The Arctic melts and threatens between 30% and 70% of infrastructure such as homes, roads and industries, with quantifiable damage in the tens of billions of dollars. As if that were not enough, the danger of the release of 1,700 billion tons of methane and Co2, to make the idea dozens of times those emitted every year by human activities all over the planet.
These are the potential catastrophic consequences of the melting of permafrost in areas around the Arctic. The almost apocalyptic scenario is described in six studies published in the latest issue of Nature Reviews Earth & Enviroment signed by various international research groups.
The permafrost is the perpetually frozen ground that is mainly found around the polar regions and inside which large quantities of carbon are trapped in the form of gases such as CO2 and methane which once released go into the atmosphere favoring global warming.
For this reason, its melting is one of the greatest dangers of climate change, a phenomenon that feeds itself: due to the warming of the polar regions, in turn it favors the further rise in temperatures.
A phenomenon that has global effects: land subsidence that “empties” from the subsoil with the consequent destruction of houses, cities, roads or pipelines. A study led by researchers from the Finnish University of Oulu attempted to estimate the damage to infrastructure and possible solutions. According to the researchers, between 30 and 70% of residential, industrial and transport infrastructures are located in high-risk areas.
Damages and disasters that rarely end up in the news except in particularly serious cases such as the accident that took place last year in Siberia, in Norilsk, the site of an environmental catastrophe due to the rupture of some tanks and the consequent loss of thousands of tons of fuel in rivers and the Arctic sea.
To limit the damage and even new disasters such as that of Norilsk, it is necessary to intervene as soon as possible - explain the researchers - with new engineering solutions that can at least secure the most strategic and dangerous infrastructures such as oil pipelines and industrial plants.
(Unioneonline / L)
