‘The permafrost is dying’: Bethel sees increased shifting of roads and buildings
Author: Lisa Demer
Updated: 1 day ago calendar Published 2 days ago
Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway, seen on June 28, is the main thoroughfare in Bethel, and one of few paved roads. It has become a roller coaster of a ride over the past couple of years. The state Department of Transportation is studying whether heaving from the thaw-freeze of permafrost is a factor. (Lisa Demer / Alaska Dispatch News)
BETHEL — Along the main thoroughfare here, drivers brake for warped asphalt. Houses sink unevenly into the ground. Walls crack and doors stick. Utility poles tilt, sometimes at alarming angles.
Permafrost in and around Bethel is deteriorating and shrinking, even more quickly than most places in Alaska.
Since the first buildings out here, people have struggled with the freeze and thaw of the soils above the permafrost. Now those challenges are amplified.
“What they are saying is the permafrost is dying,” said Eric Whitney, a home inspector and energy auditor in Bethel who has noticed newly eroding river banks, slanting spruce trees and homes shifting anew just weeks after being made level. “I’m just assuming it is not coming back while we’re around here.”
[…]
Above the permafrost in Southwest Alaska, an active layer of soil, often peat, freezes and thaws each year. With air temperatures warming too, the active layer is growing bigger, consuming what had been thought of as permanently frozen.
Thirty years ago, crews would hit permafrost within 4 to 6 feet of the surface, Salzburn said. Now they typically find it 8 to 12 feet down. To install piling deep enough into permafrost to support a house, they used to drill down about 18 feet.
“Now we are going to depths of 35 feet,” Salzbrun said.
“There is a definite change,” said another Bethel contractor, Rick Hanson of T and H Leveling.
“Thirty years ago, crews would hit permafrost within 4 to 6 feet of the surface, Salzburn said. Now they typically find it 8 to 12 feet down.”
Funny… Apart from this past year, Bethel AK is no warmer than it was in the 1930’s. However, thirty years ago, Bethel was definitely colder than it is now or was in the 1930’s…
Figure 1. Bethel AK Annual Mean Temperature, GHCN v3 (adj) + SCAR data. (NASA GISS)
There is no statistically meaningful trend in the annual, summer or winter temperatures at the Bethel AK station:
Bethel’s permafrost may be problematic due to the fact that the average annual temperature is just below freezing and gets well above 0°C in summer and it may thaw to a deeper depth than it did 30 years ago… However, there’s no evidence that the permafrost is dying any more than it would have been dying in the 1930’s.
“The permafrost is dying”. I didn’t know it was alive….
People are always thinking they can do whatever they want and nature will just go along with it (except burn fossil fuels, for some reason). Building on blow sand. Building on deltas. Making your own island. We’re humans and we can do anything, right?
It’s sad.
Nowadays there is an obsession among the … not sure what word to use. “Gullible” seems a bit to harsh. They’ve been sold an “environmental bill of goods”. Many, maybe even most, who have bought into it have no evil or ulterior motives. They just believe what they’ve been told.
OOPS! I left that opening dangling. “Nowadays there is an obsession” that ANY change is bad and must have been caused by Man. Therefore somebody must control Man!
And the “abused environment” salesma…er…salesperson knows just who or what organization is able to do it!
No. It’s not “some more information from Alaska on how climate change is melting permafrost”…
This monitoring effort will result in an inventory of areas likely to contain permafrost, a current assessment of permafrost conditions, and trends in melting and effects of melting for eight parks in Alaska.
truth
July 10, 2017 5:43 pm
Black carbon…as Drew Shindell, Ramanthan and others testified to Congress in 2010…is responsible for a very large part of what Arctic warming there is…up to 50%… responsible for Arctic ice melting as well as that of the glaciers and the permafrost.
The soot on the Arctic ice cuts the albedo resulting in melting of the ice–absorption of the sun’s heat instead of reflection—leaving dark water where once there was reflective ice–warming the water that then melts more ice…and setting up a whole new GW cycle .
