Home – Home – Jornals – Earth’s Cryosphere 2025 number 1

In the Arctic zone, the current rise in air temperatures is much faster than in the central part of Russia. This leads to an increase in the temperature of frozen ground of the foundations of buildings and engineering structures, a decrease in their bearing capacity, and an increasing risk of their destruction. At the same time, the temperature regime of frozen ground in the city depends on many factors (microclimatic features, composition and properties of soils, technogenic influence, maintenance practices). In 2022, as part of the program to create an element of a unified system for monitoring the state of permafrost in the municipality of the city of Norilsk and the Taimyr Dolgano-Nenets municipal district, the Polar Division of PJSC MMC Norilsk Nickel began a program for constructing deep boreholes in the territory of the company’s responsibility both in the natural environment (as part of the background permafrost monitoring) and the city. This article aims to assess the dynamics of the temperature regime of permafrost in the center of Norilsk. Archival materials (since 1959) and the results of geotechnical surveys conducted in Norilsk to study the geological structure, composition, and properties of frozen rocks have been analyzed, and monitoring measurements in a new thermometric borehole drilled to replace the previous one, have begun. The data obtained indicate a significant change in the geocryological conditions in the city. Over the past 65 years (from 1959 to 2024), the ground temperature at a depth of 10 m in the area of the deep thermometric borehole increased by 4.3 °C. Significant temperature fluctuations have been recorded down to a depth of 90 meters, and further down the section to a depth of 200 meters the temperature has changed by an average of 0.3 °C.