Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
what happens when a frozen World locked
away from Millennia starts to
thaw in 2014 a helicopter crew flying
over Siberia discovers something
mysterious a crater more than 80 ft wide
and deeper than a 15-story
building sink holes are nothing knew but
this is no ordinary
[Music]
sinkhole the ground has
exploded there's no way this is not
real more Siberian craters have since
been
discovered there's even evidence they
may be appearing in
Alaska the lake Bottom went from being
flat flat flat and then it just dropped
out and then show no sign of
stopping now scientists from around the
globe race to understand a hidden
world permafrost a layer of Frozen Earth
spanning a quarter of the northern
hemisphere's
landmass this ancient freezer is
beginning to thaw revealing its deepest
Secrets pretty exciting this is a
mammoth bone right here releasing over
half a billion tons of carbon every
every year it was just insane like the
water is boiling around you and
threatening local
communities houses need to be torn down
we're in the middle of a housing
crisis are the craters warning shots for
our climate future that is not included
in climate models that's a scary wild
card in the climate change story what
new dangers lurk beneath this vast
Frozen
landscape and could they warm our planet
even
further Arctic sink holes right now on
[Music]
Nova the yamal peninsula
Siberia 47,000 s mil of freezing
Tundra located in Northern Russia the
yamal lies well above the Arctic
[Music]
Circle it's home to around 10,000
indigenous net people most living as
nomadic reindeer
herders in their language yamal means
end of the
land it's now beginning to look like
it giant craters were spotted in the
north of Russia they popped up out of
nowhere in the yamamo
peninsula when I first heard about the
crater I didn't believe it I actually
thought it was a madeup
story believe me I remember this date
and I will remember it forever cuz it
was absolutely exciting something I have
never seen
before the mysterious crater is 150 ft
deep filled up with rainwater its volume
is greater than 10 Olympic swimming
pools the Striking images go viral
worldwide because no one can answer what
caused it
[Music]
vasili bov Linsky is an expert on the
geology of the
yamal with other scientists he Choppers
out to the
scene when we just came to this crator
of course we didn't know for sure what
was there
we never saw something like that
never this isn't the first massive pit
to open
up across the world gaping sink holes
have appeared due to water or erosion
weakening the ground
beneath swallowing cars whole and
wreaking havoc in towns and cities
but while the yamal crater looks at
first like an ordinary sinkhole there's
something unusual visible around the
[Music]
edges most sink holes have a rim that is
flat not
raised and while sink holes collapse
inwards the team discovers debris spread
far outside the
crater pus or of rocks and Ice are
flying sometimes in quite long distance
from 200 M to 500 M and in one case it
was distance to 900
M debris like this can be thrown out by
the impact of an
asteroid but there are no other signs of
a massive object striking
[Music]
Earth for the scientists that leaves
only one reasonable explanation
a gigantic natural
explosion I don't know if there are many
Earth system processes that have never
occurred I mean in my lifetime or at
least to Scientific understanding that
have never occurred and that we're
starting to see as a new
process so what could have provided the
power for such a massive
blast there is no sign of lava or
volcanic rock so this clearly isn't a
volcano but exploring inside the crater
sampling the air and water at the bottom
the scientists do discover an intriguing
clue unusually high levels of a single
gas
[Music]
methane used for cooking and heating
methane is a flammable gas made from
carbon and hydrogen
when combined with air it ignites
easily so this is huge bomb mean
bomb but before scientists can determine
where the methane came
from more giant craters are
discovered investigating scientists find
new new evidence of
methane since 2014 at least eight
confirmed craters have been found on or
close to the
yal but the growing number of craters
isn't the scientist's only
concern they notice a climate
connection 2014 when the first crater
appears followed one of the hot years on
record in
Russia and all the craters are
discovered during a period of
uncharacteristically warm weather in
Siberia since the late 19th century the
average global temperature has risen
around 2° F but the Arctic is warming
faster it's currently heating up around
twice as fast as the rest of the
planet the scientists begin to ask could
the explosive craters be connected to
climate
change if so what might they be telling
