Building of a radio-station, Morzhovets Island in the White Sea. Picture: Alexander Oboimov

The evidence is graphic and startling.

The Siberian Times teamed up with some of Russia's leading Arctic experts to highlight the changes underway as warmer air and sea temperatures change the face of the extreme north.

In the seas off the long polar coastline of Siberia, thawing permafrost on some of the world's most remote islands, as well as on the mainland shores, is being overrun at a dramatic rate - retreating as much as dozens of metres a year.

In the coming decades and centuries, at this rate, a number of islands will vanish altogether, say scientists.

In the seas off the long polar coastline of Siberia, thawing permafrost on some of the world's most remote islands, as well as on the mainland shores, is being overrun at a dramatic rate. Picture: The Siberian Times

Among the examples from thousands of kilometres across the Russian Arctic:

* a disused meteorological station on Vize (Wiese) Island is falling into the Kara Sea because the coastline has retreated by 74 metres in seven years: an earlier picture, in snow, shows the a building on the edge of the cliff, but in latest images, it has collapsed down the cliff;

* the tundra cliffs of the New Siberian Islands are seen collapsing into Arctic Waters amid predictions that this entire archipelago, with a land mass larger than Albania or Haiti, could be washed away if the process accelerates. One picture highlights a navigation warning sign toppling down a cliff;

* recent pictures from August 2016 from Viktor Nikiforov, coordinator of the sea animals programme of the Marine Mammal Council, show a scientific outpost on atoll-shaped Uyedineniya - or Solitude - Island in the Kara Sea in dire jeopardy of collapse as it is ravaged by encroaching waters;

* a meteorological station on the Yamal peninsula was built some 300 metres from the sea in 1952: now it is perilously close, some 40 metres, from the relentless retreat of the cliffs;

* a lighthouse on the Abramovsky shoreline lurches ominously as once-solid permafrost crumbles beneath it;

* coastal erosion speeded by climate change is eating away at Morzhovets island in the White Sea (pictured above), leaving its meteorological station on the brink.



New Siberian Islands, North of the East Siberian coast betwen the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of Sakha Republic. Pictures: Alexander Oboimov

Collapsing shores

Aleksander Oboimov, a member of Russian Geographical Society, said starkly: 'The Yamal [shore] is basically collapsing, by quite a few kilometres every year. Changes are the most evident in Yakutia (Sakha Republic), the New Siberian (Novosibirsk) Islands, Morzhovets island and the Abramovsky bereg (shore).

'Of course, global warming and melting ice play a huge role in that. These islands are mainly alluvial and with melting ice, the soil is vanishing too.

'There are already a few islands in the New Siberian archipelago that no longer exist, such as Vasiliyevsky.'

These vanished in the 19th or 20th century, showing a long-term process is underway here, something more than a very recent global warming phenomenon, but the fear is that it is now significantly speeding up.

To many, the warming Arctic is no bad thing: Russia is actively seeking to develop the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Europe, which is possible now because of a longer ice-free season in the summer months. The exploitation of gas fields - and various mineral riches - beneath the Arctic is also arguably made easier.

Yet there are enormous environmental implications, too, including the huge release of greenhouses gases in the thawing tundra, and the gargantuan impact on all kinds of wildlife.



Lighthouse at the Abramovsky shore, the White sea, and Great (Bolshoy) Lyakhovsky Island, the largest in the group of islands belonging to the New Siberian Archipelago between the Laptev Sea and The New Siberian Sea. Pictures: Alexander Oboimov

Konstantin Zaytsev, vice president of Polar Association, who has studied the retreat of the New Siberian Islands, said: 'Erosion is happening because the soil and permafrost are layered there. Thawing of the permafrost causes landslides, the soil starts to sag gradually and it all collapses.

'These rocks drop to the sea, they are washed out. Gradually we are losing land, the territory of the island is decreasing.'

Oboimov, has highlighted the problems on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky, or Great Lyakhovsky, the largest of the Lyakhovsky islands belonging to the New Siberian archipelago, between the Laptev and East Siberian seas.

