Climate and permafrost

Abstract Data from Yakutia, Siberia, indicate that permafrost has been generally stable for the last 300,000 years. Historic records indicate climatic variability in the last 150 years and predict that, in comparison with the 1980s, winters will be colder and summers warmer in the early part of the twenty‐first century. Predicted man‐induced climate warming, superimposed upon these natural trends, will offset the winter cooling, while summers will be even warmer. Changes in mean annual air temperatures for the mid twenty‐first century are calculated as being half the sum of the winter and summer temperature changes. Permafrost will be preserved in mountainous regions and in the eastern polar and subarctic plains. In western Siberia and subarctic eastern and southern Siberia considerable permafrost thawing will occur and near‐surface ground temperatures will rise.