us about Earth's climate
[Music]
future while scientists on the yamal
study the
crater elsewhere in the Arctic another
team is about to discover new pieces of
the puzzle
this time in
[Music]
Alaska kotsubu near Alaska's northwest
coast in 2017 a local pilot reports a
lake that's behaving
oddly now a team of scientists that had
been investigating returns to the site
to continue its
work so we um just left katw and then we
crossed the katsu
sound and enter the mouth of the noch
which was this like beautiful sweeping
landscape look there's so Lake right
there man that's
exciting far from the nearest town lies
easy
Lake field technician Phil Hunker
proceeds cautiously
hoping to avoid surprises hey bear heyar
hey bear
SC well there's uh definitely Bears
around here so we're going to have to
take that into account when setting up
camp easy lake is located on the lands
of the indigenous inupiat
people the state is home to over 13,000
inpac people whose traditional lands
stretch across northern
Alaska one of the scientists on the team
has special ties to this
community my name is Janelle sharp my
Ina name is a Nook my mom is originally
from kab my family is from this region
and so this project is really special to
me cuz it's kind of like me coming back
to my
roots in 2017 sharp and other scientists
asked the local Community to help them
identify unusual features in the
wilderness a pilot named Eric C told
them that while flying over the area
he'd spotted something
unusual if you fly low enough even from
the air you can see the
bubbling it's just mysterious it looks
like a jacuzzi and so you you get up to
it and you can hear this
like the water is boiling around
you on their first visit the team wanted
to investigate what's causing the
bubbles we took gas samples and then
those were sent to the lab for analysis
and they found that it is a super high
amount of
methane methane leaks known as seeps
have been found elsewhere in the Arctic
but they are usually much
smaller the team's measurements reveal
that easy lake is belching out over 10
tons of methane every
day this is the highest flux methane
seep that humans have discovered in the
Arctic the amount of methane you see is
staggering from the shore it's difficult
to see where the methane is coming
from so the team decides to get closer
to the
source hypothermia is obviously the main
danger second is me getting
air I'm very curious about what's down
[Music]
there Sullivan finds that the lake is
shallow just a few feet deep but then he
follows the lake floor towards the
source of the
bubbles I was kicking really hard to
stay down along the bottom and I was
moving my hands along it and it went
from this mushy Lake Bottom that was
flat flat flat and then it just dropped
out that gets deep so so quickly yeah
it's like you're on the bottom you're on
the bottom Bottom's gone Sullivan finds
the methane bubbles are streaming up
from the hole in the lake floor the
bubbling it's it sounded like seeping
gas as if it was even from a propane
tank how'd he go still going down
wow with the lake bottom too dark to see
the team deploys a our
skin most of this bed is around 3 ft
deep but beneath the streams of bubbles
the ground abruptly Falls
away at its deepest reaching 50
fet why does a lake floor otherwise flat
and shallow contain such a massive
hole on the yal scientists believe a
methane blew out a huge
crater easy lake is another sign within
the Arctic that beneath the surface
methane is
stirring so could more craters and more
methane be on the
way as well as methane there's one more
clue that links easy Lake and the Amal
craters both are located on the same
type of Frozen Terrain
permafrost most permafrost is found in
the land masses of high Northern
latitudes including Russia Canada and
most of
Alaska covering an area almost as large
as the US and Canada
combined Perma Frost can stretch almost
a mile beneath earth's
surface it's defined as any ground whose
temperature remains at or below 32° f
for two or more consecutive
years but it can remain Frozen for
Millennia recently Rising Arctic
temperatures have meant that in some
regions the permafrost has started to
thaw just how fast and the danger this
may pose to our climate is revealed 450
mi from Easy
lake near the town of fox in interior
Alaska something strange is happening in
the
[Music]
woods this is what people refer to as
this uh drunken Forest you can see a
bunch of these have kind of started to
go they're just having a hard time
getting enough rooting in to grow
straight this Forest sits on top of
permafrost scientist Tom Douglas has
been tracking some surprising changes
taking place as the permafrost starts to
thaw I mean look at those huge birch
trees they're literally just riding down
those slopes as it's all
degrading I mean this goes a good 20 or
