Global warming should be good for Russia

[Jaga]

Hello Guys,

just yesterday the newspaper were saying that the big chunk of the ice separated somewhere in Northern Canada from the North Pole icecap and it is flowing away.

Don't you think that the global warming would be actually good for Russia? It would warm up big territories which are around the Northern Poland circle and it would warm up the ports in the North and they would be able to operate for much more time than before

[pieter]

Russia might become rich, because it gains more land for natural resources, new settlement area's
and the expantion of agriculture and the food industries!

[Eric]

Aside from the flooding that global warming would bring (wiping out Russia's coastal cities), there's another danger not many people realize. A lot of Russian territory is covered by permafrost. Whole cities are built, in fact, on this permafrost.

If the permafrost melts, whole cities will fall down, and the results would be catastrophic.

[Jaga]

Eric,

which cities? Probably it would be easier to rebuilt it. You cannot built really solid constructions on permafrost. Yes, I understand that some land would be flooded but Russia's territory is still the biggest in the world!

[Eric]

Many Siberian cities are partially or wholly built on permafrost. If buildings were built normally on permafrost, the heat generated by the building would melt the permafrost and cause the building to collapse - this happened at the beginning of construction on permafrost before all the effects were known. These days, buildings built on permafrost are left with 1-2 stories of empty space at the ground level, allowing air to circulate and keep the permafrost frozen.

There are already some permafrost cities that have some warping or other deformation taking place in the buildings due to warming of the permafrost on which the buildings are built.

Yes, a city CAN be rebuilt. However, this is an EXTREMELY expensive undertaking with an enormous disruption to human life. In the former USSR, for example, Tashkent was totally rebuilt in 1966 after the earthquake. However, this was done with manpower and technical means from all USSR republics and Warsaw Pact countries. Russia today would not have this luxury, and the strain on the economy, industry, and population would be even greater. Leninakan in Armenia, for example, suffered a catastrophic earthquake in 1988, shortly before the end of the USSR, and to this day, due to lack of money and resources, the city has not been fully rebuilt. Before the earthquake, it was the 2nd largest city in Armenia.

[bescheid]

ericdn said:

Many Siberian cities are partially or wholly built on permafrost. If buildings were built normally on permafrost, the heat generated by the building would melt the permafrost and cause the building to collapse - this happened at the beginning of construction on permafrost before all the effects were known. These days, buildings built on permafrost are left with 1-2 stories of empty space at the ground level, allowing air to circulate and keep the permafrost frozen.

There are already some permafrost cities that have some warping or other deformation taking place in the buildings due to warming of the permafrost on which the buildings are built.

Yes, a city CAN be rebuilt. However, this is an EXTREMELY expensive undertaking with an enormous disruption to human life. In the former USSR, for example, Tashkent was totally rebuilt in 1966 after the earthquake. However, this was done with manpower and technical means from all USSR republics and Warsaw Pact countries. Russia today would not have this luxury, and the strain on the economy, industry, and population would be even greater. Leninakan in Armenia, for example, suffered a catastrophic earthquake in 1988, shortly before the end of the USSR, and to this day, due to lack of money and resources, the city has not been fully rebuilt. Before the earthquake, it was the 2nd largest city in Armenia.

Some years back, this was a construction problem in Northern Canada in the NW territories/Yukon and the Arctic regions for permanent buildings.{kai would be more knowledgeable}. As you say, the permafrost will melt from the lower heat of buildings destroying the foundation structure.

There, they used several techniques. One technique for permanent buildings, was to first core drill through the subsurface to below the permafrost, pilings then were driven in as a support for the structure to rest upon. After the surface material was removed, gravel was poured over the permafrost to protect it from melting.

For unheated storage buildings, there was what is called {floating foundation} these were lengths of treated timber placed out over the permafrost with open ends for air circulation. The storage buildings were then built over this.

As a technique, building the building 1 and 2 stories above ground level is a solution to the permafrost problem.

I would well imagine the Russian engineers have these construction techniques down to a science with their experience in Arctic climate construction.

Charles

[Eric]

I'm certainly not a geologic expert, and I'm sure conditions between Siberia and Canada must have their differences, but...

It seems as if constructing buildings on "pillars", leaving 1-2 stories empty at the ground level to allow for air circulation, has had the best effect. However, smaller buildings on permafrost are sometimes built directly onto the permafrost, and it is these buildings that are showing signs of deformation when the permafrost melts.

The USSR spent decades modernizing existing Siberian cities and constructing brand-new cities. It really was a trial-and-error process, since no construction of this kind had ever been undertaken before. However, considering the enormous population growth in Siberia in the second half of the 20th century, enough practice was obtained to be successful in this field of construction.

Also, remember that many buildings have to endure enormous temperature differences. Not all of Siberia is cold all the time; many places in Siberia have not only winters far colder than most inhabited regions on the planet, but also have extremely hot (though brief) summers. So, construction materials must be made to withstand such dramatic changes in temperature over the course of a year.

Certainly, Russia, Canada, Scandinavian countries, and Greenland can most benefit from continuing to develop Arctic-style construction techniques. Hopefully, these will someday transfer themselves to creating more elaborate buildings in Antarctica, which can be used for more advanced scientific purposes.

In the late 1970s, National Geographic published a book called "Inside Russia: The Soviet Union Today", which describes in some detail the special construction techniques used in Siberian cities, and the book also includes photos. If you can get a copy of it (believe it or not, the book is even in the Billerica, Massachusetts library, so it CAN be found!), I'd recommend reading it. It's perhaps the best American book I've ever seen on life in the Soviet Union, because it focuses on just that - life, not on petty Cold War politics.

[Jaga]

Eric,

I am not completely unaware of problems of teh far North. I read the book of Kapuscinski about Russia. He explains how people live in hard conditions in the North Siberia. But the settlements he discribed (with all the details how it partally melts etc) are mainly for small settlements and mining centers which as far as I know are partly abandoned now. Yes, of course I heard about the town Norylsk etc..... although I never was there.
I was in the far North of Norway but the climate there is different, milder than in Siberia.

Kapuscinski describes that when children go to school in the mornings and it is really really cold.... they form the type of corridors in the foggy air... so that they can actually see the shades left by other people (teachers and kids) walking to school. If the shadow finish suddenly.... that means that it was a drunkman walking and he felt down.....

Interesting to know about the book. I am glad that Charles could add also many interesting info for this discussion.