The village that is being destroyed by global warming

ROBERT PIGOTT:
Winter has come late once again to America's arctic North. Only now, in November, is ice starting to clog Alaska's shore. Beyond the beach, the narrow strip of water dividing Alaska from Siberia remains unusually clear. Alaska's average temperature is rising almost ten times faster than elsewhere in the world. Global warming is blighting the landscape and ecosystems of Alaska at frightening speed. In Shishmaref, an Eskimo village on the edge of the arctic circle, people's homes are in jeopardy. As the icy ground thaws, sea level rises and climate change brings more destructive storms, Shishmaref's narrow island is being destroyed rapidly. It means that an island village that's been here 4,000 years must be physically moved, house by house, to the safety of higher ground. For more than a decade, the land around Shishmaref has been warming. The thaw threatens not only the village's buildings, but also the people's fragile way of life. Herbert Nayokpuk's family needs to hunt animals like moose and caribou for its living. By early November hunters should be travelling over the ice with huskies or fishing in local rivers. But each year, they are having to wait longer.

HERBERT NAYOKPUK:
Shishmaref Village Elder
There have been a lot of changes in the past 20 years. Back in my younger days we could take our dog teams across the inlet about this time of year, but now there's nothing but water. The climate's getting warmer.

PIGOTT:
One end of Shishmaref has already been eaten away. Another five feet disappeared in a single storm last month. 13 houses have had to be moved from the water's edge. The US army plans to lift the other buildings onto sleds and drag them five miles to the mainland. The advancing sea is now threatening the village store.

PERCY NAYOKPUK:
Shishmaref Storekeeper
We need to store fuel for the winter and I have six tanks down by the beach. They used to be about 1,500 feet from the water. They're now less than 40 feet from the edge so there is a real threat of fuel spilling and we're trying hard to prevent that.

PIGOTT:
Almost all Alaska is covered by a layer of permanently frozen ground. But this permafrost is thawing in the higher temperatures, steadily destroying millions of acres of spruce and birch trees, and with it the habitat for much of the state's wildlife. I travelled to central Alaska with scientists who're working in part of the forest that's turning into a watery fen land. Tanana Valley was once covered with birch trees. If the warmer climate persists, they are all expected to be dead by the end of the century, unable to survive in standing water.

DR VLADIMIR ROMANOVSKI:
University of Alaska in Fairbanks
The permafrost contains lots of ice, sometimes up to 70% or more. When it melts, water can run away, creating some empty space on the ground surface. This empty space eventually collapses. This process can destroy the forest completely, replacing it with wetlands or bogs or marshes.

PIGOTT:
Scientists from the University of Alaska have monitored the rising temperature of the permafrost in the Tanana Valley. Much of it is, they say, barely freezing. Holes up to 15 feet deep are opening in the ground, creating "drunken forests" of leaning trees. It's not just Alaska's huge forests that are drowning as they sink into the swamps created by this thaw. Forests on once frozen ground across vast tracts of Canada, Russia and northern Europe are also in jeopardy. As they're destroyed, the damage goes beyond devastated landscapes and ecosystems. These dying forests are feeding the process of global warming through a vicious cycle. Rotting trees produce millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, and of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases of all.

DR GLENN JUDAY:
University of Alaska in Fairbanks
These forests are one of the world's major storehouses of carbon, in the form of the plants themselves and litter and forest material stored in the soils. The climate warming has the effect of causing much of this carbon to go back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, contributing to the warming, so it's a positive feedback mechanism, the more it warms, the more these processes are putting more carbon back into the atmosphere.

PIGOTT:
It's possible to get an idea of the volume of ice and vegetation frozen in the ground at a United States army site near Fairbanks. It was part of a project carried out during the Cold War, designed to see how easily permafrost could be excavated.

DR JOHN ZARLING:
Zarling Engineering
This tunnel is somewhat of a time machine. The area we're in now, some of the materials found were carbon dated back to 11,000 years ago.

PIGOTT:
The permafrost tunnel is festooned with roots, wood and animal bones. As it goes deeper, the wedges of ice trapped in the soil become progressively older. All over Alaska, such ancient underground ice is melting, with dramatic consequences.

ZARLING:
The climatic warming of the permafrost is a major impact to what Alaska might look like in centuries to come. The melting of the ice is going to result in considerable settlement and sinking at various areas.

PIGOTT:
On the surface, ice is disappearing even faster. On average, Alaskan glaciers have been losing 15% of their length every decade. The Byron Glacier is in rapid retreat, melting more quickly than it can form new ice. Water, locked up for centuries in glaciers and ice caps, is being added to the rising sea level. As the climate warms, this once changeless icy wilderness is being steadily degraded. The United Nation's panel on climate change says the average global temperature could increase by as much as six degrees centigrade by the end of the century. Global warming seems to be most potent nearest the poles. In Shishmaref, isolated in the tundra on the edge of North America, it threatens to transform wildlife and destroy the native way of life. Shishmaref is already under pressure. The village's tannery relies on the hunting of animals such as seals. They're becoming harder to find as sea ice diminishes. The population of the village has grown rapidly in recent years. But there's little employment. The tannery is Shishmaref's biggest employer, but it has room for only a dozen of the villagers. The people are gradually coming to terms with a future elsewhere. Some older people don't want to go. Others fear that the advancing sea will overtake the evacuation.

MINA NAYOKPUK:
It would be nice to move, not very far from here, but safety is our main concern now. We need to go where it's safe.

REPORTER:
Some people would be reluctant to leave such an old village.

MINA NAYOKPUK:
Yes, that's true, especially for the elders but the younger ones, I feel, for instance my children, they need to be able to live where it's safe for them and go on with their education and careers.

PIGOTT:
Some in Shishmaref see the abandonment of their village as a lesson in the folly of adding so recklessly to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So far this is one of only two American villages which must be sacrificed to the increasingly brutal climate. But if, in the next two weeks, no way is found to curb the burning of fossil fuels, myriad other communities in much poorer countries are likely to go the same way.