SOURCE: Global News
DATE: January 17, 2019
SNIP: The impact of climate change on roads and other crucial structures in Canada’s North is likely to be even greater than feared, says new detailed research.
Scientists have long warned that Canada’s northwest corner is warming more quickly than almost any other spot on the globe.
Using modelling techniques so detailed they take a supercomputer to process, Pomeroy and his colleagues say they’ve looked more closely than any other researchers into how temperatures are likely to play out over the next century.
They concluded that, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current level, temperatures in the area around Inuvik, N.W.T. will go up by six degrees on top of the three degrees they’ve already risen.
They say roads in winter will be vulnerable to a phenomenon in which melted groundwater seeps to the surface, then refreezes into a thick layer of ice.
Permafrost holding up buildings and roads will melt and retreat by another 25 centimetres.