#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. State Duma deputies adopted a law on state background permafrost monitoring – this is part of an innovative project of national importance Unified Monitoring System for Climate-active Substances.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, the system is being created on the Roshydromet (Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring) observation network basis – its data will be free and available to everyone. The operator will be the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), a Roshydromet subsidiary.
“This project, unique in scale and importance, has no analogues in the world”, said Alexander Makarov, the AARI director.
Online information will be sent to the monitoring center, and then transferred to the Unified State Fund for Data on the State of the Environment and its Pollution, to state authorities and other organizations. Background monitoring will give an idea of how permafrost is changing due to climate change.
“So far, only point data are available in that regard. This is a serious gap, given that two-thirds of the country’s territory is in the permafrost zone. We build houses, social and energy infrastructure, roads on permafrost, and this should be safe for people and the environment”, said Alexander Kozlov, the Ministry of Natural Resources head.
In addition, the data will show how much greenhouse gases are released when the permafrost melts. The information is used in modeling climate change forecasts in the country.
By the end of 2025, the monitoring system will consist of 140 observation points. Now the first point in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous okrug is already operating, all the equipment of which is of domestic manufacturers. By the end of 2023, there will be 20 such points, including those in the Krasnoyarsk region.
Recall that the damage from thawing permafrost in the Arctic over 30 years was estimated at seven trillion rubles. Scientists believe that the permafrost preservation in the Arctic should become a federal task.
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Text: Anzhelika Stepanova, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko
