Paul Goble
Staunton,
October 2 – Roshydromet, the Russian government’s environmental monitoring
agency, says in a new 900-page report that global warming is melting the
permafrost in the country’s Arctic regions and putting key infrastructure there,
including buildings, military facilities, roads, and oil and gas pipelines.
The
full text of the detailed report which documents these threats is available
online at mnr.gov.ru/upload/iblock/4c6/ГосДоклад_B4_2017.pdf. It has been
summarized today by Barents Observer
journalist Atle Staalesen (thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic-ecology/2018/10/place-russias-arctic-coast-has-most-dramatic-climate-change).
According to the report, last year
was the third warmest ever recorded, and only 0.1 degrees centigrade lower than
the record warmest year, 2011. The
further north and west in the Russian North one travels, the greater the
increase in temperatures. The Arctic has warmed significantly and ice cover has
declined, although not to the record low of September 2012.
The permafrost which underlies the entire
region is melting at record rates, approximately 10 centimeters over the last
year. But in some places, like Nadym, an oil-producing center, the decline in the
depth of permafrost is as much as 38 centimeters. And in the city of Norilsk, the permafrost
has continued to melt at ever more rapid rates.
The consequences for Russia of this
warming are certain to be dramatic, the government report says. All
infrastructure is at risk of collapse as ice in the soil melts, land subsides
and shifts, and sinkholes open. Some buildings and pipelines may collapse, putting
human habitation and the extraction and export of oil and gas at risk.
And this will have national security
implications as well, the report continues, because as Staalesen puts it, “among
the objects most in danger are [military] buildings and coastal installations
along the shores of the Arctic.”
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