[ ‘Washington, D.C., April 2, 2009 – An article published this week in Nature Geoscience shows that black carbon is responsible for 50%, or almost 1 ˚C of the total 1.9 ˚C increased Arctic warming from 1890 to 2007. The paper by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space (GISS) and Greg Faluvegi of Columbia University also notes that most of the Arctic warming – 1.48 ˚C of the 1.9 ˚C – occurred from 1976 to 2007. The study is the first to quantify the Arctic’s sensitivity to black carbon emissions from various latitudes, and concludes that the Arctic responds strongly to black carbon emissions from the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, where the emissions and the forcing are greatest.’ ]
[ “We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we’re just looking at carbon dioxide,” Shindell said. “If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we’re much better off looking at aerosols and ozone.” ]
James Hansen also concluded that in one of his papers…I think in 2010.
The burning of forests and biomass in different forms …that produces the soot….continues unabated, despite the fact that the black carbon impact is relatively easily mitigated for almost immediate effect…which is perhaps why warmists who want CO2 to continue to be the focus of the world …don’t want to do anything about black carbon.
Ralph Bullis
July 10, 2017 6:14 pm
The author worked at the Lupin gold mining operation located about 80 km south of the Arctic Circle near Contwoyto Lake, NU, then owned by Echo Bay Mines, from 1986 through 1994 as Chief Geologist. During that period, mining operations progressed from the 330 metre level down to the 1130 metre level. Ultimately, mining operations at Lupin progressed to the 1410 metre level in 2003 at which time the mine closed due to unfavourable economics.
Lupin is located at N65° 46’, W111° 15’ and is in a region of extensive permafrost. Because of below freezing temperatures in bedrock, salt had to be added to drilling fluids to inhibit freezing and salt became a significant cost to underground operations. Because of this, in situ rock temperatures were measured and watched carefully. As mining progressed, it was observed that in situ temperatures actually became colder with depth. It was observed that from surface to a depth below surface of 330 metres in situ temperatures decreased from about -2°C to a maximum of -12°C. From that depth in-situ temperatures gradually increased until we went through the 0°C isotherm at about 540 metres below surface. At that point, the expense for adding salt to drilling solutions ceased. In-situ rock temperatures continued to increase as mining progressed to depth.
The observation that in-situ temperatures decreased from surface to about 330 metres below surface to a temperature of -12°C suggests that the maximum permafrost temperature during the last great ice age was -12°C and that frost penetration into bedrock extended to a depth of approximately 540 metres at Lupin. The fact that in situ rock temperatures increased from a depth of 330 metres to surface suggests that slow, continued warming of the Arctic climate has gradually warmed the permafrost to that depth.
Gabro
July 10, 2017 7:26 pm
Widespread permafrost is a geologically recent phenomenon. Who is to say that the world is better now, with lots of permafrost, than it was three million years ago, with very little?
IMO earth would be better if boreal forest still covered the area now in permafrost, as at the end of the Pliocene, when Greenland lacked an ice sheet.
“IMO earth would be better if boreal forest still covered the area now in permafrost, as at the end of the Pliocene, when Greenland lacked an ice sheet.”
Except your Earth would no doubt be an extremely hot and steamy planet with few places humans could live comfortably. All coastal cities would be gone and would need to be rebuilt….ah, nah, it’s too hot – can’t be bothered!
It’s a bit concerning that everyone is jumping on the ‘urban heat island’ affect as an explanation for the sinking ground in Bethel. No doubt that is playing a part here, but the tenor of most responses to the article is that UHI affects are a complete explanation and we need look no further. An Inconvenient fact is though, that permafrost is being well monitored and is in decline across arctic Alaska: http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2016/March/03.15-ice-wedge-loss-across-artic.php
This particular study doesn’t address permafrost decline.
While the gradual warming of permafrost has been well documented in the Arctic, a new study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience indicates that a brief period of unusual warmth can cause a rapid shift. Focusing on the polygon ice troughs associated with wedges of ice that thrust deeply into the ground, the study found the ice wedges are quickly melting, amplifying the loss of permafrost by altering the storage and movement of water.
“The unique structure of ice wedge polygon landscapes promotes ponding of water and the accumulation of vast stores of soil carbon as wetland vegetation dies off seasonally and is buried and frozen over thousands of years,” said Cathy Wilson, a geomorphologist with Los Alamos National Laboratory, who coauthored the paper.
