The Siberian city crumbling due to climate change In Russia's Siberian city of Yakutsk, one of the coldest on Earth, climate change is causing dangerous melting of the permanently frozen ground, or permafrost on which the buildings stand. Average temperatures in Yakutsk have risen by 2.5 degrees Celsius over the past decade, say scientists at the Russian Permafrost Institute located here, the only such research centre in the world.