Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales
Infrastructure built on perennially frozen ice-rich ground relies heavily on thermally stable subsurface conditions. Climate-warming-induced deepening of ground thaw puts such infrastructure at risk of failure. For better assessing the risk of large-scale future damage to Arctic infrastructure, impr...
Published in: | The Cryosphere |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
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Copernicus Publications under license by EGU – European Geosciences Union GmbH
2022
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10852/92636 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-95228 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 |
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Universitet i Oslo: Digitale utgivelser ved UiO (DUO) |
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English |
description |
Infrastructure built on perennially frozen ice-rich ground relies heavily on thermally stable subsurface conditions. Climate-warming-induced deepening of ground thaw puts such infrastructure at risk of failure. For better assessing the risk of large-scale future damage to Arctic infrastructure, improved strategies for model-based approaches are urgently needed. We used the laterally coupled 1D heat conduction model CryoGrid3 to simulate permafrost degradation affected by linear infrastructure. We present a case study of a gravel road built on continuous permafrost (Dalton highway, Alaska) and forced our model under historical and strong future warming conditions (following the RCP8.5 scenario). As expected, the presence of a gravel road in the model leads to higher net heat flux entering the ground compared to a reference run without infrastructure and thus a higher rate of thaw. Further, our results suggest that road failure is likely a consequence of lateral destabilisation due to talik formation in the ground beside the road rather than a direct consequence of a top-down thawing and deepening of the active layer below the road centre. In line with previous studies, we identify enhanced snow accumulation and ponding (both a consequence of infrastructure presence) as key factors for increased soil temperatures and road degradation. Using differing horizontal model resolutions we show that it is possible to capture these key factors and their impact on thawing dynamics with a low number of lateral model units, underlining the potential of our model approach for use in pan-Arctic risk assessments. Our results suggest a general two-phase behaviour of permafrost degradation: an initial phase of slow and gradual thaw, followed by a strong increase in thawing rates after the exceedance of a critical ground warming. The timing of this transition and the magnitude of thaw rate acceleration differ strongly between undisturbed tundra and infrastructure-affected permafrost ground. Our model results suggest that current model-based approaches which do not explicitly take into account infrastructure in their designs are likely to strongly underestimate the timing of future Arctic infrastructure failure. By using a laterally coupled 1D model to simulate linear infrastructure, we infer results in line with outcomes from more complex 2D and 3D models, but our model's computational efficiency allows us to account for long-term climate change impacts on infrastructure from permafrost degradation. Our model simulations underline that it is crucial to consider climate warming when planning and constructing infrastructure on permafrost as a transition from a stable to a highly unstable state can well occur within the service lifetime (about 30 years) of such a construction. Such a transition can even be triggered in the coming decade by climate change for infrastructure built on high northern latitude continuous permafrost that displays cold and relatively stable conditions today. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas Lee, Hanna Ingeman-Nielsen, Thomas Westermann, Sebastian Romanovsky, Vladimir Lamoureux, Scott Walker, Donald A. Chadburn, Sarah E. Trochim, Erin Cai, Lei Nitzbon, Jan Jacobi, Stephan Langer, Moritz |
spellingShingle |
Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas Lee, Hanna Ingeman-Nielsen, Thomas Westermann, Sebastian Romanovsky, Vladimir Lamoureux, Scott Walker, Donald A. Chadburn, Sarah E. Trochim, Erin Cai, Lei Nitzbon, Jan Jacobi, Stephan Langer, Moritz Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
author_facet |
Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas Lee, Hanna Ingeman-Nielsen, Thomas Westermann, Sebastian Romanovsky, Vladimir Lamoureux, Scott Walker, Donald A. Chadburn, Sarah E. Trochim, Erin Cai, Lei Nitzbon, Jan Jacobi, Stephan Langer, Moritz |
author_sort |
Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas |
title |
Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
title_short |
Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
title_full |
Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
title_fullStr |
Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
title_full_unstemmed |
Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
title_sort |
consequences of permafrost degradation for arctic infrastructure - bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications under license by EGU – European Geosciences Union GmbH |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10852/92636 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-95228 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(146.601,146.601,59.667,59.667) |
geographic |
Arctic Talik |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Talik |
genre |
Arctic Arctic Climate change Ice permafrost Talik The Cryosphere Tundra Alaska |
genre_facet |
Arctic Arctic Climate change Ice permafrost Talik The Cryosphere Tundra Alaska |
op_source |
1994-0416 |
op_relation |
