We travelled to Fairbanks, Alaska this past winter to scout locations for some of our time lapse cameras. Fairbanks is Alaska’s second-largest city and is located in the sub-Arctic interior region. Much of the city and the surrounding area are characterized by permanently frozen ground (permafrost). Rising temperatures are already degrading this permafrost, damaging forests as well as roads, buildings, and other infrastructure.

We visited in the mid-winter and temperatures were consistently below zero (F). Despite the cold, the impact of climate change was still visible. We found areas of 'drunken forests' where trees with roots normally firmly rooted in the permafrost are now falling over on each other……

….and houses buckling as the permafrost melts below their foundations.

In addition to trees and structures collapsing above melting permafrost, the issue is also an alarming example of a positive climate change feedback loop. Since the ground cannot firmly hold the trees roots, they collapse and die and are no longer able to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Additionally, since the permafrost stores one of the largest natural reservoirs of organic carbon in the world in its frozen soils, its thawing can release stored carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere causing further warming, that causes more permafrost melt, that causes more carbon release, that causes more warming and so on and so on.

This is John, a local that we met. He told us that noticeable changes were happening at an increasing pace in and around Fairbanks, including animal migration displacement, infrastructure collapse due to permafrost melt and an earlier onset of ‘break up’ season where snow and ice melts during spring.

We plan to return to Fairbanks to deploy time lapse cameras to capture these changes as they happen. To help fund our mission and the creation of beautiful video highlighting the impact of rarely before seen climate change processes, click here to donate.