At a Glance

Landslides caused by melting permafrost have increased on Canada's Banks Island. The landslides, or thaw slumps, have increased from 60 active slides to more than 4,000 in three decades. The researchers say that number could increase by up to 10,000 per decade in years to come.

Warming ground temperatures are melting the permafrost in the Arctic, exponentially increasing the number of landslides, a new study says.

A pair of Canadian researchers from the University of Ottawa say thaw slumps, or landslides caused by the melting of ice in the permafrost, have increased on the Northwest Territory's Banks Island from about 60 active slumps in 1984 to more than 4,000 in 2013.

"Overall, the is now equivalent to that of the Island of Manhattan," the researchers noted in a press release.

Antoni Lewkowicz, a professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Ottawa, and his colleague, Robert Way, used satellite images from the Google Earth Engine Timelapse dataset to record the sixtyfold increase in thaw slumps on the 27,000-square-mile island that is home to the indigenous Inuvialuit community.

Their analysis published this week in the journal Nature showed that formed after particularly hot summers in 1998, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The excessive heat caused the top layer of the permafrost, once thought relatively immune to climate change, to thaw, resulting in active landslides.

"Other studies from smaller areas of Banks Island had shown that were increasing and Inuvialuit had reported seeing more slumps and exposed ground ice. We looked at the entire island and were truly staggered by the scale of the change," Lewkowicz told Newsweek.

"We could also see that the northern part of the island was not affected much in 1998 when it was not particularly warm there, but was affected more in the later years when it was much warmer probably because there was less sea ice in the Northwest Passage by then. This implies that other permafrost areas with lots of ground ice may be affected in the future as they warm up."

The researchers say with increasing temperatures, there could be up to 10,000 new slumps per decade on Banks Island alone.

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Sediment from the landslides affect rivers and lakes on the island, disturbing ecosystems for extended periods of time and making fishing harder for the Inuvialuit community.

“The Inuvialuit who live in Sachs Harbour on Banks Island have reported that it is harder to get around the island now for hunting and fishing because of the number of thaw slumps," Lewkowicz told Newsweek.

The slumps also release frozen organic material that breaks down into carbon dioxide or methane, which increases greenhouse gas emissions that produces further global warming.

"We cannot stop thousands of thaw slumps once they start. We can only make changes in our own lives to reduce our carbon footprint and we can encourage our politicians to take the necessary measures to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,"Lewkowicz said in the press release. "So that future warming is as limited as possible."