aerial view of depression in landscape.

Arctic permafrost is thawing fast. That affects us all.

As the frozen ground warms much faster than expected, it’s reshaping the landscape—and releasing carbon gases that fuel global warming.

The Batagaika crater in eastern Siberia, half a mile wide and growing, is the largest of many across the Arctic. As permafrost laced with buried ice thaws, the ground collapses, forming craters or lakes.
This story appears in the September 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Twigs, other plant matter, and Ice Age animal parts—bison jaws, horse femurs, mammoth bones—spilled onto a beach that sucked at Zimov’s boots. “I love Duvanny Yar,” he said as he yanked fossils from the muck. “It is like a book. Each page is a story about the history of nature.”

Across nine million square miles at the top of the planet, climate change is writing a new chapter. Arctic permafrost isn’t thawing gradually, as scientists once predicted. Geologically speaking, it’s thawing almost overnight. As soils like the ones at Duvanny Yar soften and slump, they’re releasing vestiges of ancient life—and masses of carbon—that have been locked in frozen dirt for millennia. Entering the atmosphere as methane or carbon dioxide, the

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