A new study reveals how in the last 40 years warming alerts have been raised throughout the Arctic and many of these critical points are grouped in Siberia, northern Canada and Alaska. For this reason, some scientists call for cooperation between the West and Russia.
The analysis of the rapidly warming arctic-boreal region, published in Geophysical Research Lettersprovides an expanded picture of ecosystems experiencing some of the most rapid and extreme climate changes on Earth. Many of the most climate-stressed areas featured permafrost, or ground that remains frozen year-round, and experienced severe warming and drought in the recent past.
The rapid melting of Arctic glaciers also threatens to release enormous amounts of methane, mercury and other harmful substances into the atmosphere, with devastating consequences, according to . But permafrost also contains other dangerous substances, the sudden release of which could wreak environmental havoc. Last year, scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) concluded that entire ecosystems were threatened by the release of mercury from the melting Arctic.
“Permafrost soil contains more mercury than all the rest of the soil on the planet, plus all the oceans and atmosphere. It feels like a bomb is going to explode,” Josh West, a professor of Earth sciences and environmental studies at USC, told the independent environmental magazine Grist in August.
The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum created in 1996, addresses issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the region, among other issues. It is made up of eight member states with territory in the Arctic: Russia, the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Organizations representing the interests of the indigenous peoples of the North also participate, including the International Aleutian Association and the Saami Council.
However, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the States meet without Russia, and all pre-war projects involving Russia have been put on hold indefinitely. Among them was the Arctic Biosafety Project, whose goal was to combat the spread of parasites, biotoxins and pathogens, including anthrax, which could easily be released at any time from the receding permafrost, according to the same media.
When Russia handed over the presidency of the Council to Norway in May 2023, its representative Nikolai Korchunov admitted that the prospects for further cooperation seemed “very uncertain” and stopped short of completely ruling out Russia leaving the organization. Meanwhile, Arctic researchers say a lack of cooperation with Russia has made it increasingly difficult to study melting permafrost and its consequences, since Russian data was instrumental in building climate models.
Vladimir Romanovsky, professor of geophysics and former director of the Permafrost Laboratory at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, highlights that, in this context, the most important thing is that climate scientists on both sides of the geopolitical divide are willing to cooperate. again. “There is great interest. I am still in contact with several colleagues from Russia with whom I have worked before,” he says, adding, however, that so far there has been no talk of funding, “since Western funding, including work field, could be a big problem in Russia, given that the country has the concepts of ‘foreign agents’ and ‘undesirable organizations.'”
