Thawing permafrost could put as much as 50 percent of Arctic infrastructure at high risk of damage by 2050, requiring tens of billions of dollars in maintenance and repairs, scientists warned on Tuesday.
“Infrastructure is in trouble,” said report co-author Dmitry Streletskiy, a geographer at George Washington University. “But it’s not like an earthquake. It’s a relatively slow process, which gives us enough time" to prevent some damage.
Scientists say this trend will continue as climate change escalates. From satellite imagery, they estimate that at least 120,000 buildings, 40,000 km of roads, and 9,500 km of pipelines could be at risk, highlighting threats to some Canadian highways, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, and the Russian cities of Vorkuta, Yakutsk, and Norilsk.
But people are still building in the Arctic. Satellite images show that coastal infrastructure has increased by 15 percent, or 180 square km , since 2000, according to anotherpublished last year in the journal Environmental Research Letters. About 70 percent of that growth is linked to the oil and gas industry, especially on Russia’s Yamal Peninsula and near the Yamburg gas field, according to that study’s lead author, Annett Bartsch, a polar researcher with the Austrian-based b.
Maintenance costs for major infrastructure could increase by $15.5 billion by mid-century, but would still be unable to prevent some $21.6 billion in damages, according to the review paper’s most conservative estimates.
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