In the right half of the house gapes a hole. The four-storey building in the Russian settlement Chersky has collapsed in parts, as the photo shows. The reason is not just the age of the structure, researchers believe. Because the ground is slowly thawing due to global warming, entire buildings or streets are sinking.

This could soon affect large parts of the permafrost regions in the northern hemisphere and endanger vital infrastructure, for example in northern Russia, Canada or Alaska, the scientists report in the journal Nature Communications.

Using climate models, they have investigated which regions in the northern hemisphere are particularly threatened by the thawing of the permanently frozen subsoil - even if the global temperature rises below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

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Buildings in thawing permafrost: Sinked down

By 2050, three quarters of the population in the permafrost regions could be affected - that is about 3.6 million people. Soil softening would destroy important buildings, roads, tracks, industrial facilities or utility lines.

Risk for oil and gas pipelines

Depending on the extent of global warming, between 48 and 87 percent of the Arctic infrastructure is in regions where the soil is expected to thaw by 2050, the researchers write. These include:

  • 470 kilometers of the Lhasa railway connecting the Chinese city of Xining and Tibet.
  • 280 kilometers of the northernmost railway track at all (from Obskaya to Karskaya ). The transport route in the Asian part of Russia is being used to open up natural gas and oil fields along the route and to build a pipeline.

There are also 1200 settlements in the area. In addition, oil and gas pipelines are located on soils that could thaw - including:

  • 1590 kilometers of the East Siberia-Pacific pipeline for the export of Russian crude oil to Japan, China and Korea,
  • 1260 kilometers of a gas pipeline also important for the European Union, which begins in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in northern Russia and
  • 550 kilometers of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that transports crude oil through the US state.

Almost one million people live in the high-risk zone

However, the risks of the thawing ground are not the same everywhere. The researchers have therefore set high-risk zones (see categories "high" and "hot spot" in the graph). Just under one million people live in them, and there is - depending on the bill - 25 to 45 percent of the infrastructure. "This area includes, for example, 36,000 buildings, 13,000 kilometers of road and 100 airports," write the scientists.

CC BY-SA 3.0 / nature.com

Risk map with detailed view of Central Alaska and the northwestern Russian Arctic

Climate protection is worthwhile in the long term

But the sinking of important infrastructure could be a problem not only for the permafrost regions themselves, but also elsewhere. "45 percent of the world's major oil and gas production sites in the Russian Arctic are in high-risk zones," the study said. If they are damaged by a sinking, there may be worldwide threats of delivery bottlenecks.

The researchers also venture a look beyond 2050. Until this year, the scenarios are quite consistent - regardless of whether the climate goals are met or the states continue as before. "But considering the decades that followed, it makes a clear difference to the damage to the infrastructure," the researchers write. This is also an appeal to the negotiators at the UN Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Katowice.

The researchers therefore advocate taking into account the results of the study in future construction projects. More detailed analyzes of individual risk regions could help to weigh the costs of more robust infrastructure and the risks of thawing soil.