Fighting the feedback loop: why scientists are sounding the alarm on Canada’s melting permafrost

River banks have slumped, forests have been lost and buildings have shifted and cracked on soft ground. Lakes and ponds have drained in some places and formed in others where once-solid land has collapsed.

Permafrost, which underlies 40 per cent of Canada’s landmass, is continuously frozen earth beneath the surface layers that freeze and thaw with the seasons.

But with northern Canada warming about three times as fast as the rest of the world, climate change threatens the permanence of vast stretches of this frozen ground — and the ecosystems and communities it supports.

For the people living in the subarctic Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, the changes have been stark.

“Our Elders definitely noticed a real change in how things look,” Dehcho First Nations Grand Chief Gladys Norwegian told The Narwhal in an interview. “They don’t have to be scientists to know, they just feel it and see it.”

While the impacts are felt most acutely in the North, permafrost thaw has implications for the global climate as well.

Scientists are now investigating how increased warming of the North could be part of a vicious feedback cycle known as the permafrost carbon feedback loop — the more the climate warms, the more permafrost thaws and potentially emits more greenhouse gasses, which further warms the climate and thaws more permafrost.

Permafrost holds twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and roughly 15 per cent of that stored carbon is vulnerable to being released, Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, told The Narwhal in an interview.

While Turetsky said emissions from permafrost are small relative to human-caused carbon pollution, they are an added burden on a climate already in crisis.

“It is a threat to climate; it will create additional warming on top of anthropogenic emissions,” she said.

The risks to infrastructure in Dehcho communities loom in the future — potentially amplified by the permafrost carbon feedback loop — but permafrost thaw has already taken a toll in the region, Norwegian said.

“Our winters are getting shorter and warmer, snow is melting earlier in the year, and the permafrost is thawing,” she said. “These changes are seen in the flow of the streams, the thickness of the ice on the lake.”

“Many of our forests are dying off and being replaced by wetlands,” she said.

For traditional land users, who harvest food by hunting and fishing, these are worrying shifts that have made travel more dangerous, Norwegian added.

“It’s very unpredictable and it puts a lot of strain on all of us that still really depend on the land.”

And now, with even more emissions potentially being released as part of the permafrost carbon feedback loop, permafrost melt threatens to accelerate further. And with it, the effects on the already altered region could accelerate as well.

Whether greenhouse gases are emitted as a result of permafrost thaw depends on what’s frozen underground.

If the permafrost consists of sand, which contains very little carbon, then it may destabilize the ground when it thaws, but it won’t result in high emissions, Turetsky explained.

It’s a different story when the permafrost consists of peat and contains stores of carbon — the remnants of ancient plants and animals

As permafrost thaws, microbial communities wake up from a frozen slumber and begin to metabolize the carbon that’s stored in the soil, Lisa Stein, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Alberta, explained in an interview.

A diverse array of microbes breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, as humans do, Stein said.

Specialized microorganisms called methanogens, meanwhile, generate methane, a greenhouse gas more powerful than carbon dioxide, as a by-product of metabolism.

The rich organic and waterlogged soils left behind as permafrost thaws in certain areas “are the perfect conditions for methanogens,” Stein explained.

“They survive and grow and divide because they’re making methane,” she said. “That’s actually how they make a living.”

In response, some scientists are now investigating the potential to use another set of specialized microbes that consume methane, called methanotrophs, to help counteract the methane-generating methanogens awoken by permafrost thaw.

Peat moss, for instance, has a microbiome that’s rich in microbes that consume methane, Stein said.

“The idea would be that if you can encourage the growth of peat moss, then you’re also encouraging the activity of methane-consuming microbes,” she explained. “It’s a carbon sponge, essentially.”

Growing more peat moss was just one of the potential responses to the permafrost carbon feedback loop discussed during a March dialogue series hosted by the Permafrost Carbon Feedback Action Group.

Mike Brown, a Vancouver venture capitalist focused on climate change, established the group in partnership with the Permafrost Association of Canada to help address the challenge of greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost.

The group plans to draft an “intervention roadmap” to guide policy responses to permafrost thaw in support of global efforts to slash carbon pollution.

“Emissions from permafrost can constitute a major global climate problem, one that’s potentially serious enough to make it much more difficult for us humans to achieve our net-zero carbon goals,” Brown said during his introductory comments to the dialogue series.

Over the course of the next century, permafrost thaw could emit as many greenhouse gases as deforestation and other land use change, Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at Northern Arizona University, said during the first webinar.

“When we think about climate change mitigation, which is keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, Arctic carbon emissions just makes that mitigation problem that much harder,” Schuur said.

The basic premise of solutions to the permafrost carbon feedback loop is simple: reduce permafrost thaw to reduce the emissions it releases. How to prevent permafrost thaw is where things get complicated.

In subsequent webinars, experts discussed ideas to help keep the Arctic cool and prevent further permafrost thaw, including land-use changes and the more controversial stratospheric aerosol injection.

One example of a land-use change came from northern Siberia, where Russian scientists have introduced Yakutian horses, reindeer, musk ox and other herbivores to Pleistocene Park to re-establish the grasslands of the mammoth steppe biome that was widespread during that last ice age.

The grasslands, which reflect more sunlight than the shrubs and forests they replaced, help keep permafrost cooler, John Moore, chief scientist at the College of Global Change and Earth System Science at Beijing Normal University, explained during the second webinar in the series.

While this type of landscape change could be included as part of a portfolio of options to help preserve permafrost in certain areas, Moore said it may not be a feasible solution on a broad scale.

Stratospheric aerosol injection, meanwhile, may offer broader cooling of Arctic and subarctic areas — but carries substantial risks.

Stratospheric aerosol injection is a type of solar geoengineering that involves spraying sulphate particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, mimicking the effect of particles released during volcanic eruptions.

While experts say stratospheric aerosol injection could conceivably cool surface temperatures in the Arctic, it risks acid rain, which is detrimental to ecosystems, and depletion of the ozone layer, which offers protection from dangerous UV radiation exposure.

“Every now and then we get a really large volcanic eruption that dumps aerosols into the stratosphere, so high up in the atmosphere. Those [aerosols] persist for a while and cool the planet,” Douglas MacMartin, a senior research associate at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, explained during the second webinar. “In principle, you could do the same thing by flying airplanes into the stratosphere.”

“Whether or not we should do it is, again, a more complicated question,” he added.

In an interview, Turetsky said she’s skeptical of geoengineering as a way to prevent permafrost thaw and questions whether these ideas would address or perpetuate the climate and environmental injustices that northern communities are grappling with already.