Brief periods of “unusual warmth” can accelerate ice wedge melting amplifying thermokarst effects.
In the case of Bethel, the average summer temperature is above freezing. Tne average annual temperature is just below freezing. The current temperatures are right about where they were in the 1930’s. Brief periods of unusual warmth are the norm. The anomaly was the unusually cold weather from the 1940’s to 1970’s.
“The permafrost is dying”. Yes, and the Arctic is screaming. We know. Our “carbon” is killing the planet. We humans are such monsters.
MarkW
July 11, 2017 6:54 am
How much of the alleged thawing is due to UHI?
dennisambler
July 11, 2017 7:52 am
Nothing new under the sun:
October 7, 1998 “Ancient Clues from a Frozen Forest” https://web.archive.org/web/20000527202434/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF14/1409.html
“Troy L. Péwé once discovered an interesting patch of woods near Ester, about nine miles east of Fairbanks. The spruce and birch trees of this forest were underground, sandwiched between layers of earth. Each tree was 125,000 years old.
Péwé said the frozen forest at Eva Creek thrived at a time that was up to 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, when there was little-to-no permafrost. Because the frozen forest is full of charred trees, Péwé suspects there were a lot of forest fires 125,000 years ago. Insect galleries carved into the bark of some of the frozen spruce indicate that the spruce bark beetle was also here then.”
“Thawing Permafrost Threatens Alaska’s Foundation”, Alaska Science Forum January 23, 1997
“Kipnuk, located about 100 miles west of Bethel, is a treeless village where about 500 people live. The topographic map for the Kipnuk area looks like Swiss cheese because the village sits amid hundreds of lakes. Kipnuk’s elevation is only about five feet above the level of the Bering Sea. Ian Parks, the principal of Chief Paul Memorial School at Kipnuk, said buildings in the village show signs of an unstable ground surface–walls develop cracks, doors stick, and floors rise and fall.”If you put a marble on the floor, in one year it’ll roll in one direction; in the next year it’ll go the other direction,” Parks said.
The symptoms Parks described are consistent with those of an area that sits on top of thawing permafrost, Osterkamp said. Permafrost occurs under about 85 percent of Alaska’s surface area; patches of permafrost can be found as far south as Anchorage.
“Gravel Roads Better Than Pavement on Permafrost” https://web.archive.org/web/19990506211825/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF5/583.html
Alaska Science Forum January 10, 1983 https://web.archive.org/web/20000126152257/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF3/360.html
“The scientific investigation of permafrost got its start, in 1828, through the efforts of an optimistic Siberian merchant.”
‘We’ had the march for science recently which would mean all those involved support not only science as a discipline but the care and attention needed when describing the world. Now, I was not aware that ice is something that lives and can die. I’m preaching to the choir of course, but H2O has three main states which are gas, liquid and frozen. There is super cooled, but just sticking with the main three and how H2O transitions from one to the other I cannot find anything about ice ‘dying’. This is NOT science, so what was the point of that march?
I was happy to see a letter to the editor in Astronomy magazine a couple of months ago complaining about how too many astronomers give human characteristics to astronomical phenomenon, as though galaxies and black holes are acting with their own will. I think they should stop talking about astronomical objects as though they are intelligent beings pursuing selfish ends. It’s not accurate. It’s irritating to listen to because of that fact.
A graph of snowfall for the region would be helpful. In the past few years the Iditarod has been moved north for lack of snow. While snow insulates the ground in winter, spring snow would keep the surface cool. And surface snow on sunny winter days can bring the flies out. –AGF
Grant
July 11, 2017 8:20 pm
The population of Bethel was 376 in 1940. Almost all it’s construction occurred after that time.
“The permafrost is dying”. I didn’t know it was alive….
People are always thinking they can do whatever they want and nature will just go along with it (except burn fossil fuels, for some reason). Building on blow sand. Building on deltas. Making your own island. We’re humans and we can do anything, right?
It’s sad.
Nowadays there is an obsession among the … not sure what word to use. “Gullible” seems a bit to harsh. They’ve been sold an “environmental bill of goods”. Many, maybe even most, who have bought into it have no evil or ulterior motives. They just believe what they’ve been told.
