Roads, Airstrips Fail Across Northwest Territories As Permafrost Melts

[hatrack]

(CP) - "Roads and airstrips across the Western Arctic are sagging, cracking and washing away as climate change slowly melts the permafrost beneath them. And as engineers try to adapt transportation networks and buildings to warmer weather, some say the consequences of doing nothing are already apparent just a short drive out of Yellowknife.

"It literally looks like an earthquake zone," says Northwest Territories transportation planner Jayleen Philps about an old stretch of Highway 4. Maintenance on the 700-metre section stopped after a new road was built around it in 1999. Now, cracks in the asphalt can swallow a fist and the shoulders have washed away. The surface, parts of which have sunk by more than a metre, is more roller-coaster than road. "It gives you a vision of the amount of maintenance that would be required," says Philps."

EDIT

In Yellowknife, an insulating liner had to be installed four metres under a 100-metre section of runway with a history of sagging. In Inuvik, freezing rain that used to fall as snow has caused a tenfold increase in the volume of de-icer and gravel used at the airport. Workers have had to terrace embankments along the Dempster Highway south of Inuvik to keep sections from collapsing. Even then, the roadbed has been sinking and new construction includes insulation under the asphalt.

Portions of the road from Yellowknife to Fort Providence have been abandoned and rebuilt over more stable permafrost. The season for ice bridges and ice roads - crucial to industry for moving in supplies - has shrunk from an average 75 days before 1996 to about 47 days. Transport Canada says 42 airports in the zone are likely to be most affected. And a soon-to-be-released study funded by Natural Resources Canada suggests six N.W.T. communities, mostly in the Mackenzie Delta, are highly vulnerable to infrastructure damage from melting permafrost. Another 18 communities are moderately vulnerable."

EDIT

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features/2005/06/05/1072708-cp.html

[applegrove]

1. Do they have any idea how much CO2 bog mud releases. This

is not good!

[hatrack]

2. Not just CO2 - lots and lots of methane as well

Estimates run into the billions of tons annually - and that's just to date. Oh, yeah, and there's that "positive feedback loop" thing that also comes into play in these circumstances.

[IrateCitizen]

3. Didn't cha hear -- global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated...

... on the American people. At least according to the scientific and cultural luminary of the United States Senate, James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

I wonder how they will spin this when the permafrost really takes off in its melting and the positive feedback loops actually become "visible" to the general public....

[hatrack]

4. Nothing Ted Stevens can't compensate for

He'll just demand more pork to rebuild Alaska's roads & houses, while calling for more "studies".

Move along, nothing to see here that "sound science" won't paper over for a while, move along . . .