NATSCIFOUND/1263854 NATSCIFOUND/1832238 NATSCIFOUND/1928237 EC/H2020/773421 NERC/NE/R015791/1 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-95228 Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas Lee, Hanna Ingeman-Nielsen, Thomas Westermann, Sebastian Romanovsky, Vladimir Lamoureux, Scott Walker, Donald A. Chadburn, Sarah E. Trochim, Erin Cai, Lei Nitzbon, Jan Jacobi, Stephan Langer, Moritz . Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales. The Cryosphere. 2021, 15(5), 2451-2471 http://hdl.handle.net/10852/92636 2000390 info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.jtitle=The Cryosphere&rft.volume=15&rft.spage=2451&rft.date=2021 The Cryosphere 15 5 2451 2471 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 URN:NBN:no-95228 Fulltext https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/92636/1/vonDeimlingetalConsequences.pdf |
op_rights |
Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 |
container_title |
The Cryosphere |
container_volume |
15 |
container_issue |
5 |
container_start_page |
2451 |
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2471 |
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1766302135869243392 |
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ftoslouniv:oai:www.duo.uio.no:10852/92636 2023-05-15T14:28:01+02:00 Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas Lee, Hanna Ingeman-Nielsen, Thomas Westermann, Sebastian Romanovsky, Vladimir Lamoureux, Scott Walker, Donald A. Chadburn, Sarah E. Trochim, Erin Cai, Lei Nitzbon, Jan Jacobi, Stephan Langer, Moritz 2022-02-11T11:27:28Z http://hdl.handle.net/10852/92636 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-95228 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 EN eng Copernicus Publications under license by EGU – European Geosciences Union GmbH NATSCIFOUND/1263854 NATSCIFOUND/1832238 NATSCIFOUND/1928237 EC/H2020/773421 NERC/NE/R015791/1 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-95228 Schneider Von Deimling, Thomas Lee, Hanna Ingeman-Nielsen, Thomas Westermann, Sebastian Romanovsky, Vladimir Lamoureux, Scott Walker, Donald A. Chadburn, Sarah E. Trochim, Erin Cai, Lei Nitzbon, Jan Jacobi, Stephan Langer, Moritz . Consequences of permafrost degradation for Arctic infrastructure - Bridging the model gap between regional and engineering scales. The Cryosphere. 2021, 15(5), 2451-2471 http://hdl.handle.net/10852/92636 2000390 info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.jtitle=The Cryosphere&rft.volume=15&rft.spage=2451&rft.date=2021 The Cryosphere 15 5 2451 2471 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 URN:NBN:no-95228 Fulltext https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/92636/1/vonDeimlingetalConsequences.pdf Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CC-BY 1994-0416 Journal article Tidsskriftartikkel Peer reviewed PublishedVersion 2022 ftoslouniv https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2451-2021 2022-03-23T23:33:48Z Infrastructure built on perennially frozen ice-rich ground relies heavily on thermally stable subsurface conditions. Climate-warming-induced deepening of ground thaw puts such infrastructure at risk of failure. For better assessing the risk of large-scale future damage to Arctic infrastructure, improved strategies for model-based approaches are urgently needed. We used the laterally coupled 1D heat conduction model CryoGrid3 to simulate permafrost degradation affected by linear infrastructure. We present a case study of a gravel road built on continuous permafrost (Dalton highway, Alaska) and forced our model under historical and strong future warming conditions (following the RCP8.5 scenario). As expected, the presence of a gravel road in the model leads to higher net heat flux entering the ground compared to a reference run without infrastructure and thus a higher rate of thaw. Further, our results suggest that road failure is likely a consequence of lateral destabilisation due to talik formation in the ground beside the road rather than a direct consequence of a top-down thawing and deepening of the active layer below the road centre. In line with previous studies, we identify enhanced snow accumulation and ponding (both a consequence of infrastructure presence) as key factors for increased soil temperatures and road degradation. Using differing horizontal model resolutions we show that it is possible to capture these key factors and their impact on thawing dynamics with a low number of lateral model units, underlining the potential of our model approach for use in pan-Arctic risk assessments. Our results suggest a general two-phase behaviour of permafrost degradation: an initial phase of slow and gradual thaw, followed by a strong increase in thawing rates after the exceedance of a critical ground warming. The timing of this transition and the magnitude of thaw rate acceleration differ strongly between undisturbed tundra and infrastructure-affected permafrost ground. Our model results suggest that current model-based approaches which do not explicitly take into account infrastructure in their designs are likely to strongly underestimate the timing of future Arctic infrastructure failure. By using a laterally coupled 1D model to simulate linear infrastructure, we infer results in line with outcomes from more complex 2D and 3D models, but our model's computational efficiency allows us to account for long-term climate change impacts on infrastructure from permafrost degradation. Our model simulations underline that it is crucial to consider climate warming when planning and constructing infrastructure on permafrost as a transition from a stable to a highly unstable state can well occur within the service lifetime (about 30 years) of such a construction. Such a transition can even be triggered in the coming decade by climate change for infrastructure built on high northern latitude continuous permafrost that displays cold and relatively stable conditions today. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Arctic Climate change Ice permafrost Talik The Cryosphere Tundra Alaska Universitet i Oslo: Digitale utgivelser ved UiO (DUO) Arctic Talik ENVELOPE(146.601,146.601,59.667,59.667) The Cryosphere 15 5 2451 2471 |