N.W.T. climate change threats include changing landscape — and a big price tag

If we manage to cap global warming at 1.5 C since pre-industrial times, it'll be several degrees warmer in Canada's North. This is the second instalment of a series that looks at what six degrees of warmth will mean for the N.W.T. Read the first here. 

Lawrence Ruben, of Paulatuk, N.W.T., says up until a few years ago, people from his community could go out on the land by themselves. But now, he says the risk of landslides and flooding means it's not safe. 

"You always have to travel with a partner, with a group," said Ruben, a director on the Inuvialuit Game Council. Travelling alone is "out of the question."

Paulatuk is in the N.W.T.'s Beaufort Delta region where thawing permafrost is triggering landslide activity and jeopardizing buildings and coastal homes in several communities. As the North continues to warm, permafrost experts say the results of its thaw will be varied throughout the territory.

That's because the characteristics of that permafrost — what one scientist refers to as "permafrost personality" — is very different from community to community. So, as it thaws, different things happen in different places.

Permafrost challenges to continue

Stephan Gruber, an environmental studies professor at Carleton University and the Canada Research Chair in permafrost and climate change impacts and adaptation in the North, said we'll see "strong changes" in landscapes if the N.W.T. warms by six degrees. 

Some of them are a continuation of challenges we face now. 

Steve Kokelj, a permafrost scientist with the Northwest Territories Geological Survey (he's the one that talks about permafrost having a personality) says thawing permafrost creates a "mosaic" of changes. 

In the North Slave Region around Yellowknife, for example, Kokelj said permafrost is primarily in low-lying pockets and in bedrock. Thawing bedrock permafrost won't change ecosystems or infrastructure, he said, but you will notice changes in areas where bedrock permafrost transitions to low-lying areas — where melting ice causes the ground to sink. 

"When you're driving [from Yellowknife] to Behchokǫ̀ for example, you'll probably notice the road is OK, and then all of a sudden it's … really undulating," he said.

In the central Mackenzie Valley, Kokelj said peatlands that contain thawing permafrost are turning into wetlands — thereby changing the structure of the forest and the ecosystem. In the western Arctic — like in Paulatuk — there's lots of ice left from the last glaciation, said Kokelj. As that terrain thaws, Kokelj said it's causing landslides which can affect the health of rivers and infrastructure.

It may be tempting to think of permafrost as something that is receding northwards as temperatures rise — but that's a visualization Kokelj and Gruber discourage. Permafrost can be between five metres to hundreds of metres thick, so it'll take different amounts of time to thaw, ranging from decades to centuries. 

There isn't a distinct line across the territory where permafrost ends or begins that slowly moves north. Instead, Gruber described the pattern of permafrost in the N.W.T. as "freckled." 

With six degrees of warming, Gruber said permafrost thaw will cause bigger problems to infrastructure such as roads, airstrips, schools and housing, in the N.W.T. Last summer, the territorial government released a report that assessed climate change risks to public infrastructure in each community. In it, changing permafrost emerges as the most pressing threat.

"At some stage, it will become more and more obvious that we don't have the money to actually do everything," said Gruber. "We will need to prioritize. And I think permafrost thaw will become a more and more prevalent agent in changing people's everyday lives."

Fate of infrastructure depends on adaptation

If the N.W.T. reaches six degrees of warming, a lead researcher with the Climate Institute of Canada says the effect on infrastructure will depend on how we adapt our way of building things.

Powerful storm waves and thawing permafrost are collapsing Tuktoyaktuk's coastline by up to one metre each year — forcing some people, and threatening others, to move their homes to more stable ground. 

In Inuvik, a pool has gone through long-term closures because the shifting ground below it is causing leaks, and a church has had its sinking floor propped up with jacks because it was built decades ago on what is now thawing permafrost. 

Dylan Clark is the lead author of Due North, a report from the Canadian Climate Institute, that looks at the threat of climate change to infrastructure in Canada's North. He says if the N.W.T. doesn't take a proactive approach to adaptation — it stands to spend $75 million dollars per year on damage caused by thawing permafrost alone. 

Infrastructure in the North faces a double threat, he said, because it's been severely under-resourced for decades. 

"There's a strong role for the federal government to ensure that we're both addressing that chronic infrastructure gap and also making sure that we're building more resilient infrastructure so that it can withstand impacts moving forward," he said. 

Flooding and wildfires pose other threats to northern infrastructure that need to be prepared for, said Clark. 

Ice travel becoming limited

The warming temperatures are also shortening the lifespan of ice roads each winter. Clark's report says a quarter of Canada's northern winter roads are found in the N.W.T., and more than half of them could become unusable by 2050. 

As the ice road season shortens — so does the period of time that hunters can safely hunt from the ice in the N.W.T.

"We've had to reset our timing for everything. Char and belugas and caribou and muskox. Every species that we subsist off of," said Ruben. 

From the 70s to the early 2000s, Ruben remembers hunting for geese for a full month every spring, sometime between late April and the first week of June. Now, he said the ice and snow melt quickly — making it harder to travel to harvesting sites and widening the area where water fowl eat, making them harder to hunt. 

Now, Ruben said the season usually ends in the second week of May. 

"We've had to learn how to, you know, harvest during a short period of time for geese," he said. 

Ruben said his community of about 340 people is doing what they can to try and stop climate change — but it's just a "tiny drop" in an ocean-sized bucket. 

"Why can't the world … make decisions to mitigate climate change?" he asked. 

"What's at stake, not only for myself individually but for our community at large, is our traditional way of living … our daily, weekly, monthly, yearly activities will have to change."