so meters below us this is a giant hole
you can hear water in there this whole
landscape is just very slowly sliding
down downhill with
gravity this is a very dramatic and very
rapid change in the landscape here that
again we're seeing in a matter of years
not decades not 20 years not by
2100 since 2018 it's prettyy
dramatic this rapid thaw is also
affecting human
settlements like UT Kavik the most
northern city in the United States
this entire Community sits on top of the
Alaskan
permafrost locals call it the top of the
world if you point that
way that's Greenland over there Canada
is over
here and that way is guess
what
Russia Gordon Brower is a Native Alaskan
inup Pac whaling captain
his people have lived in this region for
thousands of
years communities like these they're
special a lot of the cultures in the
world are assimilated and we're
assimilated here but we've brought our
culture and our ways to the future with
us and you can come here and still see
the same celebration that took place
10,000 years ago
[Music]
for five decades Brower has been hunting
in these
Waters part of an ancient inpac
tradition of living off the land in the
sea we don't have Walmart or we don't
have McDonald's up here we have other
small restaurants and other things to do
like that but the majority of food
resources are still hunted today seals
whes belugas Ducks geese uh Caribou
wolves
uh all of those are still traded and
[Music]
used with little fresh food available in
Winter generations of native alaskans
have depended on sellers carved out of
the
permafrost well we're in an ice
Celler my folks use this ice Celler for
years and years this is where I put a
whale and store it uh in trust for the
community but thawing permafrost means
this natural deep freeze isn't as cold
as it used to
be as Brower
discovered I had checked on the meat and
told my brothers you know we got to pull
that meat out it's draining and we don't
want that and I've resorted to pulling a
whole whale out of there and putting it
into walk-in
freezers thawing ice sellers aren't the
only threat Rising temperatures pose to
this
[Music]
community recently sea ice that used to
protect the shore from storms has begun
to
melt storm surge is pretty
dramatic and it's going to wreak havoc
on your Coastline here and the thing
about is when it's reaching the edge a
lot of the banks are permafrost rich and
it undercuts
them exposed by the storms permafrost is
thawing and crumbling
away now communities like utav are
trying to protect their
homes these are all our local efforts to
stop the storm
surge this is our way of trying to save
the
town with a retreating Coastline and
warming ice C ERS local communities are
hit twice by thawing
permafrost but the big thaw is an Arctic
wide
problem through the next decades and
Century we expect anywhere across the
Arctic between 30 and 70% of near
surfice permafrost will be lost that
range partly has to do with just some
uncertainty in the science but largely
has to do with how much warming will
happen in the
future Arctic Comm unities are facing
the immediate effects now but scientists
are concerned this loss has implications
for the entire
planet so why is permafrost thaw so
dangerous and what is the link to
methane back near Fox in interior Alaska
Tom Douglas is about to do something
only possible in a few places on Earth
walk deep down into the permafrost
itself the fox permafrost tunnel reveals
there's more to permafrost than Frozen
Earth that's a horn that's from the
longhorn step bison and they are extinct
now but back 18 to 40,000 years ago you
know there were step bison
here um pretty exciting this is a
mammoth bone right here can just see
kind of of the piece of it sticking out
right there it's pretty
big the tunnel reveals that permafrost
contains vast quantities of organic
matter so these are these are sges kind
of like grass and you can see that they
they're green they still have their
chlorophyll in them they're also upside
down this block fell into a water
feature that then froze um probably 20
or so thousand years ago
this ancient organic matter like all
life on our planet contains
carbon and is part of a Vital Earth
system called the carbon
cycle as they grow plants absorb carbon
dioxide when they die they or the
animals that have eaten them
decompose releasing some of this carbon
back into the
atmosphere but in the freezing Arctic
decomposition happens
slowly so over Millennia a huge amount
of organic matter became permafrost
before it could
decompose it's carbon Frozen in
time in the late ' 90s into the 2000s
people start to look at the stocks of
carbon and permafrost and it's it's a
lot it's about 1,4 400 billion metric
tons it's almost twice as much carbon as
it's currently in Earth atmosphere when
we walked in we noted that smell right
you're smelling ancient bacteria and
