Climate change and hazard zonation in the circum-Arctic permafrost regions

The permafrost regions currently occupy about one quarter of the Earth's land area. Climate-change scenarios indicate that global warming will be amplified in the polar regions, and could lead to a large reduction in the geographic extent of permafrost. Development of natural resources, transportation networks, and human infrastructure in the high northern latitudes has been extensive during the second half of the twentieth century. In areas underlain by ice-rich permafrost, infrastructure could be damaged severely by thaw-induced settlement of the ground surface accompanying climate change. Permafrost near the current southern margin of its extent is degrading, and this process may involve a northward shift in the southern boundary of permafrost by hundreds of kilometers throughout much of northern North America and Eurasia. A long-term increase in summer temperatures in the high northern latitudes could also result in significant increases in the thickness of the seasonally thawed layer above permafrost, with negative impacts on human infrastructure located on ice-rich terrain. Experiments involving general circulation model scenarios of global climate change, a mathematical solution for the thickness of the active layer, and digital representations of permafrost distribution and ice content indicates potential for severe disruption of human infrastructure in the permafrost regions in response to anthropogenic climate change. A series of hazard zonation maps depicts generalized patterns of susceptibility to thaw subsidence. Areas of greatest hazard potential include coastlines on the Arctic Ocean and parts of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia in which substantial development has occurred in recent decades.