Chaim Andersen, infrastructure planning co-ordinator for the Nunatsiavut Government. Photo by Frey Blake-Pijogge
This story was originally published in The Narwhal and appears here with minor style edits.
In central Nunainguk (Nain), the largest community in Nunatsiavut (northern “Labrador”), Joey Angnatok used shipping containers to build his warehouse.
He placed the two sea cans on hefty steel H-beams, leaving some room beneath them, should he need to jack up one end or the other against the sloping, ever-changing ground.
The land under them, he says, is “alive, like it’s always moving.”
Some of the Nunatsiavut region is underlaid with permafrost, a layer of soil, sediment, rock and ice — sometimes all of them together — that remains frozen for more than two years.
Permafrost is ubiquitous across the Arctic and much of the subarctic. Some of the oldest layers are believed to have remained frozen for hundreds of thousands of years.
But despite its longevity in some places, as the climate warms, permafrost thaw is becoming an increasingly inescapable problem.
“I hate it,” Angnatok says, “because I own a few properties around town, and unfortunately the melting of the permafrost is playing havoc with the foundations and movements of the buildings.”
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That’s why he built his warehouse to mitigate the undulating effects of permafrost thaw.
“Because the land was so bad there,” he explains, “I figured we’d try something different instead of your normal ‘pour the concrete down and then build your wood structure on that.’”
Three years after building, he says he’s still holding his breath.
Nunainguk, the administrative capital of Nunatsiavut, is a community at the forefront of change.
What’s happening here is being seen elsewhere in the North, and is predicted to continue as the climate warms — thawing and reshaping the foundations on which communities are built.
As “Canada” eyes expansion and development in the Arctic, thawing permafrost could have a big impact.
Lichens, crowberry and bakeapple thrive on permafrost, offering animals vital food sources — and impacting wildlife as it thaws
A peat plateau near ‘Rigolet, Labrador.’ The slightly raised permafrost is surrounded by wetter peatland.
Photos courtesy Yifeng Wang
Climate change and human activity drive permafrost thaw
In another part of the community, there used to be a convenience store, Puffin Snacks, in which everything — including the building itself — was tilted to one side.
“If you walked into the building, you just started running in,” recalls local resident Michelle Saunders, research manager with the Nunatsiavut Government, “because it was just so sloped.”
Puffin Snacks, too, was built on permafrost.
A study on permafrost in the town, published in 2021, shows that much of the infrastructure across the community has been impacted in some way as the ground shifts and sinks beneath it.
As the climate changes — far faster in the Arctic than elsewhere around the world — permafrost is thawing as temperatures rise.
Robert Way, an associate professor at Queen’s University in the Department of Geography and Planning, is from “Labrador” and is one of the authors of the study on permafrost in the town.
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Spending three to four months each year in “Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador,” he studies the impacts of climate change in the subarctic region.
In addition to climate change, Way says human activities such as construction of buildings and roads can also impact permafrost.
“Building a house over top of permafrost, especially in areas where the permafrost is relatively warmer, often will contribute more heat into the system,” he explains, “and will result in permafrost starting to thaw.”
Additionally, building roads leads to stripping vegetation and piling up snow, which he says can also impact the permafrost underneath.
These changes are on the minds of Saunders and her colleagues, as they manage and facilitate research programs in and with Nunatsiavut communities.
It affects their personal lives too.
Michelle Saunders, a Nunainguk resident and research manager for the Nunatsiavut Government, worries about building a cabin on shifting ground. Photo by Frey Blake-Pijogge
Saunders, who moved to Nunainguk five years ago, is thinking of building a cabin.
But permafrost thaw, she says, is a risk she is considering with each possible location.
“Is this actually a good spot?” she wonders. “Will this cause my cabin to shift over time? And I am not totally sure how to figure that out.”
Because permafrost thaw is a recent phenomenon, she cannot use knowledge from Elders or other knowledge holders to help figure out where to build on lands with no permafrost.
For her and other residents of the community of roughly 1,200 people, the ground shifting under their feet is a reality that can’t be ignored.
“I think it’s something you have to think about now, for sure,” she says.
Michelle Saunders, Nunatsiavut Government‘s research manager. Photo courtesy
Nunatsiavut Government
Permafrost thaw can damage not only infrastructure but also vegetation and wildlife found on top of it.
Across the North, Way says, the permafrost layer can range from a single metre to thousands of metres thick.
If the average year-round temperature in a region is zero degrees or below, Way says, you generally start to encounter permafrost.
“You really start to have a lot of permafrost once you get in the vicinity of Nain, and moving north from there,” Way says.
Way says that with permafrost thaw, change is gradual at first — and then sudden.
“It actually takes a lot of energy to melt that ground ice,” he says. “What you’ll see happen is it’ll take sort of a while before it thaws, maybe numbers of years.
“But then, once it starts to thaw, you start to see the surface usually sinking down.”
With a population of roughly 1,200 mostly Inuit residents, Nunainguk (Nain) is administrative capital of Nunatsiavut — an autonomous region of ‘Labrador’ formally created under the 2005 Labrador Inuit Lands Claims Agreement. Photo by Frey Blake-Pijogge
Permafrost thaw impacts entire natural environment
Nunainguk sits at the edge of the “Labrador Sea,” at a latitude of 57 degrees north — roughly on parallel with “Fort McMurray, Alta.”
It’s surrounded by rocky mountains covered in lichen, capped in snow well into May.
The gravel airstrip hugs the community’s shore, suitable only for a twin otter plane or smaller, with the smell of sea salt wafting up from the sea.
The houses are colourful, standing out against the red, green and white of shrubs and trees, some standing unevenly on sloping ground.
As well as being the largest, Nain is the northernmost community in Nunatsiavut, a 72,520-square-kilometre, Inuit-governed area that includes five communities in total.
