Permafrost collapses: disastrous effects from the Arctic to the Alps

In 2020, a huge 21,000 tonne diesel spill, caused by the collapse of the foundations of the Norilsk Nickel storage tanks due to permafrost thaw, caused one of the worst environmental disasters in Russian history, polluting rivers and lakes in northern Siberia. Among the risks posed to infrastructure by the climate crisis, permafrost degradation is one of the most serious and extensive, affecting vast areas of Asia and North America, as well as high-altitude infrastructure on all mountain ranges, including the Alps. A quarter of the territory of the northern hemisphere is made up of permafrost, much of which is in the Arctic regions, where temperatures are rising at a rate three times faster than the global average. As it happens, among other things, these areas are also among the richest in hydrocarbons in the world and thus in oil and gas pipelines and storage reservoirs. This combination could prove to be a very dangerous cocktail.

Geographers from the University of Oulu, in a study published in Nature and conducted in collaboration with a team of colleagues from North American and Chinese universities, estimate that permafrost melting could damage up to 50 per cent of Arctic infrastructure by 2050, requiring tens of billions of dollars in maintenance and repairs. A conservative estimate of the cost of maintaining and repairing the approximately 12,000 buildings, 40,000 kilometres of roads, and 9,500 kilometres of pipelines built on permafrost worldwide could amount to EUR 30 billion in 2060. However, the paper only takes into account the effects of global warming and has not examined the consequences of the heat created by the structures themselves: if it had done so, the authors claim, the estimate would have been higher.

Permafrost is also found in high-altitude areas such as the European Alps and the Tibetan Plateau, so not all of the expected damage will occur in the Arctic. However, the melting of permafrost and its costs will weigh most heavily on Arctic infrastructure and especially on Russia, which will face a EUR 20 billion bill. The problem is that when permafrost thaws, the ground shifts. Somehow anchoring buildings, roads, pipelines and other infrastructure can reduce the damage, but most structures do not currently rest on rocky ground and it is already very common in Arctic cities to be faced with damaged houses due to the unbalanced foundations built on permafrost. The Finnish study found that some cities in Russia, such as Vorkuta, Yakutsk and Norilsk, show damage to up to 80 per cent of their buildings. What is more, in the Arctic they continue to build with the same systems. Satellites show that the coastal infrastructure has expanded by 15 per cent, covering 180 square kilometres more since 2000, particularly on Russia's Yamal peninsula.

Stability problems, not only for built structures, but also for rock faces, have also been encountered in our Alps, where permafrost is present above an altitude of 2,500 metres. Just to mention a few concrete cases, the melting of the permafrost so destabilised the Casati refuge, at 3,269 metres on Cevedale, that it was closed and will be rebuilt from the ground up. Not far away, in the summer of 2023, permafrost degradation caused the Meneghello bivouac, at 3,304 metres, to collapse. A year earlier, the same phenomenon had swept away the Alberico-Borgna bivouac, at 3,674 metres in the Mont Blanc massif. The list of such events that have occurred in recent years is long. In Switzerland, permfrost melt is blamed for the landslide that detached in August 2017 from the face of Pizzo Cengalo, killing eight people and wiping out part of the Swiss village of Bondo in the Bergell Valley. More than three million cubic metres of rock material mixed with water collapsed down the valley, in the biggest landslide in Switzerland for more than a century. The same applies to the landslides in the Dolomites, particularly on the Marmolada.

Remedies to stem the damage of this phenomenon are still to be studied. Until now, researchers had mainly focused on monitoring carbon emissions embedded in permafrost for millennia, concerned that the release of carbon dioxide and methane due to melting could push global warming beyond the point of no return. The impact on infrastructure was considered collateral damage, but for the people living on it, over 5 million in Siberia, the issue is far more urgent.