chat is permafrost?
The name evokes a famous brand of mattresses which in the 70s advertised its products with marvelous Carousels entitled: “There is something underneath”. It was the mattress, to be precise.
Evocations aside, permafrost is an English term made up of perma(nent), which means permanent, and frost, which means ice cream. In Italian we could translate it with permafrost but it is not necessary since this neologism has now become part of the great debate on climate change. With the term permafrost, introduced in 1943 by the American SW Mullerrefers to the layer of permanently frozen soil found underground in certain high-latitude and high-elevation areas in the Northern Hemisphere.
This layer covers about a fifth of the land surface, more or less something like 23 million square kilometers. Permafrost has a temperature ranging from 0 degrees Celsius to lower values, depending on where it is while can reach depths ranging from 300 meters to 1500 meters underground in colder regions such as Alaska and Siberia. Much of the Arctic permafrost is up to a million years old, the deeper it gets the older it gets.
Permafrost: protagonist of the climate debate
The extension of the surface covered by permafrost and its thickness vary according to climatic conditions. The formation, consistency or eventual disappearance linked to global warming, constantly monitored by a network of scientific researchers of the International Permafrost Association, are a serious threat to the ecosystem.
Permafrost degrades, it doesn’t melt, due to the warming of the soil surface, a consequence of the increase in air temperature, a phenomenon which has been steadily increasing over the last fifty years in the Arctic areas. If all of the permafrost thawed, releasing the methane and greenhouse gases contained within it, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would significantly increase. And not only that: it could also release pathogens and viruses that date back more than three million years.
Field research often takes place at high altitudes (here at 2900 metres) and requires mountaineering skills and good resistance to cold and bad weather. Maheva is a researcher at the Université Savoie Mont Blanc, based in Chambery in France. (Photo Tomaso Clavarino)
With dramatic if not apocalyptic consequences. The thawing of permafrost is expected to continue throughout this century and probably into the next: decreasing surface area will exacerbate the emissions problem.
It will all depend on us
By limiting global warming we can, if not stop, at least significantly slow down the rate of permafrost thawing and mitigate the resulting CO2 emissions and the release of pathogens that could trigger a virus generation process. Otherwise, we would also face an increase in all those events of which today we have only signs: landslides and debris flows, hydrogeological instability and mudslides. In a word: instability.
The images we have chosen to tell what is happening to this precious and vital frozen mattress below us are the result of a visual investigation into an ecosystem that is changing and the activity of those who dedicate their lives to looking for possible solutions. Resilience, a spirit of adaptability and a commitment to scientific research are important testimonials and models for future generations.
Have you ever heard the sound of falling rocks?
“Have you ever heard the sound of falling rocks?” is the title of this winning project of theISPA Award 2022. A six-month journey along the Alps, between Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria made by the photographer Thomas Clavarino. Over the last century, temperatures in the Alps have risen by 2 degrees Celsius, double the average for the entire planet. Shorter winters, less snow, melting glaciers are the most visible effects of global warming in the Alps but then there is the degradation of the permafrost, the surface part of the earth’s crust, the one that is most in contact with all phenomena occurring in the atmosphere which has now become a protagonist in the climate debate.
On the Stubaier glacier, in Austria, dozens of sheets were spread around the poles of the ski facilities to protect the little ice and snow left over from melting, which guarantee the stability of the facilities themselves. (Photo Tomaso Clavarino)
Permafrost: the photographer’s story
In presenting his work, Clavarino writes: «The mountains, the Alps in particular, have always had a significant weight in my life. On foot, on skis, with crampons and ice ax or hanging from a rope, I have crossed them far and wide for years. The loneliness you can breathe is equal to the feeling of being helpless in front of their greatness, even knowing their secret fragility. This is what has fascinated me about the alpine environment since I was a child. I have seen them change over the years. I have witnessed the collapse of the slopes, the fury with which the waters overflow from the streams, I have observed the glaciers losing their white mantle while the rock becomes more unstable and men and animals forced to change their habits to adapt to different climatic conditions for cope with increasingly extreme weather events.
The village of Pontresina in Switzerland, on the border with Italy, has been at risk for years due to a rock glacier that is moving further and further downstream, it has been made safe with a series of stone dams which, in case of collapsing boulders and landslides, secure the country and its community. (Photo Tomaso Clavarino)
Let’s go to Mars
In the last period the presence of something resembling permafrost has been revealed on Mars. If so, it would mean water and therefore potentially extraterrestrial organisms. It could be a valuable resource for science but it is only a hypothesis and does not relieve us of the responsibility of saving our planet by looking for solutions in the universe.
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