While Turetsky said she’s not opposed to more “brainstorming” on potential geoengineering solutions, the main focus should be on decarbonizing the economy.

“We cannot lose sight that anthropogenic emissions are the driver, by far, of climate change,” she said.

Brown, the chair and founder of the Permafrost Carbon Feedback Action Group, said the team will compile a final report on the dialogue series. But the group’s work won’t stop there.

They plan to meet with officials in the federal government, engage with partners in other Arctic countries and push to ensure the challenge of permafrost carbon is on the agenda at international climate meetings in the fall.

“The permafrost carbon feedback is a legitimate issue of concern and is an active area of scientific inquiry,” Cecelia Parsons, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said in an emailed statement in response to questions from The Narwhal.

The department “continues to work on advancing the incorporation of permafrost carbon feedback in our earth-system modelling to further our understanding of its influence on climate change,” she added.

One message that came through clearly during the discussions is the need for Indigenous and northern communities to be actively involved in the work to address both climate change broadly, and permafrost thaw in particular.

During the final dialogue, Natan Obed, president of the national Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said he’s “talked about not wanting to be the canary singing in the coal mine alone.”

He wants to do more than ring the alarm bells.

“I also want to be part of the way in which we solve this challenge,” he said.

“We need to work together,” he said.

For the North, the challenge of permafrost thaw is about more than emissions: it also raises substantial concerns for infrastructure built on increasingly unstable land.

“Permafrost thaw is at the heart of the challenges that we are going to face in our communities and also in our homelands outside of our communities for the next generation — not only because of the risk of further elevated emissions,” Obed said.

Vital community infrastructure is under threat from permafrost thaw in Inuit Nungangat, the Inuit homeland in Canada. Adapting to these challenges is a key priority in the National Inuit Climate Change Strategy, which calls for investments in widespread hazard mapping, vulnerability assessments and infrastructure that can withstand the changing climate.

The Northwest Territories is facing similar challenges, with more than $1 billion worth of infrastructure at risk from permafrost thaw, according to Canada’s latest climate plan.

In the Dehcho region, First Nations have partnered with researchers, combining Dehcho knowledge with western science, to better understand and adapt to the impacts of climate change in the region.

Dehcho First Nations are working to develop a climate change strategy of their own and through the Dehcho Collaborative on Permafrost, a partnership with the Scotty Creek Research Station run by Wilfrid Laurier University, they are working with scientists to develop a regional permafrost map and monitor permafrost changes.

This work is critical: even if the world were able to wrestle the greenhouse gas emissions generated by people to zero tomorrow, more permafrost would thaw because of emissions that have already been emitted.

“Understanding what that change is going to look like is what occupies most of my effort,” Steve Kokelj, head of permafrost science at the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, told The Narwhal.

It’s a complex task.

“Permafrost thaw means very, very different things for different environments and consequently, it also means very different things for the people that live in the North, depending on where you are,” Kokelj said, noting some areas may experience landslides while others see conversion of forests to wetlands.

Either way, it’s an impact. “Understanding that variability is super important for society to be able to adapt,” he said.

Ultimately, if the goal is to save as much permafrost from extinction as possible, the best chance may lie in the drastic reduction of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

“Decarbonization might save some permafrost,” Turetsky said. And saving permafrost could reduce the impacts of the permafrost carbon feedback loop.

One thing is certain, continued growth of global emissions will result in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, with arctic and subarctic regions at particularly high risk for irreversible changes.

“Our Elders kept telling us that there’s something that’s going to come to warn us,” Norwegian said. “COVID is just a warning for us that there is more to come — and I think we all know that — if we don’t do anything for climate change.”

“We need to need to do things differently; we need to treat Mother Earth differently,” she said.

Ainslie Cruickshank, The Narwhal

Natural gas is actually migrating under permafrost, and could see methane emissions skyrocket if it escapes

Scientists say vast quantities of methane may be trapped beneath the permafrost, and it could escape if it thaws

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

Beneath Svalbard’s permafrost, millions of cubic meters of methane are trapped — and scientists have now learned that it can migrate beneath the cold seal of the permafrost and escape. A large-scale escape could create a cycle of warming that would send methane emissions skyrocketing: warming thaws the permafrost, causing more gas to escape, allowing more permafrost to thaw and more gas to be released. Because Svalbard’s geological and glacial history is very similar to the rest of the Arctic region, these migrating deposits of methane are likely to be present elsewhere in the Arctic.

“Methane is a potent greenhouse gas,” said Dr Thomas Birchall of the University Center in Svalbard, lead author of the study in Frontiers in Earth Science. “At present the leakage from below permafrost is very low, but factors such as glacial retreat and permafrost thawing may ‘lift the lid’ on this in the future.”

Cold storage

Permafrost, ground that remains below zero degrees Celsius for two years or more, is widespread in Svalbard. However, it isn’t uniform or continuous. The west of Svalbard is warmer due to ocean currents, so permafrost there tends to be thinner and potentially patchier. Permafrost in the highlands is drier and more permeable, while permafrost in the lowlands is more ice-saturated. The rocks beneath are often fossil fuel sources, releasing methane which is sealed off by the permafrost. However, even where there is continuous permafrost, some geographical features may allow gas to escape.

The base of the permafrost is hard to study because of its inaccessibility. However, over the years, many wellbores have been sunk into the permafrost by companies looking for fossil fuels. The researchers used historical data from commercial and research wellbores to map the permafrost across Svalbard and identify permafrost gas accumulations. 

“I and my supervisor Kim looked through a lot of the historical wellbore data in Svalbard,” said Birchall. “Kim noticed that one recurring theme kept coming up, and that was these gas accumulations at the base of the permafrost.”

Initial temperature measurements are often compromised by heating the drilling mud to prevent the wellbore from freezing. However, observing the trend of temperature measurements and monitoring boreholes in the long term allowed the scientists to identify permafrost. They also looked for ice forming within the wellbore, changes in the drill cuttings produced while drilling the wellbore, and changes in background gas measurements. 

The wellbore monitors identified gas influxes into the wellbore, indicating accumulations beneath the permafrost, and abnormal pressure measurements which showed that the icy permafrost was acting as a seal. In other cases, even where the permafrost and underlying geology were suitable for trapping gas, and the rocks were known sources of hydrocarbons, no gas was present — suggesting that the gas produced had already migrated.

