Search for: All records

https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/infrastructure-community-resilience-changing-arctic-status-challenges-research-needs/ 

Since the early 2000s, observations from 14 coastal permafrost sites have been updated, providing a synopsis of how changes in the Arctic System are intensifying the dynamics of permafrost coasts in the 21st Century. Observations from all but 1 of the 14 permafrost coastal sites around the Arctic indicate that decadal-scale erosion rates are increasing. The US and Canadian Beaufort Sea coasts have experienced the largest increases in erosion rates since the early-2000s. The mean annual erosion rate in these regions has increased by 80 to 160 % at the five sites with available data, with sites in the Canadian Beaufort Sea experiencing the largest relative increase. The sole available site in the Greenland Sea, on southern Svalbard, indicates an increase in mean annual erosion rates by 66 % since 2000, due primarily to a reduction in nearshore sediment supply from glacial recession. At the five sites along the Barents, Kara, and Laptev Seas in Siberia, mean annual erosion rates increased between 33 and 97 % since the early to mid-2000s. The only site to experience a decrease in mean annual erosion (- 40%) was located in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska. Interestingly, the other site in the Chukchi Sea experienced one of the highest increases in mean annual erosion (+160%) over the same period. In general, a considerable increase in the variability of erosion and deposition intensity was also observed along most of the sites.