Legacy industrial contamination in the Arctic permafrost
When permafrost thaws, the Arctic could face massive problems from legacy industrial contamination and pollutants

Date:
April 4, 2023
Source:
Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine
Research
Summary:
A previously underestimated risk lurks in the frozen soil of
the Arctic.

When the ground thaws and becomes unstable in response to climate
change, it can lead to the collapse of industrial infrastructure,
and in turn to the increased release of pollutants. Moreover,
contaminations already present will be able to more easily spread
throughout ecosystems.

According to new findings, there are at least 13,000 to 20,000
contaminated sites in the Arctic that could pose a serious risk
in the future.


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FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Many of us picture the Arctic as largely untouched wilderness. But that
has long-since ceased to be true for all of the continent. It is also
home to oilfields and pipelines, mines and various other industrial
activities. The corresponding facilities were built on a foundation
once considered to be particularly stable and reliable: permafrost. This
unique type of soil, which can be found in large expanses of the Northern Hemisphere, only thaws at the surface in summer. The remainder, extending
up to hundreds of metres down, remains frozen year-round.


========================================================================== Accordingly, permafrost has not only been viewed as a solid platform for buildings and infrastructure. "Traditionally, it's also been considered a natural barrier that prevents the spread of pollutants," explains Moritz
Langer from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and
Marine Research (AWI). "Consequently, industrial waste from defunct or
active facilities was often simply left on-site, instead of investing
the considerable effort and expense needed to remove it." As a result
of the industrial expansion during the cold war, over the decades this
led to micro-dumps full of toxic sludge from oil and gas exploration, stockpiles of mining debris, abandoned military installations, and
lakes in which pollutants were intentionally poured. "In many cases, the assumption was that the permafrost would reliably and permanently seal
off these toxic substances, which meant there was no need for costly
disposal efforts," says Guido Grosse, who heads the AWI's Permafrost
Research Section. "Today, this industrial legacy still lies buried in
the permafrost or on its surface. The substances involved range from
toxic diesel fuel to heavy metals and even radioactive waste." But as
climate change progresses, this "sleeping giant" could soon become an
acute threat: since the permafrost regions are warming between twice as
fast and four times as fast as the rest of the world, the frozen soil is increasingly thawing. When this happens, it changes the hydrology of the
region in question, and the permafrost no longer provides an effective
barrier. As a result, contaminants that have accumulated in the Arctic
over decades can be released, spreading across larger regions.

In addition, thawing permafrost becomes more and more unstable, which
can lead to further contamination. When the ground collapses, it can
damage pipelines, chemical stockpiles and depots. Just how real this
risk already is can be seen in a major incident from May 2020 near the industrial city Norilsk in northern Siberia: a destabilized storage tank released 17,000 metric tons of diesel, which polluted the surrounding
rivers, lakes and tundra. According to Langer: "Incidents like this could easily become more frequent in the future." In order to more accurately
assess such risks, he and an international team of experts from Germany,
the Netherlands and Norway took a closer look at industrial activities in
the High North. To do so, they first analysed freely available data from
the portal OpenStreetMap and from the Atlas of Population, Society and
Economy in the Arctic. According to these sources, the Arctic permafrost regions contain ca. 4,500 industrial sites that either store or use
potentially hazardous substances.

"But this alone didn't tell us what types of facilities they were, or how
badly they could potentially pollute the environment," says Langer. More detailed information on contaminated sites is currently only available
for North America, where roughly 40 percent of the global permafrost
lies. The data from Canada and Alaska showed that, using the location
and type of facility, it should be possible to accurately estimate where hazardous substances were most likely to be found.

For Alaska, the Contaminated Sites Program also offers insights into
the respective types of contaminants. For example, roughly half of the contaminations listed can be attributed to fuels like diesel, kerosene
and petrol. Mercury, lead and arsenic are also in the top 20 documented environmental pollutants. And the problem isn't limited to the legacy
of past decades: although the number of newly registered contaminated
sites in the northernmost state of the USA declined from ca. 90 in 1992
to 38 in 2019, the number of affected sites continues to rise.

There are no comparable databases for Siberia's extensive permafrost
regions.

"As such, our only option there was to analyse reports on environmental problems that were published in the Russian media or other freely
accessible sources between 2000 and 2020," says Langer. "But the somewhat sparse information available indicates that industrial facilities
and contaminated sites are also closely linked in Russia's permafrost
regions." Using computer models, the team calculated the occurrence of contaminated sites for the Arctic as a whole. According to the results,
the 4,500 industrial facilities in the permafrost regions have most likely produced between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites. 3,500 to 5,200
of them are located in regions where the permafrost is still stable,
but will start to thaw before the end of the century. "But without more extensive data, these findings should be considered a rather conservative estimate," Langer emphasises. "The true scale of the problem could be
even greater." Making matters worse, the interest in pursuing commercial activities in the Arctic continues to grow. As a result, more and more industrial facilities are being constructed, which could also release
toxic substances into nearby ecosystems. Further, this is happening at
a time when removing such environmental hazards is getting harder and
harder -- after all, doing so often requires vehicles and heavy gear,
which can hardly be used on vulnerable tundra soils that are increasingly affected by thaw.

"In a nutshell, what we're seeing here is a serious environmental problem
that is sure to get worse," summarises Guido Grosse. What is urgently
called for, according to the experts: more data, and a monitoring system
for hazardous substances in connection with industrial activities in the Arctic. "These pollutants can, via rivers and the ocean, ultimately find
their way back to people living in the Arctic, or to us." Other important aspects are intensified efforts to prevent the release of pollutants and
undo the damage in those areas that are already contaminated. And lastly,
the experts no longer consider it appropriate to leave industrial waste
behind in the Arctic without secure disposal options. After all, the
permafrost can no longer be relied upon to counter the associated risks.

* RELATED_TOPICS
o Earth_&_Climate
# Tundra # Environmental_Science # Air_Pollution
# Pollution # Air_Quality # Hazardous_Waste #
Recycling_and_Waste # Geography
* RELATED_TERMS
o Tundra o Water_resources o Arctic_Circle o
Effects_of_global_warming o Arctic_fox o Global_warming o
Climate_change_mitigation o Soil_contamination

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Alfred_Wegener_Institute,_Helmholtz_Centre_for_Polar_and
Marine_Research. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Moritz Langer, Thomas Schneider von Deimling, Sebastian Westermann,
Rebecca Rolph, Ralph Rutte, Sofia Antonova, Volker Rachold,
Michael Schultz, Alexander Oehme, Guido Grosse. Thawing permafrost
poses environmental threat to thousands of sites with legacy
industrial contamination. Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI:
10.1038/s41467- 023-37276-4 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230404114242.htm

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