Page 28 - bne magazine September 2020 russia melting

28 I Cover story bne September 2020
alert, but experts say the event was a once-in-a-1,000-year occurrence.
Snow at the nearby Lovozero lake suddenly melted as an Arctic heat wave hit northern Russia. There are no commercial or residential buildings in the region and the power plant was built in a remote area, but if it happens again then the plant that supplies the region could be in danger.
Temperatures in the Far North of Russia hit a new all-time high as experts say that 2020 could be one of the five hottest years in recorded history.
On June 20 the Weather and Climate weather portal recorded a temperature of 38C in Verkhoyansk in the Sakha Republic in the centre of Russia – the
Currently average temperatures are 5.3C above the 1951-1980 average, and have surpassed the previous record by
a "massive" 1.9C, Berkeley Earth project lead scientist Robert Rohde said, as cited by the Guardian.
Russia has just been through its warmest winter for 130 years, with the local Muscovites complaining there was no snow in December and the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was likewise bare of snow until very late into the winter.
Another study in 2007 estimated that a 1.5°C increase in mean annual air temperature (MAAT) could lead to the deformation of almost all foundations in the city of Yakutsk in Republic of Sakha. More recent assessments found
“Permafrost occupies nearly 65% of
the territory of the Russian Federation, and profoundly affects the natural environment, traditional and non- traditional sectors of the economy, and socio-economic conditions of the Russian Northern and Eastern regions,” Streletskiy says.
“Despite having limited extent in the European part of Russia, permafrost is
a very common phenomenon east of
the Ural Mountains. There are several large Russian administrative regions where permafrost underlies a significant portion of the regional territory,”
he adds.
Several regions, such as Chukotka that used to be governed by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, and Republic of Sakha, which is home to the giant Mirny diamond mine among other things, are almost entirely located on permafrost, but the extent to which a region is frozen varies widely.
At the other end of the scale some 10% of the Arkhangelsk Oblast is permafrost, but the region contains mostly rural villages with traditional subsistence economies and lacks major infrastructure.
And many regions are simply empty.
In Siberia the Altai Krai, Republics of Tuva, Kemerovo, Irkutsk Oblast, Buryat Republic, Zabaykale and Amur Oblast as well as the Far Eastern island of Sakhalin have no significant population or infrastructure, although their territories are almost entirely frozen.
Russia has invested a lot into building up a complex system of roads, rail, pipelines and airports in its permafrost regions over the last hundred years to tap the cornucopia of natural resources that
is buried under the snow, almost all of which are located in, or travel through, permafrost zones.
The most populous and developed areas are mostly in the south and clustered along the two main railways built in Soviet times: the Trans-Siberian railway and the Baikal- Amur Railway (known in Russia simply as “BAM”) that was built in the 1970s-1980s to open the region up to exploitation.
“Temperatures in the Far North of Russia hit a new all-time high as experts say that 2020 could be one of the five hottest years in recorded history”
coldest town in the world. In some places inside the Arctic Circle temperatures temporarily spiked to an unheard of 45C on occasions, according to other reports.
The previous record of 37.8C for highest temperature ever inside the Arctic Circle was set in Fort Yukon, Alaska, in June 1915, a record it shares with Verkhoyansk. Verkhoyansk holds the record for being the coldest place on earth with an all-time low of -67.8C and also holds the Guinness World Record for the highest recorded temperature range of 105C.
2020 is on course to becoming one of the five hottest years in recorded history.
Some like it hot and some not
There are 24 regions with permafrost but most of them are devoid of people or plants. And the temperatures and the extent of permafrost vary widely between them. But counter-intuitively, the temperatures in many of these regions are rising more than twice as fast as in the rest of the world.
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that there will be a 5-20% decrease
in bearing capacity of permafrost foundations in a dozens of Russian cities by the middle of this century due to climatic changes.
“A widespread reduction in permafrost bearing capacity throughout Russia
is expected by mid-21st century,” Streletskiy’s study found. “However,
the economic impact remains
unknown, as costs related to permafrost degradation have not been fully integrated into climate change impacts assessments for Russia.” In the nine regions that are going to be most affected by melting permafrost about 19% of all infrastructure and 54% of buildings will be affected, according to Streletskiy.
The nine regions include: Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), Yamalo- Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YNAO), Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (KMAO), Komi Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (CAO), Krasnoyarsk Krai and Sakha Republic (Yakutia).