carbon being oxidized um it's almost
like a well I've heard anything from
like a French cheese to Barnyard um but
it's kind of that organic um almost a
late fall wet Leaf kind of organic smell
you are smelling per Frost carbon being
oxidized and so the big question is that
carbon that we smelled that's all over
this tunnel wall what's its ultimate
fate and there's a lot of people working
on
that in other words how much of this
carbon will end up in the atmosphere and
most importantly how
fast Falmouth
Massachusetts 3,000 M from the ice
tunnel Arctic ecologist Susan Natali
investigates samples of permafrost to
find out what happens when it thaws
so these are permafrost cores that were
collected from different locations
across Alaska some of these are really
dark like particularly this one and that
dark color means that that has a lot of
carbon in
it as permafrost warms its carbon
thaws and the carbon cycle starts up
once again so that carbon then is
available for microbes to break down
they use it for energy and they
decompose it and in that process they're
releasing carbon dioxide or
methane carbon dioxide and methane are
both greenhouse
gases as Earth's surface absorbs energy
from the Sun it radiates some of it back
out as
heat in the atmosphere greenhouse gases
absorb this heat radiating part of its
energy back at Earth and heating up our
planet greenhouse gas are concerned
because they trap heat they're helpful
to us because they they make this
habitable planet but because there's too
much in the atmosphere they're now
making this an unhabitable planet or a
less habitable
planet it's estimated that in the mid
18th century there were over 2,000
gigatons of naturally occurring
carbon-based greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere with industrialization
human-made greenhouse gas emissions
began to add to this amount by 2019 it's
estimated the total had risen to over
3,000
gigatons over the last century and a
half Earth's average temperature
increased around 2°
F scientists agree human emissions
caused this
warming but recently they've become
concerned greenhouse gases being
released by permafrost might be driving
temperatures higher
too as the name suggests permafrost is
permanently frozen ground so we thought
okay this carbon is very stable so
nothing is going to
happen but as permafrost starts to thaw
this carbon becomes
vulnerable since the mid '70s carbon
dioxide emissions from the north Alaskan
Wilderness have spiked by More than
70% but while we know a lot about carbon
dioxide the impact of another greenhouse
gas coming out of the permafrost is less
widely
known the very one escaping from the
yamal and easy
Lake
methane methane is really important
because it's much more potent in terms
of its ability to trap heat so it's
about 30 times more powerful than carbon
dioxide luckily while carbon dioxide
lasts centuries or longer in our
atmosphere methane only lasts around 12
years but as a far more potent
greenhouse gas any large scale increases
in methane emissions have climate
scientists seriously
concerned for now more than half of
methane emissions come from Human
sources like fossil fuels and
agriculture sources well understood by
climate
experts but scientists are increasingly
worried about methane emissions from
permafrost so far they don't know how
much methane the permafrost is
releasing and that's a big problem in
order to control our temperature we have
a certain amount of carbon that humans
can release that's our carbon
budget in 2015 the international Paris
agreement set a target for limiting
global
warming its goal was to keep the
temperature rise to well below two
preferably to 1.5°
C to stand a good chance of remaining
below the 1.5 degree mark one estimate
states that humans could release a
maximum of around 460 G tons more carbon
dioxide but recent climate calculations
are based on computer models with
incomplete
information unfortunately a lot of these
Earth system models that contribute to
such goals do not take into account CO2
and methane emissions from
permafrost the most recent carbon
budgets have started to include
permafrost carbon
but some scientists believe they still
underestimate the amount of carbon the
warming Arctic will
release making temperature goals harder
to meet and putting more pressure on
societies to dramatically cut their
emissions to
compensate so we think we have a certain
amount of greenhouse gases that humans
can release but our Target is wrong
right now because we're not accounting
for potential permafrost emissions of
methane and carbon
dioxide understanding the Dynamics of
thawing permafrost is now critical to
predicting our climate
future so how much methane is permafrost
emitting each year and is this annual
amount going to
increase good dog St ahead I'm by I'm by
