-
Wooden walkways replace roads, and homes rest on pilings in the village of Newtok in western Alaska. This Yupik village of just 380 people, located along the Ninglik river in the lower Kuskokwim delta, is sinking as the permafrost beneath it thaws. The entire village is in the process of moving to Mertarvik, a new village site about nine miles away built on rocky ground
-
Jasmine Kassaiuli sits in her bedroom in Newtok. Recently the ceiling of her home split as the thawing permafrost continues to destroy the foundation
-
Ice cellars, generations-old massive underground freezers, are flooding as the permafrost melts. These tangible effects of climate change have become a part of everday life in the Inupiat native community of Kaktovik, Alaska
-
The ice cellar at Pleistocene Park near Chersky, Siberia, is flooding each year due to permafrost thaw. Some are completely destroyed, and without them, food will spoil which is a serious issue in such a remote location
-
-
The permafrost tunnel in Fairbanks, Alaska
-
David Shaw demonstrates how a small flame can become a huge methane gas flare-up on the surface of a lake. Thawing permafrost causes bubbles of the gas to become trapped in the ice
-
Leonid Nalyotov stands along what used to be a lake behind his home along the Kolyma river in Yakutia, Siberia. Land once separated the lake from a nearby river, but a channel formed after the land collapsed from the thawing permafrost, draining the lake
-
Sergey Zimov, a scientist, digs up mammoth and bison bones at Duvanny Yar, a permafrost ‘megaslump’ or a thermokarst depression. The area is an important scientific destination for scientists studying permafrost thaw, as well as the history of late Pleistocene era Beringia land, with thousands of years of historical and climate information located in the layers of crumbling soil
-
-
The Batagaika crater in the Siberian town of Batagay, Russia. It has been called the ‘hell crater’ or the ‘gateway to the underworld’. This thermokarst depression in one of the biggest in the world at more than 300ft deep and 1km (3,280ft) long, and started forming in the 1960s when the permafrost under the area began to thaw after nearby forests were cleared
-
As the rate of permafrost thaw accelerates in Siberia, the Batagaika crater grows bigger, unearthing even more layers of ancient soil. Archeologists have found numerous artifacts from the ice age
-
The Batagaika crater has over 200,000 years of history and climate information within the permafrost of this thermokarst depression, and just as many years of methane that could be released into the atmosphere
Topics