'Solar radiation, currents, waves, rain and wind are actively destroying ice shores,' he said. 'The speed of the disappearing shore is up to over 30 metres a year, and five metres a year on average.'

The way he describes it, the island has a doomsday feeling to it, as if it has been hit by a natural catastrophe.

'It is getting smaller each year. There are vanishing shores, with cracks appearing that you can't jump over. Rocks dozens of metres in diameter lie at the foot of cliffs.

'The way it looks makes you think of a catastrophic natural phenomena - earthquakes, perhaps. It is hard to believe that it was all caused by gradual silent thawing of ice caused by solar heat.'



Vise (Wiese) Island. Pictures: Alexander Oboimov, Ivan Mizin/WWF Russia

Yet it is also plainly a process that has been underway over a much longer period. For example, in 1815 two islands were discovered in the Laptev Sea, named Vasiliyevsky and Semyonovsky, both formed of loess soil - undersoil ice, covered by silt and tundra.

In 1823, a lieutenant who was doing a shoreline survey described Vasiliyevsky as 7.4 kilometres long and a quarter of a kilometre wide. The Northern Hydrographic Expedition in 1912 measured Vasiliyevsky island and discovered that it was only 4.6 km long.

By 1936, hydrographers couldn't find the island: the sea was reported to have 'eaten it'.

Many experts see the New Siberian Islands as especially vulnerable, yet they are not alone.

An aerial picture shows a similar process at work far to the west at lake-pocked Morzhovets, where the former coastline is visible in the blue-tinged sea.



Morzhovets Island, with the former coastline still visible underwater. Picture: Alexander Oboimov

Doomed islands

Oboimov said: 'The first lighthouse was built back in 1841, at the north-western end of the island, 576 metres from the edge of the shore cliff. By 1857, the distance between the lighthouse and and the cliff decreased to 202 metres, and by 1865 to 65 metres.

'Construction work to build the second lighthouse started in 1869, this time 790 metres away from the shore. In 1882 the distance between the lighthouse and the shore dropped to 277 metres, which means the north-western part of the island was vanishing at 43 metres per year over the previous 12 years.'

Hydrographers predict this island, like others, is doomed in the coming centuries yet the trend shows that the dramatic erosion is not new.

An old map - pictured here - dating from 1890 depicts small Arctic islands in the Laptev Sea that completely disappeared during the 20th century.



Vanished islands marked on the map, and coastline of Vize island. Pictures: Alexander Oboimov

The lonely Vize island - also known as Wiese island - shows credible evidence of a significant speeding of this process. Glaciologist Dr Alexander Aleinikov compared the coastline here between 2009 and this year.

'The shores of the Vize Island were collapsing earlier too,' he said. 'It is a natural process; however, if back in the 1950s polar experts reported (a retreat of) about 1.5 metres per year, according to satellite images taken from 2009 to 2016, the shore has stepped back by 74 metres at this place.

'The speed has increased significantly.'

Oksana Lipka, coordinator of WWF's climate and energy programme, said: 'It was earlier believed that the fastest pace of shore erosion in Russia - and the world - was in the New Siberian Islands that 'step back' by 5-to-15 metres a year, sometimes by 20 metres after a strong storm.

'It is likely that the pace of shore erosion is even higher (on Vize).'

It was urgent to continue monitoring, she said.

In the pictures from Vize, the rapid changes leading to this house being on the cliff edge are seen as being caused by a marked speeding of erosion of the permafrost shore by waves. Previously, the sea was frozen for a much longer period during the year, so the waves had limited power in battering the coast.

The melting of the sea ice means the coastal permafrost, weakened by warmer temperatures, faces more forceful waves in a double whammy.

The energy of wave impact directly depends on number of summer days when there is so-called open water around the island - without ice.



Kotelny island, part of the Anzhu Islands subgroup of the New Siberian Islands, between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. Picture: Maxim Avdeev

Analysis of Landsat satellite images over recent years shows the open water period has increased because of global warming. For example, a satellite image taken on 15 July 2016 shows there is absolutely no ice in the water area around Vize island.