I'm by Fairbanks interior
Alaska ecologist Katie Walter Anthony is
heading out onto the Frozen
terrain come on piggy
come Walter Anthony was among the first
to study easy
Lake she's found concerning evidence
it's not the only Lake in the permafrost
region that's releasing
[Music]
methane so when you spear the spot if I
hear gas coming out I'm going to try to
ignite it and if there's fire we both
need to get out of the way okay
ready
yep
whoa I got me oh
shoot am I on fire no well I was
wondering it's
smoking you
okay that was a good one that was a good
one all right
the methane comes from organic matter in
permafrost thawing and decomposing at
the bottom of the lake then rising in
methane bubbles to the
[Music]
surface across the Arctic permafrost
thaw is generating vast numbers of new
Lakes as the soil warms ice beneath the
surface melts causing the ground to
slump and fill with
water and once a lake is formed you
can't stop it because that water has
heat and it causes the ground to thaw so
fast the Lakes then start releasing
methane as the methane escapes it causes
more permafrost to thaw and more methane
to be generated which is more warming
and you get what's called a positive
feedback
cycle positive feedback Cycles from
permafrost regions are another scenario
not sufficiently accounted for in
current climate
models as per Frost THS greenhouse gases
like CO2 and methane will be released
back to the atmosphere much
faster warming is causing more
[Music]
warming due to positive feedback
permafrost emissions could increase the
rate of
warming compounding the need for humans
to reduce their emissions if climate
targets are to be met
[Music]
but permafrost carbon isn't the only
potential driver of a positive feedback
[Music]
cycle permafrost is actually not the
largest carbon reserve on Earth there's
much larger carbon Reserve in Earth's
crust as fossil carbon but we often
don't talk about this carbon this is
because this carbon is considered very
stable
but some scientists now wonder if this
Mega source of carbon is as stable as
they
thought disturbing evidence comes from
the bubbles in Easy
Lake methane released by thawing
permafrost has a particular chemical
fingerprint when the scientists at easy
Lake studied the methane in the bubbles
they discovered it originated deeper
inside inside
Earth much
deeper miles beneath the permafrost deep
in Earth's crust lie huge fossil methane
reservoirs while methane from permafrost
comes from organic matter thousands of
years old fossil methane comes from
organisms that decomposed millions of
years
ago but if it's miles beneath the
surface how is this methane getting
through Earth's crust and why
here above ground the landscape itself
gives scientists a
clue looking up at the Peaks around here
and studying the local geology we know
that this is a highly fractured and
faulted
region as of 2021 Alaska is the most
seismically active state in the
[Music]
US in the territory close to easy Lake
scientists have discovered a network of
geological fault
lines although not on a tectonic plate
boundary movements of Earth's crust have
caused it to crack
here the closest fault line discovered
so far is fewer than 5 mil from the
[Music]
lake fault lines make cracks in Earth's
crust through which fossil methane can
rise to the
surface though it hasn't been confirmed
the scientists suspect a fault line lies
near or directly beneath easy Lake but
if so there's a
mystery seismic evidence from the area
suggests easy Lake sits above 500 ft of
still frozen
permafrost this should form a rock solid
frozen barrier trapping the fossil
methane inside Earth
so how are these deep stocks of
greenhouse gas breaking through to the
surface so far the team's sonar scan has
revealed a 50-ft hole in the lake
floor but what if they could look deeper
into the permafrost
itself geophysicist Nick Hassen joins
the team with technology used by the
military 75 is just after the
shrub I'm essentially scanning the
permafrost using a geophysical method
called very low
frequency very low frequency or vlf
measures a special kind of
electromagnetic wave as it moves through
Earth these waves are sent out globally
by the Navy to communicate with
submarines but as those waves pass
through through the earth below hasson's
equipment can pick them
up by measuring the speed the wave
travels Hassen can tell whether the
ground deep beneath him is frozen or
not when it moves through the ground if
there's permafrost or ice these waves
are coming up against a lot of
resistance but if there's no permafrost
or ice it quickly moves
through if they're strong enough the
electromagnetic VF waves should enable
Hassen to see whatever Lies Beneath the
lake and so we can scan the Earth
similar to how a doctor scans you with
an
MRI easy lake is the biggest onland
methane seep yet found in the Arctic but
