In Siberia, climate change is literally re-shaping the landscape—as rapidly warming temperatures start to alter what has long been a given in much of Russia's vast hinterland: that the ground is frozen.
ABC News' Patrick Reevell reports on the melting permafrost in some parts of Russia that's putting roads and buildings at risk of collapse, and may contribute to more greenhouse gases.YAKUTSK, Russia -- Thirty years ago, the road out from the village of Mai was flat. So were the fields around it, enough that local people used to play football on them.
Around two-thirds of Russia is covered by permafrost -- permanently frozen ground that never thaws, even during summers. It runs from just below the surface of much of Siberia for sometimes thousands of meters underground, kept frozen by the region's fierce colds. Stretching down from the Arctic, Yakutia would be larger than most countries if it was independent and is one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, with winter temperatures routinely reaching below -70 Fahrenheit.
"You see already how much it has fallen. Within 30 years, it's fallen from -3 to -1 degrees," he told ABC News during a visit to the monitors in August. "Ten or 20 years from now, that will be a different picture," he told ABC News."If the trajectory will continue the same— we will have massive thawing of permafrost in warmer, discontinuous permafrost zone."
Some scientists worry that it also poses a profound threat for the rest of the world. The frozen soil holds hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases, like methane and CO2, which are released as it slowly thaws.
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