Arctic Thaw Quickening Threatens Trillion-Dollar Costs - Report

The Arctic's quickening thaw is melting the permafrost under buildings and roads from Siberia to Alaska, raising world sea levels and disrupting temperature patterns further south, an international study said on Tuesday.

The frigid region's shift to warmer and wetter conditions, resulting in melting ice around the region, may cost the world economy trillions of dollars this century, it estimated.

The report by 90 scientists, including United States experts, urged governments with interests in the Arctic to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  U.S. President Donald Trump doubts that human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, are the main driver of climate change.

"The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, and rapidly becoming a warmer, wetter and more variable environment," according to the study, which updates scientific findings from 2011.

"Increasing greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the primary underlying cause," they wrote in the study commissioned by the Arctic Council grouping the United States, Russia, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland.

Arctic warming could have cumulative net costs from 2010-2100 of between $7 trillion and $90 trillion, it said, with harm exceeding benefits such as easier access for oil and gas exploration and shipping, it said.

The period 2011-2015 was the warmest since records began in 1900.  Sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which shrank to a record low in 2012, could disappear in summers by the 2030s, earlier than many earlier projections, it said.

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