OOPS! I left that opening dangling. “Nowadays there is an obsession” that ANY change is bad and must have been caused by Man. Therefore somebody must control Man!
And the “abused environment” salesma…er…salesperson knows just who or what organization is able to do it!
Here’s some more information from Alaska on how climate change is melting permafrost.
https://www.alaskacenters.gov/upload/AKRO-IM-permafrost-cc-brief-small.pdf
No. It’s not “some more information from Alaska on how climate change is melting permafrost”…
Black carbon…as Drew Shindell, Ramanthan and others testified to Congress in 2010…is responsible for a very large part of what Arctic warming there is…up to 50%… responsible for Arctic ice melting as well as that of the glaciers and the permafrost.
The soot on the Arctic ice cuts the albedo resulting in melting of the ice–absorption of the sun’s heat instead of reflection—leaving dark water where once there was reflective ice–warming the water that then melts more ice…and setting up a whole new GW cycle .
[ ‘Washington, D.C., April 2, 2009 – An article published this week in Nature Geoscience shows that black carbon is responsible for 50%, or almost 1 ˚C of the total 1.9 ˚C increased Arctic warming from 1890 to 2007. The paper by Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space (GISS) and Greg Faluvegi of Columbia University also notes that most of the Arctic warming – 1.48 ˚C of the 1.9 ˚C – occurred from 1976 to 2007. The study is the first to quantify the Arctic’s sensitivity to black carbon emissions from various latitudes, and concludes that the Arctic responds strongly to black carbon emissions from the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, where the emissions and the forcing are greatest.’ ]
[ “We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we’re just looking at carbon dioxide,” Shindell said. “If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we’re much better off looking at aerosols and ozone.” ]
James Hansen also concluded that in one of his papers…I think in 2010.
The burning of forests and biomass in different forms …that produces the soot….continues unabated, despite the fact that the black carbon impact is relatively easily mitigated for almost immediate effect…which is perhaps why warmists who want CO2 to continue to be the focus of the world …don’t want to do anything about black carbon.
The author worked at the Lupin gold mining operation located about 80 km south of the Arctic Circle near Contwoyto Lake, NU, then owned by Echo Bay Mines, from 1986 through 1994 as Chief Geologist. During that period, mining operations progressed from the 330 metre level down to the 1130 metre level. Ultimately, mining operations at Lupin progressed to the 1410 metre level in 2003 at which time the mine closed due to unfavourable economics.
Lupin is located at N65° 46’, W111° 15’ and is in a region of extensive permafrost. Because of below freezing temperatures in bedrock, salt had to be added to drilling fluids to inhibit freezing and salt became a significant cost to underground operations. Because of this, in situ rock temperatures were measured and watched carefully. As mining progressed, it was observed that in situ temperatures actually became colder with depth. It was observed that from surface to a depth below surface of 330 metres in situ temperatures decreased from about -2°C to a maximum of -12°C. From that depth in-situ temperatures gradually increased until we went through the 0°C isotherm at about 540 metres below surface. At that point, the expense for adding salt to drilling solutions ceased. In-situ rock temperatures continued to increase as mining progressed to depth.
The observation that in-situ temperatures decreased from surface to about 330 metres below surface to a temperature of -12°C suggests that the maximum permafrost temperature during the last great ice age was -12°C and that frost penetration into bedrock extended to a depth of approximately 540 metres at Lupin. The fact that in situ rock temperatures increased from a depth of 330 metres to surface suggests that slow, continued warming of the Arctic climate has gradually warmed the permafrost to that depth.
Widespread permafrost is a geologically recent phenomenon. Who is to say that the world is better now, with lots of permafrost, than it was three million years ago, with very little?
IMO earth would be better if boreal forest still covered the area now in permafrost, as at the end of the Pliocene, when Greenland lacked an ice sheet.
“IMO earth would be better if boreal forest still covered the area now in permafrost, as at the end of the Pliocene, when Greenland lacked an ice sheet.”
Except your Earth would no doubt be an extremely hot and steamy planet with few places humans could live comfortably. All coastal cities would be gone and would need to be rebuilt….ah, nah, it’s too hot – can’t be bothered!
What you know to be fact, isn’t.