An unexpectedly frequent finding

The scientists emphasized that gas accumulations were much more common than expected. Of 18 hydrocarbon exploration wells drilled in Svalbard, eight showed evidence of permafrost and half of these struck gas accumulations. 

“All the wells that encountered gas accumulations did so by coincidence - by contrast, hydrocarbon exploration wells that specifically target accumulations in more typical settings had a success rate far below 50%,” said Birchall. “These things seem to be common. One anecdotal example is from a wellbore that was drilled recently near the airport in Longyearbyen. The drillers heard a bubbling sound coming from the well, so we decided to have a look, armed with rudimentary alarms designed for detecting explosive levels of methane — which were immediately triggered when we held them over the wellbore.”

Experts have shown that the active layer of permafrost — the upper one or two meters that thaws and re-freezes seasonally — is expanding with the warming climate. However, we know less about how the deeper permafrost is changing, if at all. Understanding this is dependent on understanding the fluid flow beneath the permafrost. If the consistently frozen permafrost grows thinner and patchier, this methane could find it ever easier to migrate and escape, possibly accelerating global warming and exacerbating the climate crisis.
 

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Earth Science

DOI

10.3389/feart.2023.1277027 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Permafrost Trapped Natural Gas in Svalbard, Norway

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Dec-2023

 

A groggy climate giant: subsea permafrost is still waking up after 12,000 years

New research suggests slow but substantial greenhouse gas release from submarine permafrost

IOP PUBLISHING

Research News

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IMAGE: ARTISTIC DIAGRAM OF THE SUBSEA AND COASTAL PERMAFROST ECOSYSTEMS, EMPHASIZING GREENHOUSE GAS PRODUCTION AND RELEASE. view more 

CREDIT: ORIGINAL ARTWORK CREATED FOR THIS STUDY BY VICTOR OLEG LESHYK AT NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY.

In the far north, the swelling Arctic Ocean inundated vast swaths of coastal tundra and steppe ecosystems. Though the ocean water was only a few degrees above freezing, it started to thaw the permafrost beneath it, exposing billions of tons of organic matter to microbial breakdown. The decomposing organic matter began producing CO2 and CH4, two of the most important greenhouse gases.

Though researchers have been studying degrading subsea permafrost for decades, difficulty collecting measurements and sharing data across international and disciplinary divides have prevented an overall estimate of the amount of carbon and the rate of release. A new study, led by Ph.D. candidate Sara Sayedi and senior researcher Dr. Ben Abbott at Brigham Young University (BYU) published in IOP Publishing journal Environmental Research Letters, sheds light on the subsea permafrost climate feedback, generating the first estimates of circumarctic carbon stocks, greenhouse gas release, and possible future response of the subsea permafrost zone.

Sayedi and an international team of 25 permafrost researchers worked under the coordination of the Permafrost Carbon Network (PCN), which is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The researchers combined findings from published and unpublished studies to estimate the size of the past and present subsea carbon stock and how much greenhouse gas it might produce over the next three centuries.

Using a methodology called expert assessment, which combines multiple, independent plausible values, the researchers estimated that the subsea permafrost region currently traps 60 billion tons of methane and contains 560 billion tons of organic carbon in sediment and soil. For reference, humans have released a total of about 500 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. This makes the subsea permafrost carbon stock a potential giant ecosystem feedback to climate change.

"Subsea permafrost is really unique because it is still responding to a dramatic climate transition from more than ten thousand years ago," Sayedi said. "In some ways, it can give us a peek into the possible response of permafrost that is thawing today because of human activity."

Estimates from Sayedi's team suggest that subsea permafrost is already releasing substantial amounts of greenhouse gas. However, this release is mainly due to ancient climate change rather than current human activity. They estimate that subsea permafrost releases approximately 140 million tons of CO2 and 5.3 million tons of CH4 to the atmosphere each year. This is similar in magnitude to the overall greenhouse gas footprint of Spain.

The researchers found that if human-caused climate change continues, the release of CH4 and CO2 from subsea permafrost could increase substantially. However, this response is expected to occur over the next three centuries rather than abruptly. Researchers estimated that the amount of future greenhouse gas release from subsea permafrost depends directly on future human emissions. They found that under a business-as-usual scenario, warming subsea permafrost releases four times more additional CO2 and CH4 compared to when human emissions are reduced to keep warming less than 2°C.

"These results are important because they indicate a substantial but slow climate feedback," Sayedi explained. "Some coverage of this region has suggested that human emissions could trigger catastrophic release of methane hydrates, but our study suggests a gradual increase over many decades."

Even if this climate feedback is relatively gradual, the researchers point out that subsea permafrost is not included in any current climate agreements or greenhouse gas targets. Sayedi emphasized that there is still a large amount of uncertainty about subsea permafrost and that additional research is needed.

"Compared to how important subsea permafrost could be for future climate, we know shockingly little about this ecosystem," Sayedi said. "We need more sediment and soil samples, as well as a better monitoring network to detect when greenhouse gas release responds to current warming and just how quickly this giant pool of carbon will wake from its frozen slumber."

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abcc29

CAPTION

The coastline of the Bykovsky Peninsula in the central Laptev Sea, Siberia retreats during summer, when ice-rich blocks of permafrost fall to the beach and are eroded by waves

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by BYU Graduate Studies.

Summary of the key scientific points:

• Subsea permafrost has been thawing since the end of the last glacial period (~14,000 years ago) when it began to be inundated by the ocean
• An international team of 25 permafrost researchers estimate that the subsea permafrost region currently traps 60 billion tons of methane and 560 billion tons of organic carbon in sediment and soil. However, the exact amount of these carbon stocks remains highly uncertain.
• This carbon is already being released from the subsea permafrost region, though it remains unclear whether this is a natural response to deglaciation or if anthropogenic warming is accelerating greenhouse gas production and release.
• The researchers estimate that currently, the subsea permafrost region releases approximately 140 million tons of CO2 and 5.3 million tons of CH4 to the atmosphere each year. This represents a small fraction of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions--approximately equal to the greenhouse gas footprint of Spain.
• Experts predict a gradual increase in emissions from subsea permafrost over the next three hundred years rather than an abrupt release.
• The amount of greenhouse gas increase depends on how much human emissions are reduced. Experts estimate that approximately ¾ of the extra subsea emissions can be avoided if humans actively reduce their emissions compared to a no mitigation scenario.
• This climate feedback is still virtually absent from climate policy discussions, and more field observations are needed to better predict the future of this system.

