Permafrost Thaw
A carbon store twice the size of the atmosphere is beginning to release.
Severity score
40.5
Serious · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Arctic permafrost contains enormous quantities of frozen organic carbon. As it thaws it emits carbon dioxide and methane, adding warming that is not accounted for in most emissions budgets. It also destroys infrastructure across northern Russia, Canada and Alaska.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
6Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
30People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
42Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
96Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
84Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.