The Arctic is melting, but the Government of the Russian Federation is taking control of permafrost

According to the Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Alexander Kozlov, there will be 140 thermometric wells in the country, of which 78 have already been drilled. Each such well is equipped with sensors to the entire depth: information about the temperature inside the permafrost is transmitted to the monitoring center online.

The problem is that in 2035 the Arctic for the summer will be completely deprived of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. This event will be a critical point of no return: the ice-free Arctic Ocean will begin to absorb excess solar energy. This is a natural process, as water has a darker surface and less reflectivity than ice. For this reason, warming in the Arctic will accelerate exponentially, which will threaten industrial and residential infrastructure in the circumpolar regions of the Russian Federation.

The monitoring system for the state of permafrost (cryolithozones) will help track how the strength of soils in the Arctic zone changes, and respond in a timely manner, said Alexey Chekunkov, Minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic. Unfortunately, the system of hydrometeorological observations, which Roshydromet currently contains, has not yet been restored even to the level of the 80s of the last century. And climate change, meanwhile, does not give time to swing.

The temperature in the Arctic region is growing 3.7 times faster than in other climatic zones of the Earth. Russian territory occupies 28 percent of the region's area - 4.8 million square meters. In the Russian Arctic, 85 percent of the land is in the permafrost zone and 2.6 million people live there. A decade and a half after the Arctic Ocean loses its ice, by about 2050, the bearing capacity of frozen Arctic soils is projected to decline by 60 percent. There will be a destabilization of the soils on which many Russian cities are located. As a result, more than 70 percent of residential buildings in the Russian Arctic may be at risk of destruction. These are objects erected on permafrost in Yakutia, in Chukotka, in the Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Districts, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

The critical situation today is already developing in 27 cities and settlements of the Arctic zone of Russia. There, due to soil defrosting, drawdowns and deformations began about 50 percent of the houses of the housing stock, in which almost 800 thousand citizens live. In the area of ​ ​ maximum risk are the cities of Noyabrsk, Nadym, Gubkinsky and Muravlenko.

The problems are not limited to housing alone: they are much wider.

The Russian Arctic is characterized by a high level of industrialization and urbanization compared to other polar regions of the planet - the same Norway, Greenland or Alaska. Based on the eternal (no longer eternal) permafrost, railways and roads have been laid, large factories are standing on the permafrost. According to glaciologists, in the north of Russia, all building codes were designed for permafrost, and without it, half of Siberia will simply have a terrible endless swamp. A lot of carbon dioxide and methane will enter the planet's atmosphere, which will aggravate the climate crisis.

So far, the dynamics are as follows: the depth of the "thawed" soil in the northern regions increases by a centimeter every year. For this reason, about 35 thousand accidents occur annually in the cryolithozone in Western Siberia alone. An example of such a large-scale accident: a diesel spill in Norilsk in 2020. Then the soil literally disappeared from under the supports on which there was a huge tank of diesel fuel belonging to the Norilsk Nickel company. The fuel spilled from the tank poisoned several rivers in the Arctic zone at once.

The details of that accident are characteristic of the thawing North: the disappearance of permafrost is especially dangerous for structures erected on piles. Alas, in the Russian Arctic, more than 75 percent of structures are built this way - on stilts. Climatologist Alexei Chernokulsky warns that by the middle of the 21st century, the destruction of industrial enterprises, due to the degradation of permafrost, could turn into unprecedented environmental disasters.

The Ministry of Natural Resources calculated that the total damage from the degradation of permafrost in the Arctic: by 2050 it will exceed 5 trillion rubles. The melting of frozen soils increasingly leads to failures of technical systems in the process of hydrocarbon production. Difficulties in the construction of railways and roads are already emerging. The modernization of the infrastructure of the Arctic in the new conditions will significantly increase the cost of development and maintenance of the region. Maybe it's cheaper to leave the North to polar bears?

But that's not the answer. Monitoring soil health and maintaining industrial and residential infrastructure in the Arctic is important because the region has enormous economic potential. In particular, there are explored reserves of 95 percent of all platinoids in Russia, 73 percent of nickel, 76 percent of rare earth metals, 74 percent of natural gas.

So, the Government of the Russian Federation has taken a course towards equipping the North in new climatic conditions, including in terms of improving housing conditions and stimulating demography. There are results: in 2024, the population of the Arctic zone grew by one percent - up to 2.4 million people. And the total amount of investments in geological exploration in the Arctic in the same year amounted to almost 175 billion rubles. Information on the state of permafrost, geotechnical monitoring, will allow making adjustments to the construction of factories, roads and houses.

According to the Minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic Alexei Chekunkov, technologies have been developed that make it possible to neutralize the negative impact of melting permafrost. The project was tested and showed good results. "Such technologies are already being used at enterprises in Norilsk and Salekhard. For trunk and industrial facilities, our companies implement systems that allow stabilizing soils and economically effectively resisting these changes", said Alexey Chekunkov.

True, at the moment, funds, equipment and trained specialists are not enough for their widespread implementation.

In addition to the danger of man-made disasters, warming in the traditional cryolithozone is almost guaranteed to lead to outbreaks of "mothballed" diseases. Such as, for example, anthrax. Rosselkhoznadzor in December 2019 published data on the number of cattle burial grounds in the country. It turned out that there are more than 17 thousand burials of "biological waste" in Russia. Perhaps about 3.5 thousand cattle burial grounds potentially contain anthrax spores - they buried the corpses of animals that died from this disease.

In permafrost, spores remain viable for hundreds of years - frozen land preserves them. If the soil thaws, anthrax can start spreading across the region again? The last decade has already recorded isolated cases. In 2016, more than 20 people fell ill with anthrax in Yamal and a 12-year-old boy died. Microbiologists then found that the cause of the outbreak of the disease: a cattle burial ground opened due to the heat with the remains of 2.5 thousand fallen deer - they had to be burned.