A recent Science news feature brought unprecedented visibility to saline permafrost, highlighting how buried salt layers across Arctic coastlines are thawing at subzero temperatures, deepening lakes, destabilizing coasts, and undermining infrastructure. These findings underscore a central challenge: saline permafrost behaves fundamentally differently from typical permafrost due to freezing-point depression, yet remains poorly mapped and inconsistently defined.
The newly established IPA Saline Permafrost Action Group is uniquely positioned to address these gaps. Led by Benjamin Jones, Roger Creel, Denis Lacelle, Tonghua Wu, and Avirmed Dashtseren, the group brings together >50 international researchers spanning geophysics, geochemistry, geology, geography, engineering, and hydrology. Their work directly responds to the scientific questions elevated in the Science article—including the need to quantify where saline permafrost occurs, how deeply it extends, and how rapidly it is thawing.
The Action Group hopes to unify definitions, standardize measurement protocols, and synthesize global datasets into an open-access geospatial database. Early efforts include compiling core data, coordinating international workshops, and developing a mapping database. As public awareness grows, the Action Group provides the timely, coordinated leadership needed to transform scattered observations into a coherent global understanding of saline permafrost and its role in a rapidly changing Arctic.
Privided by Benjamin M. Jones
Recovering a thawed saline permafrost core with the Big Beaver Earth Drill near Utqiagvik, Alaska.