Speaking during a roundtable in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, Ruslan Tsalikov said over a quarter of housing in north Russia could be destroyed along with local airports, underground storage facilities, including oil reservoirs, if Siberia's huge permafrost started to melt further.

"If the annual temperature rises by one or two degrees...the permafrost coul

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d decrease 50%," the official said, adding that the "risk of flooding would also double."

It would also threaten to release huge quantities of methane gas - Russia's permafrost is believed to hold 30% of the world's entire supplies.

Currently West Siberia's permafrost is melting at a rate of four centimeters per year. If the trend continues the permafrost border will move up to 80 kilometers further north in the next 20 years.

In the Arctic Region, levels of sea ice have decreased almost 50% from 7.2 million square kilometers in 1979 to 4.3 million square kilometers in 2007. And as sea ice disappears less sunlight is reflected which accelerates the rate of warming.

According to studies carried out by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, scientists expect warming rates to triple, "Our study suggest that, if sea ice continues to contract rapidly over the next several years, Arctic land warming and permafrost thaw are likely to accelerate," David Lawrence from the center said.

However, Lawrence said that it was still not known the exact effect this would have on "the delicate balance of life."

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, two thirds of the world's 25,000 polar bears could die by 2050, when the ice they use to hunt seals is expected to disappear due to global warming.

MOSCOW, June 19 (RIA Novosti)