CAPTION

The coastline of the Bykovsky Peninsula in the central Laptev Sea, Siberia retreats during summer, when ice-rich blocks of permafrost fall to the beach 

Quotes from other co-authors:

"I think there are three important messages from this study. First, subsea permafrost is probably not a climate time bomb on a hair trigger. Second, subsea permafrost is a potentially large climate feedback that needs to be considered in climate negotiations. Third, there is still a huge amount that we don't know about this system. We really need additional research, including international collaboration across northern countries and research disciplines."

Dr. Ben Abbott, senior researcher on the project, Brigham Young University

"This work demonstrates the power of science synthesis and networking by bringing together experts across a range of disciplines in order to assess our state of knowledge based on observations and models currently available. While scientific work will continue to be done to test these ideas, bringing knowledge together with this expert assessment provides an important baseline for shaping future research on subsea permafrost greenhouse gas emissions."

Dr. Ted Schuur, Lead investigator of the Permafrost Carbon Network, Northern Arizona University

"This expert assessment is a crucial contribution to the scientific literature in advancing our knowledge on subsea permafrost and potential greenhouse gas emissions from this so far understudied pool. Bringing together scientists from multiple disciplines, institutions, and countries has made it possible to move beyond individual datapoints or studies providing a much more comprehensive estimate of subsea permafrost. "

Dr. Christina Schädel, Co-Investigator of the Permafrost Carbon Network, Northern Arizona University

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High resolution versions of the photos and illustrations are available at this link.

 

Permafrost Showdown

by Robert Hunziker / May 17th, 2024

“Deep below the glistening surface of a frozen Arctic lake, something is bubbling—something that could cause global warming to accelerate beyond all previous projections… Now the freezer door is opening, releasing the carbon into Arctic lake bottoms. Microbes digest it, convert it to methane, and the lakes essentially burp out methane.’ Scientists estimate that permafrost holds up to 950 billion tons of carbon. As it thaws, 50 billion tons of methane could enter the atmosphere from Siberian lakes alone. That’s ten times more methane than the atmosphere holds right now,” (Katey Walter Anthony, biogeochemist, National Geographic Explorer Since 2011)

Rapid warming of Arctic permafrost has brought a significant threat to all life forms. Consequently, The Royal Society (est. 1660) felt compelled to support publication of a new video that exposes this threat: What Happens When the Permafrost Thaws? BBC in partnership with The Royal Society by Daniel Nils Roberts, British-Norwegian director, April 15, 2024.

“Thermokarst lakes (formed when permafrost melts) are projected to release approximately 40% of ancient permafrost soil carbon emissions this century.” (Source: K.M. Walter Anthony, et al, “Decadal-scale Hotspot Methane Ebullition Withing Lakes Following Abrupt Permafrost Thaw”, Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2021).

“The Tibetan Plateau is the largest alpine permafrost region in the world, accounting for approximately 75% of the total alpine permafrost area in the Northern Hemisphere. Similar to high-latitude permafrost regions, this region has experienced fast climate warming and extensive permafrost thaw, which has triggered the widespread expansion of thermokarst lakes and other types of abrupt permafrost thaw. The number of thermokarst lakes in this permafrost region is estimated to be 161,300.” (Source: Guibiao Yang, et al, “Characteristics of Methane Emissions from Alpine Thermokarst Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau”, Nature Communications 14, Article No. 3121, 2023).

Ecosystems throughout the planet are rapidly transforming because of human-generated global warming. After all, what does the formation of 161,300 thermokarst lakes in only the Alpine permafrost region alone say about the impact of global warming?

Scientists are expressing renewed concerns about monster climate events lurking beneath the frozen ground of permafrost, which is 15% of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere (MIT Climate Portal). And monsters lurk above solid grounding in Antarctic glacial formations, starting to fracture as fissures widen like ogres of the deep.

From the Arctic to Antarctica the planet is sagging, dripping, slouching, changing the face of 10,000 years of nature coexisting with humanity side-by-side until only recently as it transforms into an adversarial relationship. Permafrost ranks alongside the Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland, The Great Barrier Reef, and the world’s three largest rainforests as the most important determinates of this changing future. Within permafrost’s confines exist thousands of years of latent ingredients that have the potential to set the world on fire. Its impact could be transcendent.

“Most of Earth’s near-surface permafrost could be gone by 2100, an international team of scientists has concluded after comparing current climate trends to the planet’s climate 3 million years ago… The team found that the amount of near-surface permafrost could drop by 93% compared to the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900. That’s under the most extreme warming scenario in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” (Source: Study: “Near Surface Permafrost Will Be Nearly Gone by 2100″, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, September 15, 2023).

What Happens When the Permafrost Thaws (the film): “Permafrost is of huge importance to the entire planet… including one-half of Canada and two-thirds of Russia… and the Tibetan Plateau… permafrost is rock, sediment or ice that remains at or below zero degrees Celsius for two or more consecutive years… depending upon where it is found, permafrost can be millions of years old.”

Interviews in the What Happens film, living in permafrost regions, like Svalbard, Norway, when discussing noticeable climate change: “This kind of weather, it’s not supposed to be like this in October, it’s supposed to be minus 15°, clear, dry climate, and it’s not. It’s a rainstorm.”

As a result of abnormal climate behavior, especially where permafrost hangs out, the “active layer” of permafrost is getting deeper and deeper throughout the world. This is bad news. This creates more and more exposure to thousands of years of accumulation of “who knows what?”  It’s happening at a fast enough rate now that it could expose 10,000,000 woolly mammoths (a very rough estimate by somebody?) as well as ancient viruses, and who knows what else?

Moreover, aside from 10,000,000 woolly mammoth skeletons with some of them kinda well-preserved skin, fur, etc., a unique study claims up to 20,000 toxic contamination sites could be exposed: “Here we identify about 4500 industrial sites where potentially hazardous substances are actively handled or stored in the permafrost-dominated regions of the Arctic. Furthermore, we estimate that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are related to these industrial sites.”  (Source: Moritz Langer, et al, “Thawing Permafrost Poses Environmental Threat to Thousands of Sites with Legacy Industrial Contamination”, Nature Communications, March 28, 2023).

“But there’s something else that concerns scientists much more. The scariest thing that is happening with permafrost is what it is doing to the climate itself… permafrost acts as a storage… it locks up the carbon from dead vegetation quite effectively, and it’s accumulated over many thousands of years.” (What Happens).

Now, the freezer door is open. Nobody knows for sure what’ll come through. But the biggest concern is permafrost competing with human-driven carbon emissions like CO2. This could drive global warming to unspeakable levels.

