In Tiksi, in Yakutsia (Siberia, Russia), the tundra stretches for several hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. In this landscape of another world, the temperature has increased by several degrees since the 1980s. To get there, you have to spend hours in a strange vehicle, the only way to cross these increasingly impassable areas. “The tundra has also started to subside. These roads we pass through gradually turn into a stream. If the summer is hot, the ground sinks deeper and deeper.”, explains Sergei Botchkariov, the driver of the vehicle.
The fishermen of the Laptev Sea are at the forefront of climate change. The fishing campaign has just started, and it supports the whole village. That day, it was only -8 ° C, a high temperature for the season. In 40 years, the region has lost 20 days of extreme cold, when temperatures are below -10 ° C.
The consequences are felt as far as the North Pole, since the Laptev Sea is like the Arctic ice factory, as meteorologist Alexander Goukov explains: “The ice is constantly drifting north. If it forms here, it is then transported to the Arctic, and even the Atlantic.” In 40 years, the area covered by ice in the Arctic in September has shrunk by 30%, a loss equivalent to three and a half times the area of France.
Russian Meteorological Institute Rosguidromet (data analyzed and compiled by Nikita Tananaev, researcher at the Yakutsk Permafrost Institute).
Laboratory of Climate and Northern Ecosystem Changes, Institute of Natural Sciences, Northeastern Federal University, Yakutsk (Kyunney Kirillina, Nikita Tananaev, JPL NASA)
Zachary Labe, University of Colorado researcher specializing in ocean ice cover modeling.
National Ice and Snow Data Center (USA)
Non-exhaustive list