Investigators have determined that the leakage of of 20,000 tons of diesel (about 150,000 barrels) from a reservoir at a power plant in Russia’s Far North was caused by damage from thawing permafrost—just the latest sign of the catastrophic effects climate change is having in the Arctic. “Entire cities and roads were built on permafrost,” said Guido Grosse, head of the permafrost research unit at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany. “When permafrost thaws, the ice deep in the ground that has been there for thousands of years melts, and you lose stability. That has an impact on infrastructure.”
Infrastructure in Siberia, northern Canada and Alaska is usually built on pillars that stand on top of the permafrost. With temperatures rising at twice the global average rate in the Arctic Circle, the frozen ground is thawing and causing cracks in roads and buildings. About half of Russia, the world’s largest country, is covered with permafrost. But while Soviet scientists have developed ways to refreeze the ground in cases where structural stability is at stake, they lag North America in preparing for a future with no permafrost at all.
Many of Russia’s settlements in the Far North are shrinking as harsh conditions and economic isolation drive people to leave. Vorkuta, a former gulag coal mine set up by Joseph Stalin and the country’s third-biggest city in the Arctic Circle, has lost more than half of its population since the collapse of the Soviet Union.