Climate change could make frozen Siberia habitable within decades, scientists reveal – The Independent
Climate change could make large swathes of Siberia habitable before the end of this century, a new study suggests.
Winter temperatures could rise by as much as 9.1C while mass-melting would see the size of the permafrost drop by a quarter under the most extreme scenario considered feasible by scientists.
This would open up pristine areas of Russia east of the Ural Mountains, paving the way for millions of people to relocate to the region, which stretches from northern Kazakhstan to the Bering Sea.
Modelling for a less extreme rise in atmospheric carbon still resulted in temperature increases of up 3.4C in the winter months.
Under this projection, scientists estimated there would be a five-fold increase in the capacity of the territory to sustain human populations.
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A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica
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Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others.
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Smoke – filled with the carbon that is driving climate change – drifts across a field in Colombia.
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Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050.
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Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. “Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals,” says the photographer. “Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow.”
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Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent.
Tom Schifanella
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A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures.
Abrar Hossain
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A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature.
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A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a “public health emergency”.
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Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions.
Mahtuf Ikhsan
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A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Kira Morris
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Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others.
Hira Ali
3/10
Smoke – filled with the carbon that is driving climate change – drifts across a field in Colombia.
Sandra Rondon
4/10
Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050.
Probal Rashid
5/10
Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. “Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals,” says the photographer. “Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow.”
Rizwan Dharejo
6/10
Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent.
Tom Schifanella
7/10
A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures.
Abrar Hossain
8/10
A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature.
Riddhima Singh Bhati
9/10
A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a “public health emergency”.
Leung Ka Wa
10/10
Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions.
Mahtuf Ikhsan
Researchers said the speed with which humans could move to Siberia would depend on investments in infrastructure, as the region was currently poorly served.
For their analysis, the team from Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Federal Research Centre and the US National Institute of Aerospace looked at two possible scenarios for how concentrations of CO2 may rise in the coming decades. One, termed representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6, represented “mild” climate change, while RCP 8.5 represented more extreme changes.
The two trajectories are accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being at the lower and upper ranges for greenhouse gas emissions: RCP 2.6 assumes global emissions will peak by 2020, with emissions declining substantially thereafter; whereas under the RCP 8.5 scenario, emissions will continue to rise throughout the 21st century.
Dr Elena Parfenova, lead author of the study, which was published in Environmental Research Letters, said: “We found increases in temperature of 3.4C (RCP 2.6) to 9.1C (RCP 8.5) in mid-winter; increases of 1.9C (RCP 2.6) to 5.7C (RCP 8.5) in mid-summer; and increases in precipitation of 60mm (RCP 2.6) to 140 mm (RCP 8.5).”
Under the group’s worst case simulations, permafrost coverage in Russia’s far east would decrease from the current level of 65 per cent to 40 per cent by the 2080s.
At 13 million square kilometres, Russia’s Asian territory accounts for about 77 per cent of the country’s total land area, but around just 27 per cent of its population, much of which is concentrated along the forest-steppe in the south.
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But Dr Parfenova said this was likely to change: “Asian Russia is currently extremely cold. In a future warmer climate, food security in terms of crop distribution and production capability is likely to become more favourable for people to support settlements.”
She added: “However, suitable land development depends on the authorities’ social, political and economic policies.
“Vast tracts of Siberia and the far east have poorly developed infrastructure. The speed these developments happen depends on investments in infrastructure and agriculture, which in turn depends on the decisions that should be made soon.”
Vladimir Chuprov, of Greenpeace Russia, said there were a number of factors triggered by a warming Siberia that would complicate efforts to increase the human population there.
“Permafrost degrading would mean that at any area with dominating swamps or wetlands, it will be impossible to build infrastructure” in the short term, he told The Independent. He added that “higher temperatures will provoke more insects, which is bad for agriculture”.