“There’s estimated to be four times the amount of carbon in permafrost than all the human-generated CO2 emissions in modern history. The release into the atmosphere of even a fraction of this as carbon dioxide and methane will have a profound impact on the climate.” (What Happens)

“What can be done” is an open question that’s semi-addressed in the film What Happens: We can make more informed decisions and build communities that are resilient to changes, highlighted by the ways that humans are entangled with nature. In other words, adaptation is the most realistic solution, other than stopping fossil fuels, which is not happening.

Meanwhile, the backup position to frustration over ongoing CO2 emissions that are continuing to ratchet up, now at all-time highs, scientists are increasingly calling for “adaptation to climate change” instead of pounding the table for a halt to emissions. For example, a recent report by the prestigious Columbia Climate School makes the case: “Experts are warning that policymakers should consider adaptation to sea-level rise a primary concern.” But, how to adapt to permafrost thaw is an altogether different matter… the most challenging of all.

In truth, climate change is far ahead of schedule, as scientific models of yesteryear look like distant history. It’s likely that history will designate the 21st century “The Age of Adaptation” by default as countries react, after the fact, to collapsing ecosystems, which guarantees a future full of surprises beyond wildest imagination.

There are scientists who believe permafrost thawing will accelerate global warming beyond the comfort zone of life in several regions of the planet; in fact, it’s already very close to a large scale event in Pakistan, India’s Indus River Valley, eastern China, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Still, regardless of circumstances, finding a way forward to the future is in the lifeblood of humanity. In that regard, there is some good news (kinda good): According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) renewables will meet 35% of “global power generation” by 2025, thus a significant rise in CO2 emissions from global power activity is unlikely over the next few years. However, global power generation is not the full enchilada of world energy: Along those lines, coal consumption is expected to drop 13.5% by 2030 but natural gas and oil will both rise as renewables, alongside fossil fuels, experience strong growth to meet increasing levels of demand. According to the IEA, fossil fuels will still account for 70% of world energy, down from today’s 82%, by 2030. This is progress but is it too slow, not enough soon enough? Moreover, and as endorsed by several oil CEOs, the IEA expects oil supply to remain robust into 2050. Hmm -global warming is all about excessive levels of fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Those emissions are not going away anytime soon, which will please the permafrost thawing gods.

As for US influence to lessen the impact of permafrost thawing, although not expressly stated as such in the legislative bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides $370 billion in clean energy investments. But can Biden’s IRA survive political wars? Is IRA bulletproof? More importantly, is it enough soon enough?

According to Barron’s d/d April 1, 2024: “Trump Is Taking Aim at Biden’s Climate Law”: He calls it a waste of money, and instead, has promised oil and gas CEOs favorable treatment, including scrapping Biden’s IRA, if elected, assuming they pony-up $1 billion for his campaign. Is this a bribe? It’s MAGA’s BMGW “Buy More Global Warming” to subsidize thawing of permafrost.Facebook

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Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

This little-known climate change hazard is creeping across northern Canada. These scientists are trying to fight it

By Steve McKinley Halifax Bureau
Sat., Nov. 20, 2021

There’s a subterranean menace stalking the highway outside of Whitehorse.

It is implacable, remorseless and, unless drastic measures are taken, inevitable.

If and when it reaches the Alaska Highway, many of the Yukon’s northern communities will be cut off from Whitehorse, as will that city’s only connection to neighbouring Alaska.

That’s why Fabrice Calmels, research chair in permafrost and geoscience at Yukon University, has dotted the area around it with sensors. He hopes to be able to give governments an early warning of the menace long before the ground begins to heave beneath their feet.

The menace is called a permafrost slump. It occurs when the permanently frozen layer of soil that underlies large swaths of Canada north of the 60th parallel begins to thaw.


When that layer contains a lot of water in the form of ice — in Canada, it most often does — and that ice thaws, the ground can often no longer support the weight on top of it.

When that happens, it can cause roads to sag or buckle. It can even cause sinkholes to open up in the middle of a roadway.


And, when the slumps happen, there is often a chain reaction — more permafrost is exposed to the air, accelerating the thawing, and the slumping becomes a runaway process.


To be fair, the menace, located about 34 kilometres west of Whitehorse airport by road, is more of a tortoise than a hare.

It has moved 69 metres over the past five years, and it now sits 37 metres from the road. But it’s picked up the pace recently. Over the past summer — fuelled in part by a two-week spell of above 30 C weather — it has moved a whopping 18 metres.

If it continues at its current average pace — which is not a given — it will cross paths with the highway in two or three years. Yukon’s Department of Highways and Public Works is already looking at ways to mitigate the problem.

They’re considering everything from detouring the highway to finding ways to keep the permafrost cool to digging down to replace and stabilize the ground below the highway.

The problem, says Idrees Muhammad, manager of design and construction for the department, is that all those options are expensive, part of the cost of trying to build on permafrost.


Calmels’ sensors are the first stage of an early-warning system for permafrost slump, which he is developing in collaboration with his mentor, Michel Allard, professor emeritus at Laval University, who has similar sensors installed at three airports in remote Nunavik communities in northern Quebec for the same purpose.

“Permafrost touches everything,” says Calmels. “It’s always been difficult to build on permafrost.”

Everything that is built upon permafrost today incorporates measures designed to minimize the impact of that layer becoming unstable. Houses built on permafrost are built above the ground to allow air to pass below them, to keep the permafrost frozen. Roads cost five times more to build and maintain on permafrost than on non-permafrost ground because they must compensate for the possible movement of the ground due to changes in the permafrost layer.

But most of that technology is based on a relatively stable climate, says Calmels, one where there is a thermal equilibrium between the infrastructure, the air temperature and the permafrost temperature.

“But if our (global) temperature is rising, then it becomes a lot more difficult.”

When the warning system is finished, the scientists hope they will be able to automatically analyze the data coming from those sensors, predict if the thawing permafrost might cause a slump that could threaten those sites, and automatically send an alarm to those who need to know about such things.

Those warnings would come at two levels, says Calmels. The first, detecting smaller movements and temperature changes in the permafrost, would warn officials that there was a likelihood of a slump occurring in the near future. The second level, a massive movement or the loss of a sensor, would indicate that a slump — or a sinkhole — had just occurred, giving officials a chance to shut down any affected roads.

Calmels’ sensors, some deployed in boreholes drilled into the permafrost, each hour measure ground temperature at various depths, air temperature, soil moisture and precipitation.