no one has used VF to look beneath
it until
now wow fantastic
signals yeah so I'm starting to notice
just a
[Music]
change well we're over the largest seep
and there's some sort of large anomaly
happening right here where I'm located
and the VF just picking it up it's very
exciting the signals are just
outstanding back at Camp Hassen takes
the first ever highresolution Glimpse
beneath easy Lake
this slice through 500 ft of ground
below the lake reveals an
anomaly so the dark blue is the
permafrost region so anything that's
light blue to Red is thawed and so this
shouldn't be here there should be
permafrost covering this entire area but
for some reason what you can see here uh
is a thaw chimney going from uh
somewhere below 150 M uh to the surface
where we see the rising Bubbles and so
this is really
unique so far the scientists have only
seen 50 ft beneath the
lake now hasson's VF image lets them
look 10 times
deeper below the lake stretches a deep
layer of
permafrost but the scientists now know
this hasn't just thawed at the surface
instead a chimney of material has thawed
right through the Frozen
permafrost a warmer semi-permeable
passageway through which fossil methane
Rises to the
surface so thawing permafrost means not
one but two sources of methane for our
atmosphere as it warms permafrost
releases es its own methane gas and as
thaw chimneys form within it they
provide an Escape Route for fossil
methane that has been safely trapped for
millions of
[Music]
years scientists estimate there are
around 1.3 trillion tons of methane
stored beneath the
Arctic that's nearly 250 times as much
methane as there is in Earth's
atmosphere today
so is easy lak's thaw chimney unique or
is fossil methane escaping
elsewhere while the leak in Easy lake is
unusually large smaller seeps of fossil
methane are being discovered across the
Arctic in Alaska alone over 70 sites
have been
found there's no current sign the entire
reserve of fossil methane is moving
toward the surface
but the appearance of even small amounts
of this ancient greenhouse gas has some
scientists
concerned if permafrost Tha then that's
a scary wild card in the climate change
story because we think there's a huge
amount of methane and natural gas
trapped inside permafrost and under
permafrost so if permafrost becomes like
swiss cheese with lots of holes in it
then you can have chimneys where that
gas is erupting out and that is not
included in climate
models if only a tiny fraction of the
fossil reservoirs were to reach the
atmosphere it could intensify warming
putting even more pressure on human
emissions
targets how fast that's going to happen
and just how much methane will come out
um we don't
[Music]
know scientists don't currently
understand how fast such a cycle might
occur or what it would look like
[Music]
but there's one place on Earth that
gives a chilling example of how a
human-made permafrost feedback cycle
actually
works Northeast Siberia is home to the
chery
[Music]
mountains in the 1960s in a place called
Baga a stretch of forest was cleared to
make a
road stripped of its tree cover
the permafrost was exposed to the
warming Sun as it thawed the ground sank
pulling down trees at its Edge and
exposing more
permafrost a positive feedback
cycle today the strip of cleared Forest
is a depression nearly 300 ft deep and
over half a mile wide and it's growing
scientists call it a mega slump
but AA it is very big but this the size
is because of the initial human impact
and this one is already more than 1
kilometer and growing every
summer Baga reveals how a small human
impact can start a devastating feedback
cycle in
permafrost scientists are now trying to
to discover what a feedback cycle could
mean for the entire permafrost region
and whether it could reach a point where
it becomes
irreversible such a phenomenon is called
a Tipping Point a Tipping Point is the
proverbial straw that broke the camel's
back you can get away with adding straw
for so long and then you can't and the
The Tipping Point is the point of no
return it's it's a controversial idea
among climate scientists but the
prospect of a Tipping Point has been
raised for a number of global climate
systems including Arctic sea ice and
deforestation in the
Amazon so far there's no conclusive
evidence that a Tipping Point is near
for
permafrost however some scientists
believe aspects of the thaw are now
irreversible
[Music]
Vladimir romanovski has spent decades
studying the changing
permafrost near UT kavic in northern
Alaska he investigates what happens as
large wedges of ice in the ground start
to
melt before it was more or less flat
area but then ice melts and surface
subsides romanovski believes lakes
formed by melting permafrost ice have
passed a point of no
turn it took tens of thousands of years