The permafrost found here is discontinuous, which means it’s interspersed with patches of unfrozen ground, Way says.
Permafrost is also found in the southern regions of “Labrador,” in high mountains and hills that have blowing wind patterns in winter, and along the south coast in peatland areas.
Way says that in “Labrador,” snow thickness is one of the most important controls on the distribution of permafrost.
Thicker snow insulates the ground, he explains, leading to more peatland permafrost in the most wind-exposed sites where snow is less likely to accumulate.
And it can be found beneath the ocean in shallow waters in the High Arctic, Way adds. There’s a rare patch of more southerly subsea permafrost in “Webb Bay,” north of Nunainguk.
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As permafrost thaws, it releases carbon dioxide and methane, which both themselves contribute to global warming.
Around the world, permafrost stores as much as 1.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide — about three times more than what’s currently found in the atmosphere.
And while permafrost has historically acted as a “carbon sink” — storing massive amounts of carbon from dead plants and decaying organic matter underground — that thaw may turn it into a carbon emitter.
Subsea permafrost thaw beneath coastal waters also releases greenhouse gases.
The warming Arctic Ocean could release up to 250 gigatons of carbon dioxide by the year 2100, estimates the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.
Another estimate, from the European Space Agency Climate Office, predicts that by the end of this century, thawing permafrost will emit more greenhouse gases each year than all of the European Union countries combined, amplifying climate change even more than what it is now.
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Beyond greenhouse gases, permafrost thawing contains other risks. Those include releasing the carcinogen radon, and exposing the remains of humans and animals, which may contain still-active pathogens.
In 2024, a United Nations Environment Program report warned that deadly diseases preserved in permafrost long ago — including smallpox, anthrax, and the 1918 influenza pandemic strain — could threaten human health.
Some of the frozen pathogens, however, could be completely unknown to modern humans and wildlife.
“This phenomenon has already led to the revival of ancient mega-viruses,” the report concluded, with climate change potentially “unleashing a catastrophic global health emergency.”
The residents of Nunainguk (Nain) are seeing the ground beneath their feet shift as the region’s permafrost thaws due to climate change and human activity. But the impacts are also being seen on ocean wildlife, as permafrost on the seabed thaws too. Photo by Frey Blake-Pijogge
Thawing permafrost impacts everyday life
Angnatok is a fisherman in Nunainguk. At the end of every fishing season, he converts his fishing boat into a research vessel.
He has been a part of various research teams, including one studying permafrost thaw, and he’s seen how it plays into everyday life across the region — for better or worse.
He recalls collecting Arctic char from fishermen along the north coast, where they would use snow to keep the fish frozen. When the snow melted, he says, “they would start digging away the ground” to reach the permafrost.
“They would start chopping that ice down and using that to keep their char cold.”
He’s also seen it shift, like near Nunainguk‘s airport building.
“If you dig down, even just three or four inches, you’ll hit solid permafrost,” he notes.
The town’s airstrip is one of many sites listed in the 2021 report as having permafrost underneath.
That report recommended long-term temperature monitoring at depth to study permafrost — and cautioned that any future community expansion and site-selection initiatives will need to factor in permafrost.
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As well as climate change**,** permafrost can also thaw due to human activities, such as building roads or houses, which makes the ground underneath warmer and changes the way the environment is managed.
In much of the Arctic, homes and other buildings are constructed on stilts and piles to keep them from warming the frozen layer of ground below.
Chaim Andersen is the infrastructure planning co-ordinator for the Nunatsiavut Government, and sees the impacts of permafrost thaw in the community.
“It’s a huge problem, especially for housing,” Andersen says, “because obviously we get really cold winters.”
If the ground thaws and shifts, it can damage the housing above it.
“Then there’s opportunities for cracks to be in the wall and for drafts to come through during the winter, which makes it really difficult to heat the home,” she says, adding that the costs of heating are already high in the region.
Andersen’s role includes planning and implementing infrastructure projects, and navigating the community’s housing and infrastructure needs. In the remote community, she says, accessing materials for repairs can be challenging.
“If there are any kind of identified areas in community that have permafrost, there’s kind of two things that happen,” she explains.
“One is either it makes the land difficult to develop on — or you can’t develop it all, because the buildings need to be up to standard and having that foundational instability makes it really difficult.”
The town of was established in 1771 by Moravian missionaries. Today, the Moravian church is one of many buildings in town affected by permafrost thaw and shifting ground. Photo by Frey Blake-Pijogge
Permafrost, land and water: it’s all connected
Yifeng Wang, a scientist for the federal government who researches permafrost, says that thawing conditions can impact other parts of the ecosystem, and vice versa.
“If you have shrubs, they tend to trap the snow in the winter, and that creates a thick, insulating blanket almost over the ground.”
This can cause permafrost to thaw.
Vegetation found on mounds of permafrost in northern “Labrador” includes lichen, and berries such as bakeapples, redberries or blueberries, Wang says.
Animals like caribou, which rely on these plants as food, are impacted by permafrost thaw.
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Angnatok wonders if, under the ocean, the Arctic char habitat around Nunainguk is being affected too.
“The permafrost below the ocean appears to be melting also,” he says, “so therefore the waters are warming during the summer season in the areas.
“What effects is that having on char — or anything else in that area?”
Species that were never found near Nunainguk, such as salmon, are now being observed in the surrounding rivers.
He and other community members wonder if this change could be linked to the permafrost thaw, as well.
As shifting ground becomes more common beneath northern communities, damaging infrastructure and altering the landscape, it’s impacting everything in the ecosystem — including the people who have built their lives on top of it.
The post ‘Foundational instability’: As permafrost thaws, Nunainguk’s ground is shifting beneath its residents’ feet appeared first on Indiginews.
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