Why are the frozen arctic coasts eroding so fast?

• Main Author: Lantuit, Hugues
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Arctic; Beaufort Sea; Climate change; Ice; laptev; Laptev Sea; permafrost; Sea ice; Siberia
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/34647/; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.42835

Arctic permafrost coasts, which account for 34% of the coasts of the Earth, are extremely vulnerable to climate change, because the frozen bluffs, upon contact with seawater, lose the cohesion provided by the permafrost matrix and are instantly washed away by incoming waves. With warming in the Arctic expected to be roughly twice as high as the global mean, sea ice extent is expected to decline dramatically and induce favourable conditions for coastal erosion. The subsequent impacts include threats to infrastructure and changes to the nearshore food-web through the release of sediment and organic matter to the ocean. A comprehensive understanding of the processes at work at the local level is nonetheless still lacking and impeding any kind of prognosis on the trajectory of erosion rates. In this presentation, we show recent efforts to quantify Arctic coastal erosion and understand the processes driving it, as well as the impacts of the changing environment, with a greater focus on the western Canadian Arctic (Beaufort Sea) and eastern Siberia (Laptev Sea).