Episode 2: A Thawing Habitat

This episode explores new science which reveals how global warming may result in Siberia becoming more habitable during the 21^st century.

Read this episode’s science poem

Your barren canvas stretches
Tightly across forgotten states;
Caught between unforgiving waves
And starry mountain peaks,
Your pulse beats unhurriedly
In this hibernation of solitude.

Permafrost litters your landscape:
Continuous,
Discontinuous,
Sporadic.
Its frozen core
A hard border to
Fertile soils and
Future disturbance.
But as the ice begins to melt
These borders shift;
Ancient ley lines retreating
North,
Cutting new paths
Across a scenery
That will no longer
Be forgotten.

This poem is inspired by recent research, which has found that climate change could make Siberia more habitable by the end of the twenty-first century.

By Dr Sam Illingworth

The original episode appeared here.

Go back to The Poetry of Science

Featured image credit: The far East of Siberia somewhere along the north shore of the Sea of Okhotsk - CC BY-SA 2.0 by David Baron