CRI听力:Alaska Living with Climate Change

Research Engineer Bruno Grunau at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Alaska says people there are witnessing the effect of climate change.

"I would like to see in Paris or what not, the discussion to be surrounded on the impact that climate change has already had. In Alaska, we have thousands and thousands of miles where we show the effects of climate change and how's it's impacted on people and communities. We're seeing it first-hand here in interior Alaska."

About 80 percent of the American state is covered in permafrost, the layer of frozen ice under the ground.

But warmer weather has thawed the permafrost and eroded soils.

This has put homes, roads and pipes there on the brink of sinking.

Experts in Alaska have been helping the authorities find ways to build structures that will survive the increasing temperatures.

Doug Goering, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alaska, says the state transportation department is keen to understand how to minimize the effects of thawing permafrost.

"There's only a few methods out there for really effectively keeping permafrost cool beneath roadways. And two methods that are used here, one involves what are called thermosiphons. And in a fairly new configuration however, and the other involves a couple different kinds of applications of air convection embankments."

Thermosiphons are carbon dioxide-filled steel pipes that are engineered to carry away heat from below the road's surface, to help keep the ground frozen.

The system will operate only in the winter, when the ground is colder than the air.

Research Engineer Bruno Grunau also explains they are experimenting on four homes built on permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, each with a different foundation and cooling system.

"Two of the homes are on standard pilings, steel pilings driven into permafrost, and two of them, we have what is called thermal raft foundation. A thermal raft is basically 12 or 16 inches of foam where the house sits right on the foam. And the idea of the foam is that minimizes the heat that goes into the ground."

In 2012, the United Nations Environment Program released a report warning of the implications of thawing permafrost.

The study shows that a global temperature increase of three degrees Celsius means a six degrees Celsius increase in the Arctic, which could result in between 30 to 85 percent loss of near-surface permafrost.

The U.S. government estimates that some 1 hundred thousand Alaskans live in areas which could be affected by the melting permafrost.

For CRI, this is Fei Fei.