Canada has about one quarter of the world’s permafrost, underlying about half of our country. The North, especially the western Arctic, has had the most rapid climate warming, with annual temperatures at Inuvik, NWT, rising since the 1960s from -9.5 °C to above -6 °C. Adjustments in the precipitation regime are primarily to rainfall in early autumn. These indicators exceed projections made in 2000 for the magnitude of climate warming under the highest rate of greenhouse-gas emissions then thought likely. The consequences of such climate change for permafrost environments depend on the history of ice accumulation in the ground and distribution of such ice with depth. Permafrost is no longer in thermal equilibrium with the climate, as it was 50 years ago. Instead, there are sites where the response to climate change is only in terms of temperature and others where ground properties are changing. In some cases, the adjustments to terrain integrity are gradual but in others catastrophic. The primary direct costs associated with climate change effects on permafrost accrue from deterioration of infrastructure. In Yukon, for instance, the proportion of the operation and maintenance budget for transportation infrastructure associated with climate-related costs rose from 24% to 53% in 1994–2022.
Dr. Chris Burn was a graduate student at Carleton (M.A. 1983; PhD 1986) and has been a member of the faculty since 1992. His field investigations on the permafrost environment in Yukon and western Arctic Canada began in 1982, with the focus of the research on the relations between climate and permafrost, particularly those driving the response of permafrost terrain to climate change. He was awarded a D.Sc. by the University of Durham and the Polar Medal of Canada in 2018, and the Mentorship Medal of the Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences in 2024. He was President of the International Permafrost Association in 2020–2024.
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