They also include inclinometers, which can be used to produce information about whether the ground is moving, how much and how fast it’s moving and about its movement relative to other layers.

His team also surveys the slump from the air, using GPS markers and a drone to track its movement.

All the data goes into a data logger, which then sends the information to a nearby substation called a gateway. In the case of the Alaska Highway slump, that gateway is at a farmer’s place about a kilometre away.

From the gateway, the information is uploaded via the internet to a central computer at Laval University in Quebec City. There, an algorithm — now in the final stages of development — analyzes the raw data and determines if there’s a danger of an upheaval occurring in the near future.

There’s evidence this system works. During the past year, Calmels put sensors directly in front of the Alaska Highway slump, and, using the data he collected, was able to predict the next portion of the slump six days before it actually happened.

Eventually, the whole system will be automated, and if the algorithm determines an alarm should be raised, it will be sent out automatically via an email distribution list to whoever needs to know.

The project, funded in part by both the federal and territorial governments, is being undertaken in collaboration with Laval University.


In Quebec, Laval’s Allard has placed similar sensors near the airports of three Nunavik communities — Salluit, Tasiujaq and Inukjuak — to keep an eye on whether any permafrost changes might lead to buckling runways.

Here, Allard is also concerned about thawing permafrost creating landslides, a similar process to the slumps in Yukon, but occurring on more of a slope.

When the permafrost layer thaws, the layer of ground on top of it, the active layer, which perennially freezes and rethaws, may be cut loose and start to slide. Scientist call that an “active layer detachment failure.”

“The idea is: how can we assess the risk that a landslide will occur in the future?” he says. “By what method can we make a warning system that will tell, for example, the mayor, the civil security organizations that, if the weather continues as it is going on now, the risk of landslides will be starting.”

Those kinds of warnings are vitally important in Quebec’s far North. There are 14 Inuit communities in Nunavik, all of which depend solely on their airports for supplies once the seasons change and ice closes off shipping access.

Once Allard and Calmels’ warning system is up and running, the three airports will have a little advance notice of changes in the permafrost that might affect airport runways. Allard says he’s already been talking with the government about expanding that warning system to the other 11 communities.

And it’s not a stretch to believe that the early warning system they’ve developed can be adapted to other, non-permafrost areas.

For example, given enough study, the network of sensors and the automated warning system could be applied to slopes in B.C., warning officials there when a mudslide or rock slide might be imminent, and sending off a widespread alarm when one has. That’s a warning that might have been useful during last week’s flooding and mudslides in southern B.C. that killed at least one person and trapped hundreds of people on its highways.

“This is not so complex, you know,” says Allard. “The key system is the data logger and the (local) communication. And those systems are widely available, and they can be deployed to anywhere in the world.

“So, if some specialist in landslides wants to send a signal, the system can be installed on their instrumentation and be put to use.”

Allard expects the automated warning system will be up and running by next summer.

Thawing permafrost isn’t just a problem for the Arctic. Here’s how it can impact the globe

By Steve McKinley

Halifax Bureau
Sat., Nov. 20, 2021

There’s a reason scientists and climate change activists have been raising the alarm about the planet’s melting permafrost for the better part of the last decade.

That’s because as climate change causes an overall rise in global average temperatures, the consequent thawing of that perpetually frozen layer of earth in the Arctic has the potentially to drastically change people’s way of life, not only in the north, but across the globe.

At the local level, thawing permafrost has impacts on the way people — and animals — hunt, fish and otherwise gather food. It has further-reaching impacts on any man-made infrastructure built on it, which has consequential effects on access between communities in a region where those communities tend to be widely dispersed.

And thawing permafrost has impacts on a global level, where the process can contribute to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which will, in a feedback loop, further speed the increase in global average temperature, thus causing more permafrost thaw.

Permafrost, by definition, is any type of ground that stays at or below 0 C for two or more consecutive years. In Canada, most of that permafrost contains water in the form of ice.

In practice, much of the permafrost that occurs in the world — predominantly north of 60 degrees latitude — has remained frozen for thousands of years. That includes great swaths of Canada, Greenland, Siberia and Alaska.

In those regions, there is a layer of ground at the surface that repeatedly thaws and refreezes as the seasons change. Scientists call this the active layer. Usually, it ranges from 0.5 to 2 metres thick, with the thinner active layers occurring in far northern regions, while the thicker layers occur near the southern boundaries of permafrost.

Underneath that active layer lies the permanently frozen permafrost layer. In regions where the temperatures are consistently cold, such as Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic, that layer can be 700 metres thick. Further south, as in Yellowknife, it becomes only a few metres thick.

At the interface of the two layers, the permafrost tends to contain a lot of water in the form of ice. This is significant because when ice-rich permafrost begins to melt, it undermines the stability of the ground above it.

When that happens, you may get sinkholes, you may get slumps in the earth, and in the cases where the ground is sloped, you may get landslides. Or, as the scientists dub it, an “active layer detachment failure.”

To a large extent, the thawing of a permafrost layer depends on two things: temperature and precipitation.

“If you have a warm winter where the winter is not cold enough to cool off the permafrost, it’s relatively bad. If you have a hot summer, it’s not good news either,” says Fabrice Calmels, the research chair for Permafrost and Geoscience at Yukon University.

“If you have a lot of snow in winter, it means that you will have a layer that insulates the cold air from the permafrost. So, it keeps the permafrost warmer because you put a blanket on it. So, a lot of snow is not good.”

If there’s rain, says Calmels, that’s not good for the permafrost either, because the warmer water will infiltrate the soil, move through its active layer and warm the permafrost beneath.

When that happens, things on the surface become disturbed.

The change in topology may be quite dramatic.

Old Crow in the Yukon is 800 km north of Whitehorse — a three-hour flight by plane, the only way to get there.

For generations, Zelma Lake, near Old Crow, has been a focal point of hunting and fishing for the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation.

But in 2007, that lake suddenly, catastrophically, drained — the result, in part, say scientists, of melting permafrost opening up cavities under the lake.

That’s an extreme example. There are less sensational ones that may have wide-ranging long-term consequences.

Lakes turn into grasslands or ponds. Traditional trapping trails become inaccessible. Berries and medicinal plants aren’t able to grow where they used to.

In the same area around Old Crow, says Calmels, permafrost thawing has led to changes in the forest above. And as the forest degrades, a species of lichen that’s attached to that forest becomes more rare. And that particular lichen is a favourite food of the caribou. If the rarity of the lichen becomes widespread, it potentially means the caribou change their migration paths, meaning those who hunt the caribou will have to change along with them.

In areas where humans have built infrastructure on top of permafrost, the thawing of that layer often means upheaval of the ground above. And that means roads may become impassable — even developing sinkholes — and airport runways may become unusable.

And that’s especially problematic north of 60 where remote communities depend on those roads and airports for all their supplies.

Just outside Whitehorse, Calmels is tracking a permafrost slump that is edging its way toward the Alaska Highway. If that slump were suddenly to bisect the highway, all road contact between Whitehorse and some of the Yukon’s northern communities would be lost, as well as all access to Alaska.

In northern Quebec, scientists have sensors placed at the airports of three northern communities, hoping to predict any permafrost slumps before they happen.

But the cost of a thawing permafrost can turn out to be greater and a lot more global.

Buried within that frozen layer is a huge amount of organic matter. In the last ice ages, in Siberia and parts of the Yukon and Alaska, large portions of the Arctic were not covered by the glaciers that marched steadily south. In these organically rich regions lived some of the planet’s legendary — now extinct — megafauna, the woolly mammoth and the great auk, as examples.

When the ice age receded, all that organic matter, along with huge amounts of plant biomass, were buried and remains frozen in the permafrost.

But when that organic matter is again unfrozen and exposed to air — when the permafrost surrounding it melts — nature’s organic chemical processes resume. The organic carbon is broken down by bacteria into carbon dioxide and methane.

The permafrost, once a carbon sink, now becomes a source of greenhouse gases.

And those greenhouse gases contribute to the warming of the atmospheric temperatures, meaning they will, among other things, expedite the process of thawing the permafrost.

Steve McKinley is a Halifax-based reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @smckinley1

Permafrost: a ticking carbon time bomb

In Sweden's far north, permafrost beneath the Stordalen mire is up to thousands of years old

 Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP


Issued on: 25/10/2021 

Abisko (Sweden) (AFP)

Here in the Arctic in Sweden's far north, about 10 kilometres (six miles) east of the tiny town of Abisko, global warming is happening three times faster than in the rest of the world.

On the peatland, covered in tufts of grass and shrubs dotted with blue and orange berries and little white flowers, looms a moonlander-like pod hinting at this far-flung site's scientific significance.

Researchers are studying the frozen -- now shapeshifting -- earth below known as permafrost.

As Keith Larson walks between the experiments, the boardwalks purposefully set out in a grid across the peat sink into the puddles and ponds underneath and tiny bubbles appear.

The distinct odour it emits is from hydrogen sulfide, sometimes known as swamp gas. But what has scientists worried is another gas rising up with it: methane.

With average temperatures rising around the Arctic, the permafrost has started to thaw Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

Carbon stores, long locked in the permafrost, are now seeping out.

Between carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, permafrost contains some 1,700 billion tonnes of organic carbon, almost twice the amount of carbon already present in the atmosphere.

Methane lingers in the atmosphere for only 12 years compared to centuries for CO2 but is about 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year period.

Thawing permafrost is a carbon "time bomb", scientists have warned.
Vicious circle

In the 1970s, "when researchers first started showing up and investigating these habitats, these ponds didn't exist", says Larson, project coordinator for the Climate Impacts Research Centre at Umea University, based at the Abisko Scientific Research Station.

"The smell of the hydrogen sulfide, that's associated with the methane that's being released -- they wouldn't have smelled that to the extent we do today," adds Larson, who measures how deep the so-called active layer is by shoving a metal rod into the ground.

Researcher Keith Larson tracks the thawing of the permafrost which worries scientists because carbon stores, long locked in the permafrost, are now seeping out

 Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

Permafrost -- defined as soil that stays frozen year-round for at least two consecutive years -- lies under about a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere.

In Abisko, the permafrost beneath the mire can be up to tens of metres thick, dating back thousands of years. In parts of Siberia, it can go down over a kilometre and be hundreds of thousands of years old.

With average temperatures rising around the Arctic, the permafrost has started to thaw.

As it does so, bacteria in the soil begin to decompose the biomass stored within. The process releases the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane -- further accelerating climate change in a vicious circle.

A few minutes' drive away at the much smaller Storflaket mire, researcher Margareta Johansson has tracked the thawing permafrost since 2008 by measuring the active layer, the part of the soil that thaws in summer.

Vicious circle: as the permafrost thaws, bacteria in the soil begin to decompose the biomass stored within and the process releases greenhouse gases

 Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

"In this active layer, where measurements started in 1978, we have seen it become between seven and 13 centimetres (2.8 and 5 inches) thicker every decade," says Johansson, from Lund University's department of physical geography and ecosystem science.

"This freezer that has kept plants frozen for thousands of years has stored the carbon that then can be released as the active layer gets thicker," she adds.

- At a tipping point? -

By 2100, the permafrost could have significantly thawed if CO2 emissions are not reduced, experts on oceans and the cryosphere from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have warned.

The Arctic's average annual temperature rose by 3.1 degrees Celsius (37.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1971 to 2019, compared to 1C for the planet as a whole, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme said in May.

So could the permafrost reach a tipping point? That is, a temperature threshold beyond which an ecosystem can tip into a new state and risk disturbing the global system.

The big issue with permafrost is that the thawing and accompanying carbon release will continue even if human emissions are cut 

Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

It's feared, for example, that the Amazon tropical forest could turn into a savannah or that the ice sheets atop Greenland and West Antarctica could melt entirely.

"If all the frozen carbon would be released, it would almost triple the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere," Gustaf Hugelius, from Stockholm University who specialises in the carbon cycles of permafrost, tells AFP.

"But that will never happen," he quickly adds. The thawing of the permafrost, he says, will not take place all at once, nor will all the carbon be released in a giant puff.

Rather, it will seep out over decades, even hundreds of years.

Permafrost Kenan AUGEARD AFP

The big issue with permafrost is that the thawing and accompanying carbon release will continue even if human emissions are cut.

"We have just begun activating a system that will react for a very long time," Hugelius says.

- Cracks in the ground -

In Abisko, a small lakeside town with traditional red brick and wooden buildings known as a popular spot for viewing the northern lights, telltale signs of thawing permafrost are there if you know where to look.

Tears in the ground have opened up and slumping soil is visible around the picturesque town. Rows of telephone poles are tilting because the ground has started to shift.

Signs of thawing permafrost, such as tears in the ground and slumping soil, have appeared around the small northern Swedish town of Abisko

 Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

In Alaska, where permafrost is found beneath nearly 85 percent of the land, thawing permafrost is causing roads to warp.