The increase in temperature of the air and the sea's surface, along with the reduction of ice and extension of the time the water is 'open' and 'the results of climate change in northern longitudes', says WWF.

'Remarkably, the temperature in the Arctic is rising twice as fast as anywhere on the planet.'

A problem for scientists in making comparisons is that much Arctic research halted with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is only now getting back to full scale.

A series of vivid pictures was supplied by Mikhail Grigoriev, deputy director of the Permafrost Studies Institute, Yakutsk, who has studied the impact of the changing climatic conditions on the East Siberian Sea.

Already in 2009, there had been a loss of 10 square kilometres of coastline, he reported. The fastest retreating are icy sea shores. The speed of destruction of shores that contain ice is between five and seven times higher than areas with less ice.



Marked are key areas of coastal erosion 1982-2009 observations in the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea. Pictures: Mikhail Grigoryev

During recent years, a key monitored area showed a rapid increase of thermal abrasive shore destruction. The speed of their retreat grew by up to two times in several areas above the annual mean.

These changes are linked to increasing air temperature in the area and rising storm activity due to reduced area of pack ice in the Arctic. Dr Grigoriev has also warned that this year the depth of permafrost thaw in Yakutia - usually between 30 and 60 centimetres - has exceeded one metre.

One study on the Bykovsky Peninsula, located north-east of the harbour town of Tiksi, in Sakha Republic, found that between 1951 and 2006 total coastal erosion ranged from 434 metres, while accretion ranged from 92 metres over the same period.

So the net erosion in a relatively sheltered location was 342 metres.

'Coastal erosion in the Arctic differs from its counterpart in temperate regions due to the short open-water season (3-4 months) and to the presence of ice in the marine and terrestrial environments (that is, permafrost and ground ice).

'Despite these restrictions, Arctic coastal erosion rates compare with temperate coastal erosion and lead to the release of vast quantities of terrestrial organic carbon and contaminants to the Arctic Ocean,' stated this study.



Uyedineniya - or Solitude - Island in the Kara Sea. Pictures: Viktor Nikiforov

Of the top ten sea areas with the greatest coastal erosion, six are in the Arctic waters above Siberia.

'Four are located in the Laptev Sea sector, three in the US Beaufort Sea, two in the East Siberian Sea and one in the Canadian Beaufort Sea,' said Dr Irina Streletskaya, docent of the Faculty of Cryolitology and Glaciology, at Moscow State University.

'One of the driving forces behind a potential increase in erosion is the lengthening of the open-water season, which is thought to have a much greater impact on the coasts than the increased fetch associated with disappearing sea ice.'

She added: 'Arctic coastlines are likely to undergo dramatic changes in a warming climate, affecting both biophysical and human systems, with countless impacts ranging from threats to infrastructure to changing biological environments affecting wildlife.

'Erosion is responsible for substantial fluxes of carbon and probably contaminants to the marine environment, which in turn can potentially alter the near-shore carbon cycle and affect several trophic levels.

'The dynamic nature of coastal erosion and its coupling with climate variables could thereby result in increasing fluxes of sediment from the coast.'



Leaning 'Vankin' navigation signal (now collapsed), the East-Siberian Sea, and shores of Yamal peninsula around Marresalya polar station. Pictures: Mikhail Grigoriyev, Alexander Oboimov

Dr Ivan Mizin, senior expert at the WWF's Barents Sea office, said: 'Sea islands that are altering both because of human influence and climate change require careful attention of researchers.'

He warned: 'Vize Island needs protection first of all as a year-round habitat of Polar bears, Atlantic walrus, and Ivory gull. It is located on the border of two seas and joins the population of these rare species.

'We need to understand if reduction of the size of the island will affect these species and to what extent. To do that, it is desirable to limit human impact to the already existing Polar meteorological station and obtain reserve status (for the island).'

With an expected large increase in commercial shipping using the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Europe - along the Russian coastline - he said it was important to 'preserve the most precious natural territories that will play an important role in maintaining biological diversity of the Kara sea during its commercial exploration'.