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Alaska Scientists Warn of Thawing Permafrost Web & USAGM
November 9, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Transcript/Script((PLAYBOOK SLUG: ARCTIC PERMAFROST THAW
HEADLINE: Alaska Scientists Warn of Thawing Permafrost
TEASER: Joint research with Russia suspended by Ukraine invasion
PUBLISHED AT: 11/9/2023 at 3:15p
BYLINE: Natasha Mozgovaya
CONTRIBUTOR:
DATELINE: Fairbanks, Alaska
VIDEOGRAPHER: Natasha Mozgovaya
VIDEO EDITOR:
ASSIGNING EDITOR: Stearns
SCRIPT EDITORS: Stearns, Mia Bush
VIDEO SOURCE (S): VOA
PLATFORMS (mark with X): WEB __ TV _X_ RADIO _X_
TRT: 3:08
VID APPROVED BY: Jepsen
TYPE: TVR EDITOR NOTES: ))
((INTRO))
[[Climate change is having a big impact on the Arctic permafrost – the subsurface soil that usually remains frozen throughout the year. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya reports from Alaska on how warming permafrost is changing infrastructure planning and the local landscape.]]
((NARRATION))
On his walk to gather data from sensors in a forest outside the city of Fairbanks, geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky stops at an area spotted by deep pits and trenches.
((Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska Geophysics Professor))
“From the completely flat, completely flat area, which it was before this melting of ice, it became very, very uneven and that’s a very typical surface of the degradation of ice-rich permafrost.”
((NARRATION))
Rising global temperatures are increasing demand for the hands-on study of permafrost temperatures, especially in circumpolar areas where both homes and critical infrastructure, such as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, are built atop permafrost.
((Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska Geophysics Professor))
“Unfortunately, permafrost in these regions is usually in the lower slopes and the river valleys, and places where people live.
So there is lots of ice <..> which makes thawing permafrost really dangerous for any kind of infrastructure.”
((NARRATION))
In Arctic villages, buildings stand on stilts to avoid the heat from the house melting the permafrost below. Utqiagvik resident Eben Hopson often resorts to makeshift solutions.
((Eben Hopson, Utqiagvik Resident))
“Underground there's solid ice and under the ground during the spring when it melts that the ice melts - and that that's why there's all like little potholes in the street -
And during the spring, <..>, the house shifts down.
We flipped the house up with a jack or just like one little jack on that spot of the house. And we leveled it to make the house level and straight.”
((NARRATION))
In Alaska, scientists are collecting permafrost temperatures from more than 350 sites, ranging from the surface to 100 meters below ground, measuring factors impacting thawing, such as precipitation.
((Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska Geophysics Professor))
“You really need to know where a permafrost is most stable, how long it could be stable. <…> You cannot rely on kind of traditional knowledge because what's happening now in the environment, it was not observed anytime during the lifetime of the population here. You know, not for many thousand [of] years.”
((NARRATION))
Romanovsky says Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine disrupted collaboration on permafrost research between the countries, from regular data sharing to the intended joint study of the crater discovered in West Siberia, mostly likely created by violent explosions of methane released by the thawing of permafrost.
((Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska Geophysics Professor))
“It's a big hazard. And also, it's a very interesting scientific question. So we don't have anything like this in North America so far, as far as we know, but it could happen.”
((NARRATION))
Even 20 meters below Alaska’s North Slope, Romanovsky says temperatures are up 3 degrees Celsius. Engineering solutions exist for countering thawing permafrost but each comes with a price and questions about how long they will hold if temperatures keep rising.
((Natasha Mozgovaya, VOA News, Fairbanks, Alaska))
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