Russia is facing 7 trillion damage from melting permafrost

A man and stray dogs pass by a residential block constructed on stilts in the early morning in the Republic of Sakha Yakutia Russia, in the city of Yakutsk, September 7, 2021. CHURAPCHA, Russia, Oct 18 Reuters: The old airport in the Siberian settlement of Churapcha has been unusable for years, its runway transformed into a swampy field of puffed-up mounds and reliefs.

Like cities and towns across the northern and northeastern Russian region, Churapcha is suffering the consequence of climate change thawing the permafrost on which everything is built.

There isn't a single settlement in Russia's Arctic? You wouldn't find a deformed or destroyed building, said Alexey Maslakov, a Russian scientist at Moscow State University.

Homes are being separated from sinking earth. Current pipelines and storage facilities are under threat. The roads are increasingly in need of repairs.

As Russia Warms more than the global average, the melting of Siberia's long-frozen tundra is releasing greenhouse gases that scientists fear could frustrate global efforts to reduce climate-warming emissions.

With permafrost covering 65% of Russia's landmass, the costs are already mounting.

Russia could face 7 trillion roubles $97 billion in infrastructure damage by 2050 if the rate of warming continues, said Mikhail Zheleznyak, director of Yakutsk's Melnikov Permafrost Institute.

The bumpy scenery around Churapcha, located some 5,000 km 3,100 miles east of Moscow, resembles giant sheets of bubble wrap in places where ice wedges inside the ground have melted, causing the ground to crumble, sag or cave in altogether.

In the 1960 s and 1970, as Soviet Russia expanded into the Arctic, many buildings were constructed in the far north and far east with the assumption that the permafrost would never freeze for millennia.

Churapcha, with a population of 10,000, closed its airport after the melt in 1990 s, scientists say.

Over the years, the once-smooth runway became a mottled field that looks more like a dragon's back, as the ground sinks and the ice melts. Eventually, the area could become a lake, according to scientists.

Fyodorov at the Permafrost Institute has been studying the site for years and found that some areas were sinking at an average rate of 2 - 4 centimetres a year, while others were subsiding by up to 12 cms annually.

In eight settlements in northeast Russia, 72% of the people surveyed by North-Eastern State University said they had problems with the subsidence of their homes' foundations, said Fyodorov.

In Russia, there are more than 15 million people living in permafrost foundations. Russia is investing to better monitor the subterranean thaw.

At this time, we don't know what happened to it, Ecology Minister Alexander Kozlov said in August. We need monitor not only to detect what is melting - how. Scientists will use it to learn its consequences and predict how to prevent accidents. The ministry plans to establish 140 monitoring stations, each with up to 30 - meters of wells to measure the situation underground. Although that may help determine how quickly the region is iced, it won't help villagers like Yegor Dyachkovsky whose home is already growing at Churapcha's former airport.

In the five years since his parents built their home, the ground has sunk below it. At first the home was raised 30 centimetres off the ground on its stilt foundations. The gap is now to be a full metre.

Dyachkovsky brought five truckloads of soil to fill the gap between the ground and his home, and says he still needs more.

Some of his neighbors are trying to sell their homes. Everyone is trying to figure out the situation on their own, said Sergei Atlasov, another Churapcha resident.

Dyachkovsky's family is actually building a garage and seems ready to take his chances.

Is it possible to go against nature? We should adapt, Dyachkovsky said. It's like this everywhere. No one to complain to. The spirit is up high, perhaps.