It’s a bit concerning that everyone is jumping on the ‘urban heat island’ affect as an explanation for the sinking ground in Bethel. No doubt that is playing a part here, but the tenor of most responses to the article is that UHI affects are a complete explanation and we need look no further. An Inconvenient fact is though, that permafrost is being well monitored and is in decline across arctic Alaska:
http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2016/March/03.15-ice-wedge-loss-across-artic.php
This particular study doesn’t address permafrost decline.
Brief periods of “unusual warmth” can accelerate ice wedge melting amplifying thermokarst effects.
In the case of Bethel, the average summer temperature is above freezing. Tne average annual temperature is just below freezing. The current temperatures are right about where they were in the 1930’s. Brief periods of unusual warmth are the norm. The anomaly was the unusually cold weather from the 1940’s to 1970’s.
Well, it supports that it Is declining, gradually, with isolated brief spurts. The vectors are all pointing in the one direction.
It seems that Moscow – and much of Russia – is having no summer this year. A portend of the coming winter perhaps.
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/Russia-summer-feels-like-winter-58333
“The permafrost is dying”. Yes, and the Arctic is screaming. We know. Our “carbon” is killing the planet. We humans are such monsters.
How much of the alleged thawing is due to UHI?
Nothing new under the sun:
October 7, 1998 “Ancient Clues from a Frozen Forest”
https://web.archive.org/web/20000527202434/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF14/1409.html
“Troy L. Péwé once discovered an interesting patch of woods near Ester, about nine miles east of Fairbanks. The spruce and birch trees of this forest were underground, sandwiched between layers of earth. Each tree was 125,000 years old.
Péwé said the frozen forest at Eva Creek thrived at a time that was up to 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, when there was little-to-no permafrost. Because the frozen forest is full of charred trees, Péwé suspects there were a lot of forest fires 125,000 years ago. Insect galleries carved into the bark of some of the frozen spruce indicate that the spruce bark beetle was also here then.”
“Thawing Permafrost Threatens Alaska’s Foundation”, Alaska Science Forum January 23, 1997
“Kipnuk, located about 100 miles west of Bethel, is a treeless village where about 500 people live. The topographic map for the Kipnuk area looks like Swiss cheese because the village sits amid hundreds of lakes. Kipnuk’s elevation is only about five feet above the level of the Bering Sea. Ian Parks, the principal of Chief Paul Memorial School at Kipnuk, said buildings in the village show signs of an unstable ground surface–walls develop cracks, doors stick, and floors rise and fall.”If you put a marble on the floor, in one year it’ll roll in one direction; in the next year it’ll go the other direction,” Parks said.
The symptoms Parks described are consistent with those of an area that sits on top of thawing permafrost, Osterkamp said. Permafrost occurs under about 85 percent of Alaska’s surface area; patches of permafrost can be found as far south as Anchorage.
“Gravel Roads Better Than Pavement on Permafrost”
https://web.archive.org/web/19990506211825/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF5/583.html
Alaska Science Forum January 10, 1983
https://web.archive.org/web/20000126152257/http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF3/360.html
“The scientific investigation of permafrost got its start, in 1828, through the efforts of an optimistic Siberian merchant.”
‘We’ had the march for science recently which would mean all those involved support not only science as a discipline but the care and attention needed when describing the world. Now, I was not aware that ice is something that lives and can die. I’m preaching to the choir of course, but H2O has three main states which are gas, liquid and frozen. There is super cooled, but just sticking with the main three and how H2O transitions from one to the other I cannot find anything about ice ‘dying’. This is NOT science, so what was the point of that march?
I was happy to see a letter to the editor in Astronomy magazine a couple of months ago complaining about how too many astronomers give human characteristics to astronomical phenomenon, as though galaxies and black holes are acting with their own will. I think they should stop talking about astronomical objects as though they are intelligent beings pursuing selfish ends. It’s not accurate. It’s irritating to listen to because of that fact.
A graph of snowfall for the region would be helpful. In the past few years the Iditarod has been moved north for lack of snow. While snow insulates the ground in winter, spring snow would keep the surface cool. And surface snow on sunny winter days can bring the flies out. –AGF
The population of Bethel was 376 in 1940. Almost all it’s construction occurred after that time.