As Meltdown Gathers Speed, Maintenance Costs For Canadian Arctic Highway Triple In 10 Years
EDIT
Further along the (Ed. - Dempster (H)ighway, another road slump was dubbed "the million dollar hole" because so much gravel had to be poured in to shore it up. The highway is drivable, but climate-related maintenance costs on the Dempster have more than tripled over a decade, to $5.1 million in 2016. "It really highlights the need to start thinking innovatively about the solutions, because these types of phenomena are going to become more and more commonplace," Kokelj says.
EDIT
There's a saying among climate scientists that "what happens in the North doesn't stay in the North," meaning big changes in this region will affect the rest of Canada as well. Mean temperatures in the Western Arctic have increased a staggering 3.4 degrees Celsius since the 1960s. To put that in perspective, the goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change that Canada signed is to ensure global temperatures rise no more than an average of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Scientists predict that worldwide warming greater than that could trigger potentially disastrous changes to weather patterns and ocean levels.
As the climate in the North has gotten warmer it has also become wetter, says Professor Chris Burn as he motors out along the MacKenzie River delta, pointing to long fingers of stripped vegetation on the adjacent Caribou Hills. Burn has traveled to Inuvik, NWT, for 36 summers as part of his research for Carleton University and the Aurora Research Institute (ARI), a new and growing hub of permafrost research in Inuvik for Canadian and global scientists.
After a warm, wet summer two years ago, the tops of many of these hills gave way. There were 87 landslides in one night, a phenomenon that scientists had never before seen in the NWT. No one was hurt in this remote area, but "we have no basis to believe that this will not continue; it won't stop now," Burn warns.
EDIT
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/the-national-permafrost-thaw-inuvik-tuktoyaktuk-1.5179842
