WASHINGTON POST • January 11, 2022
The warming of the Arctic’s frozen grounds has already inflicted a range of calamities on its hardy residents: paved roads that look like ribbons fluttering in a breeze; concrete buildings warped into a cockeyed latticework of cracks. Broken pipelines. Landslides. Sudden sinkholes. Drained lakes. In coming decades, the shifting terrain that accompanies the warming of the permafrost caused by climate change will put more of the man-made structures at risk. Nearly 70 percent of the infrastructure in the permafrost areas of the Northern Hemisphere – including at least 120,000 buildings and nearly 25,000 miles of roads – are located in areas with high potential for thaw of near-surface permafrost by 2050, according to new research.