to put this ice into the ground now it's
it's melting to put all this ice into
the ground back you will need several
tens of thousands of years so that's for
humans definitely irreversible process
it is tipping
points while melting ice forms lakes in
the wilderness just a few miles away
it's causing very different problems for
the local Comm
community in the roads outside UK kavic
the effects of rising Arctic
temperatures are easy to
see just from observation growing up
here um coming out here since I was a
kid uh the roads were a lot higher uh
than they are
now it is literally
sinking his bumper M it Native Alaskan
inup Lars Nelson is an infrastructure
consultant he knows firsthand what
permafrost thaw is doing to his
community this road is for subsistence
use we come out here and Stage our hunts
it's a big part of our history and it's
important that we're able to access it
in case of an
emergency and it's not just the roads
that are
sinking in downtown utav Nelson meets
inac Anthony Edwards
these ones are subsiding too yeah he's
an expert on the ANC Community with four
decades experience in the construction
industry yeah look at this one is really
messed up look at how it's just that's
where the houses are
sinking local houses are built on wooden
pilings if they were built on the ground
the heat used to warm the homes would
thaw the permafrost
below but now the permafrost is thawing
by itself and the pilings are starting
to
sink when the um piling is a very small
base uh it doesn't hold its structure
the communities they need House Leveling
move houses they houses need to be torn
down we're in the middle of a housing
crisis Nelson believes strategic
building is the answer we're on to it
right now and we're refining it right
now we can build nice good healthy homes
we just got to pay attention to our
foundation pay attention to the tundra
we're building on more
closely cuz it's such an awesome spot
you know it's the top of the
world but as the permafrost continues to
thaw others in Alaska are looking at
more drastic
Solutions so this is our portable
adjustable sled base home it is on a
giant steel sled as opposed to the
pilings CEO of the Regional Housing
Authority Griffin Hagel has a more
radical plan for sinking
homes what we would do if we needed to
to move this we would be hooking up our
tow chains to these two attachment
points we've got one on this side and uh
one on that corner of the building over
there hook that up to a piece of heavy
equipment caterpillar and then drop it
off the pads and basically tow it across
the snow in the winter
[Music]
time as temperatures rise Hegel is
searching for ways to protect some of
the most isolated communities in the
United
States this is the largest municipality
in the world I think by land area and we
provide affordable housing in eight
Villages across an area the size of
Minnesota only without any roads
no Alaskan homes have been sledded away
yet but Arctic warming has forced some
towns to
relocate and Hegel thinks houses will
soon be on the move and there's several
you know communities especially in rural
Alaska native communities that are
increasingly at risk of of relocation
due to global warming and so this gives
us an advantage and having the option
the adaptability to move that that
structure if it becomes necessary
native people the indigenous communities
that have called this place home for
thousands of years have come up with all
sorts of Innovations to make life work
here so we draw a lot of inspiration
from that and we see that as kind of the
continuation of a long long tradition of
[Music]
innovation as inhabitants across the
Arctic adapt to their changing
World scientists drive to build a better
picture of our climate
future the methane craters are just one
sign of a region undergoing
unprecedented
changes placing communities with deep
ties to this land at
risk we've been wailing here for well
over 4,000
years we've adapted time and time
again today we might not be able to do
it by ourselves
but the big thaw is not just a regional
problem what's happening in the Arctic
could really affect everyone on
Earth Arctic greenhouse gases will
intensify future global warming how
quickly is difficult to
predict and positive feedback Cycles
could accelerate Beyond human control
making our choices today even more
urgent because it's very difficult to
take control over the natural systems
it's even more important for us to lower
our
emissions these craters are a really
important and concerning indicator that
things are changing and the Arctic is
melting and the Arctic is thay and the
future of the Arctic is a very different
place than it was several decades ago
[Music]
episodes of Nova are are available with
passport this program is also available
on Amazon Prime video
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]