Thawing Permafrost Dots Siberia With Rash Of Mounds

Churapcha, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Apr, 2025) In the vast white expanse around Churapcha in eastern Siberia, the ever more rapid thaw of the permafrost is changing the landscape, cracking up houses and releasing greenhouse gases.

A growing number of little mounds are appearing across the region of Yakutia in the Russian Far East.

Known as "bylars" in the Yakut language, the tiny hillocks are no more than a metre high and have an almost regular polygonal shape.

"The peaks of these formations are stable. It is the space between the mounds that is sinking," said Nikita Tananayev, director of the climate laboratory at the Federal Northeastern University in the regional capital Yakutsk.

"With climate change, the ice is melting faster," he told AFP.

The mounds' distinctive shape is due to the fact that the underground ice that is melting is shaped in polygons.

Permafrost is a layer of soil that is never supposed to thaw and covers around 65 percent of Russia's territory.

- Record mild weather -

The distinctive mounds have even been appearing in urban areas in Yakutia.

In the town of Churapcha, around 135 kilometres from Yakutsk, the land Innokenty Poselsky bought last year to build a house has around 20 mounds.

"About 40 years ago, there was an airstrip here and the land used to be quite flat," the 34-year-old said.

"Over the last four decades, the landscape has become pockmarked. It's like that everywhere here," he said.

Poselsky said he has only managed to level around half of the land. His house is built on piles deeply embedded in the permafrost -- like all the buildings in the region.

The thaw is having a visible effect on residential and commercial property -- the walls of some buildings are subsiding and cracking.

"Over 40 percent" of buildings on permafrost are affected by thawing, Mikhail Kuznetsov, head of the federal agency for development of the Russian Far East, said last year.

Tananayev said rising temperatures were to blame.

Temperatures have gone up by "1.5 degrees Celsius in the last 30 years" in Yakutia and "up to two degrees in some areas", he added.

The numbers chime with data from global observatories using ice cores that show the last two years -- 2023 and 2024 -- were the hottest on Earth for more than 120,000 years.

Global warming is largely caused by fossil fuel consumption and Russia is the world's fifth biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases.