Often referred to as the world’s coldest city, Yakutsk is the capital of the Sakha Republic in Russia. This makes sense because wintertime lows typically range from a bone-chilling -58°F. Extreme weather demands an extreme style of living.
People must bundle up in heated bus stops or adjacent stores to avoid hypothermia while waiting for the bus. They are also unable to wear spectacles without risking them freezing to their faces. For those who live on permafrost—permanently frozen soil—found throughout circumpolar North America, Europe, and Asia, these safety measures are unavoidable.
There is much more to permafrost than meets the eye—so much more than these ten facts will only scrape the surface—including diseases that have been trapped in snow and ice for millennia and the ability to contain more greenhouse emissions than humanity could ever produce.
1. Permafrost Covers Around 11 Percent of the Earth’s Surface
Permafrost is often characterized as ground that remains totally frozen for two or more years, while scientific definitions differ depending on the study. According to conventional estimates, there are currently 22.8 million square kilometers (8.8 million square miles) of permafrost on Earth.
To put things in perspective, that is 11% of the entire surface of Earth and 15% of the exposed land area in the Northern Hemisphere. Throughout the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost is a regular occurrence and occupies large areas in Alaska, Canada, and Russia.
Certain classifications expand the total area to encompass the Antarctic’s ice-free territory and the highest peaks of the Himalayas. Permafrost regions differ not just in extent but also in depth. There are locations where frozen soil extends down to a depth of approximately three feet. Its thickness is close to 5000 feet elsewhere.
2. There Are Two Types of Permafrost
Continuous and discontinuous permafrost are the two main categories that researchers typically distinguish between. A continuous stretch of frozen earth that extends from one location to another is known as continuous permafrost.
The Russian region of Siberia contains one of the world’s largest continuous permafrost portions, and it is thawing quickly as a result of climate change. In contrast, discrete regions comprise discontinuous permafrost.
Terrain breaks up some permafrost, preserving snow and ice in the shade of mountains but not in direct sunlight. In some places, the climate causes permafrost to break up, with some areas thawing in the summer and reforming in the winter. The Hudson Bay region of Canada contains discontinuous permafrost.
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3. Thawing Permafrost Can Assume Strange, Polygonal Shapes
Rethink your perception of permafrost as a featureless, level terrain. Melting snow can seep into ground crevices over centuries, and occasionally even decades, creating formations that appear odd at first appearance but are actually quite natural.
These mosaics also found on drying mud flats, can span thousands of square miles, with the diameter of each polygon ranging from thirty to one hundred feet. Given that polygonal fields are the result of thawing ice, it is not surprising that their frequency will increase with continued global warming.
However, polygonal fields are not the only way that permafrost erosion manifests itself. Warming ground in Alaska creates new depressions with thawing ice, empties lakes, and results in landslides.
4. Permafrost Preserves a Variety of Prehistoric Specimens
The vegetation and wildlife in permafrost regions are abundant. A small layer of wet, non-frozen soil typically covers the frozen ground, which is why several species have been able to establish themselves in these unfriendly environments.
Hardy plants that have evolved to the intense cold, wind, and brief growth seasons of the polar areas include pine, larch, and spruce trees; Arctic willows; saxifrages; and a variety of mosses, grasses, lichens, and sedges.
But when the planet warms more, more plants will be able to travel north, turning the tundra into forests over time. A number of ancient plants and animals that once lived in the tundra are also preserved by permafrost.
Animals found in permafrost include bison, wolves, cave lions, bears, and the calves of woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos. Scientists particularly valued them because, over time, their ice coffins preserved not only their skeletons but also their skin, hair, and, in certain cases, their last meals.
5. Living on Permafrost Requires Special Architecture
The bulk of the world’s permafrost regions are still uninhabited by people, but those that are need special design to support human habitation. It is necessary to build structures atop wooden piles or gravel pads since building directly on top of permafrost can elevate the temperature of the soil beneath, causing the frozen, cement-like ground to change into mud that can swallow a house.
With the majority of Yakutsk’s buildings perched three feet above the ground, its citizens may use boilers and stoves without worrying that their property would turn into a quicksand puddle. Sadly, this centuries-old custom is no longer effective due to global warming. The thawing permafrost causes scores of buildings in the Siberian city and elsewhere to fall every year.
6. Permafrost is One of the World’s Biggest Carbon Sinks (for Now)
Permafrost, which reaches depths of over 2000 feet in Canada and 4,000 feet in Russia, is thought to hold 1700 billion tons of organic carbon, which is twice as much as the carbon now found in the atmosphere of Earth.
The majority of this organic carbon has accumulated over millions of years from long-dead plants that have been unable to break down because of the constant cold. However, the plants will start to decompose and release carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide and methane when the permafrost thaws as a result of global warming.
7. Permafrost Has Cryogenically Frozen Ancient, Dangerous Diseases
In addition to producing greenhouse gases, thawing permafrost poses a risk of dispersing a host of archaic illnesses. The viruses and bacteria that extinct mammals like mammoths and cave lions carry have the ability to awaken from a protracted state of sleep.
The virus, which dates back 27,000 years, was discovered in the gut of a newly thawed mammoth and infected amoebas by a French virologist in 2014. These diseases run the risk of coming into contact with living things, such as plants and animals, which frequently lack the immune systems necessary to combat them, as permafrost thaws.
There have already been some releases of these permafrost pathogens. While the 300-year-old bones of a Russian woman had smallpox evidence, a lung sample from the body of an Inuit woman discovered from Alaskan permafrost in 1997 was found to possess genetic material of the influenza strain that caused the 1918 pandemic. Thawing permafrost was a contributing factor in the 2016 anthrax outbreak that killed 2000 Siberian reindeer.
8. Thawing Permafrost Might Cause $70 Trillion in Economic Damage
According to a 2019 research published in Nature Communications, the quantity of carbon dioxide and methane emitted from thawing permafrost is predicted to hasten global warming’s destructive impacts on the global economy, causing an estimated $70 trillion by 2300.
The study’s authors assert that they are the first to estimate the economic harm that will result from melting permafrost and the melting of white ice, which cools the earth by reflecting sunlight. The study did discover that the economic cost of permafrost thaw was not as high as previously thought, based on the most sophisticated mathematical models.
9. Permafrost is Difficult to Measure
Permafrost is invisible from space, despite having the surface area indicated above. Furthermore, satellite imaging fails to show it. Since most permafrost is found below the surface of the Earth, measuring its amount, distribution, quality, and scope requires boring holes in the ground, a labor-intensive procedure that is gradually becoming more efficient thanks to digital technology.
By combining correlating measurements—such as land-surface temperature and soil moisture—researchers like Charles Miller from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are able to get a clearer picture of permafrost. He said in an interview with the European Space Agency:
“We have a record going back over 20 years that details changes to the Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost soils, and this is key to improving climate models.”
10. Thawing Permafrost Will Shift the Real Estate Market
The world’s once hostile regions are increasingly becoming habitable due to global warming, a process that residential and commercial real estate investors are closely monitoring. For instance, while Yakutia’s inhabitants are suffering due to rising temperatures, Greenlanders may benefit from new prospects for economic growth in the form of mining and agriculture.
Alaska is comparable. The state might eventually appear to be “the best place to live in the U.S.”, according to science journalist Gaia Vince of TIME. As a result, Vince anticipates that American developers would try to increase the northern state’s already inadequate infrastructure to accommodate migrants who are relocating there from hotter, potentially less livable regions of the planet.
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