Climate Change Concerns Arctic Coastal Community

Parts of Tuktoyaktuk, a hamlet in the northwest corner of the Northwest Territories, were under sea water last summer. In addition, flooding is becoming an annual occurrence, the community's mayor said.

The people who live along the coast of the Beaufort Sea have heard scientists warning that rising seas and melting permafrost could erode away at their communities. What's more they may have experienced this erosion first hand as parts of Tuktoyaktuk, a hamlet in the northwest corner of the Northwest Territories, were under sea water last summer. Ina addition, flooding is becoming an annual occurrence, the community's mayor said. "This place fills up with water just about all the time. Every year you can expect it two or three times to be flooded," Mayor Mervin Gruben said. "You can't drive from here to the other side because all this will be flooded here. That gravel pile was an island. Our swimming pool, that was an island. All this was just covered in water here." The mayor has noticed the warmer-than-usual weather in recent years, and is worried that climate change will lead to rising sea water and more storm surges. "We used to have houses all over.... There was even actually a lake, from what the elders tell me," he said. "That's not very long; maybe 50, 60 years ago," he added. "This is all gone." Herschel Island is just off the northern coast of neighbouring Yukon and is the site of a territorial park and a traditional whaling community.This community has also seen shoreline erosion recently. The island's airport runway has been washed out by strong winds on several occasions; making it inaccessible. "The factors which influence erosion are getting worse.... There's going to be more open water, there's going to be open water for longer periods of time," said Steve Solomon, a coastal geologist with Natural Resources Canada. "The land is going down, the sea level is rising. In the long term, that's not a very healthy scenario." Tuktoyaktuk is built on permafrost; this means the sea can expose, erode and melt that permafrost over time. "One of the key issues for this community is what happens if permafrost warms by, say, 2 C?" said Scott Dallimore, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. "What will that temperature change mean to the stability of this deeper, frozen permafrost, but also the surface layer and its impact on degrading permafrost at the coastline?" "It's just melting, and our roads are sinking below ground level, disappearing into the tundra," he said. "The graveyard is shifting." Gruben does not like to think about what Tuktoyaktuk will lose in the next 50 to 100 years. However, his council has started forcing new construction in the community to go further inland.