Cities in Siberia have seen buildings start to crack as the ground shifts. In Yakutsk, the world's largest city built on permafrost, some buildings have already had to be demolished.

The deterioration of permafrost affects water, sewage and oil pipes as well as buried chemical, biological and radioactive substances, Russia's environment ministry said in a report in 2019.

Last year, a fuel tank ruptured after its supports suddenly sank into the ground near the Siberian city of Norilsk, spilling 21,000 tonnes of diesel into nearby rivers.

Norilsk Nickel blamed thawing permafrost that had weakened the plant's foundation.

Across the Arctic, permafrost thaw could affect up to around two thirds of infrastructure by mid-century, according to a draft IPCC report, seen by AFP in June ahead of its scheduled release by the UN in February.

In Siberian cities, buildings have begun to crack as the ground shifts 

Mladen ANTONOV AFP/File

More than 1,200 settlements, 36,000 buildings and four million people would be affected, it said.

It can lead to other dramatic changes in the landscape too, such as trapping water to form new ponds or lakes, or opening up a new path for water drainage, leaving the area completely dry.

- Threatening Paris goals -

The planet-warming gases escaping from permafrost threaten the hard-won Paris climate goals, scientists have warned.

Countries that signed the 2015 treaty vowed to cap the rise in global temperatures at well below 2C -- 1.5C if possible -- compared to preindustrial levels.

To have a two-thirds chance of staying under the 1.5C cap, humanity cannot emit more than 400 billion tonnes of CO2, the IPCC recently concluded.

At current rates of emissions, our "carbon budget" would be exhausted within a decade.

Scientists warn that the planet-warming gases escaping from permafrost threaten the hard-won Paris climate goals

Hector RETAMAL AFP/File

But carbon budgets do "not fully account for" the wild card of a rapid discharge in greenhouse gases from natural sources in the Arctic, warned a study this year, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Many climate models currently don't take permafrost into account because it is difficult to project the net effects of the permafrost thawing, Hugelius says.

Emissions in some areas are offset by the "greening of the Arctic" as certain plants thrive in the warmer temperatures, he adds.

However, the latest IPCC report from August did raise the issue of melting permafrost and stated that "further warming will amplify permafrost thawing", he says.

Action taken now can still have a strong effect on the speed of the thaw, Larson stresses.

Many climate models currently don't take permafrost into account because it is difficult to project the net effects of the permafrost thawing, says Gustaf Hugelius, from Stockholm University who specialises in the carbon cycles of permafrost 

Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

Even if "we actually don't have control over the rate of thaw of the permafrost soils" that doesn't mean "we shouldn't turn off the fossil fuels and change how we live on this planet", he says.

Some changes driven by warming temperatures in the Arctic are already irreversible, he adds sadly.

Tradition slipping away

"Around here we've been reindeer herding for at least 1,000 years," says Tomas Kuhmunen, a member of the indigenous Sami community.

Wearing a peaked bobble hat in traditional blue, red and yellow, he is standing on top of Luossavaara mountain overlooking Kiruna, Sweden's northernmost town that has grown up around an iron mine.

Kuhmunen, 34, works with the Sami Parliament but is also a reindeer herder, a practice passed down the generations for as far back as he can trace his family records, which is until the 1600s.

Unlike in his ancestors' days, modern times have forced the grazing reindeer to negotiate roads, rail tracks, wind power plants and mines.

Today, they must also adapt to the warming climate.

Traditionally, the reindeer roam freely part of the year, with the cold weather in autumn quickly freezing the ground, which stayed frozen through the winter snowfalls.

"That creates a good ground for the reindeer to dig up the lichen," Kuhmunen says, explaining that they can smell lichen through as much as a metre of snow.

But changing weather patterns have affected the availability of food.

Unseasonably high temperatures cause the snow to thaw and freeze again when the cold returns, building up thicker layers of ice that prevent the reindeer from digging down through the snow.

The animals struggle to find enough to eat, forcing Kuhmunen to spread the herd out over a much larger area to find food.

That means he has to go tens of kilometres more to keep an eye on them, using a snowmobile rather than skis.

"In many instances down in the forest we are grazing what were our forefathers' 'Plan C' type of pastures," the bearded herder says.

According to Sweden's Sami Parliament, about 2,500 people depend on reindeer for their livelihood.

The changes facing herders are of concern to the UN's IPCC climate science advisory panel.

In Siberia "nomadic reindeer herding and cryosphere fishing livelihoods are vulnerable to permafrost thaw, which alters northern landscapes and lakes as well as rain-on-snow events... " its draft report said.

"These people are endemically adapting via key decisions to alter nomadic routes, pasture uses and seasonal land use."

When necessary, Kuhmunen puts out pellets in troughs for the reindeer to feed on.

"It's a way to have the reindeer survive, but it's not desirable" and it's not "economically sustainable", he insists.

It reflects a trend in Sweden, Norway and Finland, according to researchers from northern Sweden's Umea University.

But herders do not consider it "a long-term solution": feeding the reindeer directly is harmful for their health and behaviour -- reindeer become "too tame", threatening the traditional lifestyle, they noted last year.

- Shrinking -

On the south peak of the dramatic Kebnekaise massif, 70 km away, year after year Ninis Rosqvist is seeing the impact of a warming climate before her very eyes.

Nimble as a mountain goat, the 61-year-old glacial researcher expertly climbs up under a cloudless blue sky to place an antenna in the freshly-fallen snow to measure the altitude.

Before she gets her answer, she knows the glacier -- 150 km north of the Arctic Circle -- is smaller than the last time she was there.

The mountaintop glacier has shrunk by more than 20 metres (66 feet) since the 1970s.

The GPS shows she is 2,094.8 metres up.

Until two years ago, it was Sweden's highest peak.

"In the past 30 years, it's been melting more than previously, and in the last 10 years it's been even more," Rosqvist, a Stockholm University geography professor, says, adding that summers especially have been unusually warm with recurring heatwaves.

"We can see the effect of it because it's like: 'Wow (the glaciers) they're thin, they have melted so much'."

Most glaciers in Sweden are likely doomed, Rosqvist believes. Here, the loss won't have much of an impact since there is already enough freshwater from rain and snowmelt.

But it's a strong signal to the world.

In South America and around the Himalayas, people depend on the yearly meltwater from glaciers for drinking water and irrigation.

And in Greenland, the ice sheets hold enough water to raise global sea levels by up to seven metres.

For many researchers, an important lesson from the Arctic is that some of these systems are outside human control.

© 2021 AFP