Arctic Science Journeys
Radio Script
1997

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Melting Permafrost
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STORY: A few feet beneath much of the Arctic's forest and tundra is a layer of frozen earth. Scientists call it permafrost. Engineers whose job it is to design buildings on permafrost have their work cut out for them. Especially in places like Kipnuk, Alaska, a Yupik Eskimo village of about 600 people in the southwest corner of the state. Ian Parks is the principal of the village school, a modern building that sits on melting permafrost.

PARKS: "Ah, yeah, that's kind of a like a local joke that we go through here. The permafrost does upset the building to such an extent that it's very easy to see when you put a marble on the floor, it rolls down to one corner one year and will roll to the other corner the next year because the houses are always heaving and moving around."

The school shifts because heat from the building thaws the permafrost beneath it. In extreme cases, buildings have actually disappeared into giant sink holes created by melting permafrost.

But thawing permafrost isn't just Kipnuk's problem. Tom Osterkamp is a professor of physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since the mid-1970s, he's measured permafrost temperatures through small holes drilled at sites across the state. He says permafrost is melting throughout the Arctic.

OSTERKAMP: "What these holes are showing is that there is a significant warming going on, and in some places it looks like the permafrost is actually thawing."

Permafrost is normally within a degree or two of thawing, so it doesn't take much for it to melt. Professor Osterkamp says recent years of heavy snow that prevented the ground from completely freezing may be to blame, or it could be a sign that the global climate is changing. Whatever the cause, he's worried about the consequences.

OSTERKAMP: "I just really think that this is an extremely serious thing. But again it's based on predictions of computer models of climate. Most people seem to believe those predictions nowadays. I'm not sure that I do. I can only say that permafrost is currently thawing and if it continues to warm, more permafrost will thaw and there will be more problems. "

Problems such as thermokarst. These are large areas where thawing permafrost leave behind huge holes and trenches. Such changes can transform an entire ecosystem.

OSTERKAMP: "We have several observations of this sort of thing happening. We see a boreal forest, mature spruce forests, basically being converted to grasslands. In other words, it's totaling destroying the ecosystem, the boreal forest ecosystem, and producing a new ecosystem, just simply through the thawing of this ice-rich permafrost and the development of this thermokarst terrain."

Osterkamp says it's too soon to say if the melting is part of a long-term change in the environment. But if it is, that would be a chilling thought indeed.

For Arctic Science Journeys, this is Debra Damron reporting from Fairbanks, Alaska.