Hi! My name is Bolot. I am a journalist. Based in Yakutsk. Ask me a question about the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Siberia / Russia, and get the answer.
As you know, Yakutsk, the capital of the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia in Russia’s Siberia, is based on the frozen ground known mostly as the permafrost. What’s that? It means the ground the city stands on is penetrated by ice. Actually, it is the mixture of dust, soil and ice.
See the above video made inside the undeground tunnel used by Yakutsk Permafrost Institute (the only one alike in the wold) and get an idea of what I am trying to tell. In this vid I like most of all those huge frozen snowflakes. If you had be lucky enough to go down inside, please, do not crush snowflakes, as it took decades for them to became so awesome :)
Previously, I wrote much about Yakutsk Permafrost Institute. Read more…
Yakutsk Permafrost Institute with its underground laboratory in the form of tunnel is a sort of a must-to-see sight in the capital of Siberia’s Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). It is the most visited by international guests.
The last year before The Copenhagen Climate Change Summit it became a real Mecca to international journalists, who wanted to know whether the global warming affected the life of the only city in the world, that was entirely built on permafrost.
The Copenhagen Summit made climate changes topical in news. Interesting, but Yakutsk and I felt this fever as well. A couple weeks ago five western journalists arrived in Yakutsk to make reportages about the affects of global warming in Yakutsk. In the summer I helped two photographers Mathias Braschler & Monika Fischer, who searched persons with tumbledown houses for portraits to show in Copenhagen, and Jonathan Watts, a Beijin-based The Guardian correspondent.
Recently I have received similar requests from western journalists. The last one was from the Swedish Aftonbladet newspaper reporter. He asked the following questions and got my replies. Read more…
He wrote “Data from Yakutsk is extremely important, because this is the longest dataset in the Eastern Siberian region, longer than any series in the United States. Yakutsk shows an abnormally high rate of warming since the early 19th century, but what if the official values used by large agencies between 1829 and 1854 are 1.9°c lower than reality?”
In the course of the week received two requests with the same question like “Do you know the contact info of the Yakutsk-based expert, who can give profound information on how climate changes affect melting permafrost.” The first inquiry arrived from two world-known photographers and another from a Swedish journalist. Read more…
