YAKUTIA, March 22. /TASS/. Director of the Melnikov Permafrost Institute (the Russian Academy of Sciences' Siberian Branch) Mikhail Zheleznyak suggested organizing a state-run system to monitor and manage conditions of the permafrost in the Russian Arctic. The system's organization cost is estimated at 12 billion rubles, he told a climate conference in Yakutsk on Wednesday.
"The existing system, the geology studies are not sufficient for detailed forecasts," he said. "We have a general idea, but whenever we face development of territories, or construction, we need more accurate data, which may be received only from a monitoring system. It would be the only correct solution to begin with organizing a state monitoring system."
This monitoring system will be used for forecasts, for solutions to preserve and use rationally the cryogenic resources so that to have engineering structures stable and to prevent emergencies, he added. The Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute's expert Nikita Demidov told the conference about 1 billion rubles ($12 million) would be invested in the organization of the monitoring system within 2023 - 2024. Investments at the initial stage in 2022 made 10 million rubles ($127,800). That stage included necessary legal paperwork, the choice of 20 locations for monitoring stations and certain technical and technological aspects. Investments in 2023 will be about 300 million rubles ($3.8 million), and in 2024 - 700 million rubles ($8.2 million). The project is financed as a major innovation project of state importance.
Work on the national monitoring system will begin in 2023 and will continue along with formalities of a bill on perennially frozen ground. The system will unite 140 monitoring stations across the country, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute's Director Alexander Makarov said. "Why 140? In this aspect we have complied with recommendations of the World Meteorological Organization regarding the permafrost observation," he said, adding the Russian Scientific Center's experts have been working at special sites in the Arctic, including on the Spitsbergen, on Severnaya Zemlya. When the system begins working, the specialized scientific center will accumulate the data, which would be available to all. The monitoring will be organized both in the Far North and in other regions that have permafrost areas.
Permafrost problems
The cost of buildings and engineering structures, built on the permafrost in the Russian Arctic, is about 9.6 trillion rubles ($124 billion). Under 24 scenarios, with the climate change, by 2050, the damage to residential and industrial structures is estimated at 5-7 trillion rubles ($64-90 billion). This includes the damage to residential buildings of about 770 billion rubles ($9.9 billion), he continued. The state-managed monitoring of the permafrost needs to be an interdepartmental system of regular observations, collection, accumulation, processing and analysis of information to assess the permafrost conditions, to forecast its changes and to develop regulatory methods, he added.
"We have been working on a state system of the permafrost reference monitoring in Russia, which is a very important project <…> We are opening a network to follow up the permafrost's conditions," deputy head of the national hydro-meteorology service, Roshydromet, Vladimir Sokolov said, adding the service had entered an agreement to cooperate in permafrost and climate studies with the Russian Academy of Sciences, the North-Eastern Federal University, and Yakutia's government and Academy of Sciences.
The Federation Council's representative Alexander Akimov stressed the climate change problems, which are of the global character, are top important for Arctic regions, and thus the plan to develop monitoring systems is a very promising direction. "The permafrost degradation adds to the risks of infrastructure failures [in the Arctic] that may require additional expenses to repair and service such facilities," he said.
TASS wrote earlier that Russian scientists would organize a wide network of observation stations. The first 20 of the planned 140 stations will begin working in 2023. Necessary equipment will be installed at existing stations of the national hydro-meteorology service, thus cutting the project's expenses. The Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI, St. Petersburg) has opened a center to monitor the permafrost conditions. The new observation system will be used for the full-scale monitoring of the permafrost that occupies two-thirds of the Russian territory.
The conference on climate aspects and the permafrost thawing ran on March 22-24. The event was organized by the Ministry for Development of the Far East and Arctic, Yakutia's government and the North-Eastern Federal University.