My folks live in Alaska, and despite the fact that my dad has been golfing in February, the curmudgeon STILL claims there has been no global warming in Alaska and the permafrost is the same as it was when I was growing up up there.
Sometimes an odd faith persists in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Sort of like those government agencies who persist as well, even to the point of rewriting scientific studies to make the data say what they want.
Alaska's not-so-permanent frost. With winters warming eight degrees in three decades, Alaskans face a strange new landscape. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]
With winters warming eight degrees in three decades, Alaskans face a strange new landscape.
By Yereth Rosen | Special to The Christian Science MonitorHOMER, ALASKA – Overlooking the snowcapped mountains and tidewater glaciers around Kachemak Bay, this hamlet of fishermen, artists, and tourists seems the picture of Alaskan charm.
But beneath the scene of plenty is a landscape parched: Three hot summers have dried local wells and forced the native village of Nanwalek to shuttle in bottled water and ration it. Swaths of spruce forest around Homer and the Kenai Peninsula are brown because of an unprecedented beetle infestation, linked to the warming climate. And snow levels have diminished steadily since 1938.
While much of the world knows global warming as a phrase, Alaska's warming climate is far more palpable. Summers here, as elsewhere, have been warmer and longer; winters are more temperate, with average temperatures climbing eight degrees Fahrenheit in three decades. Alaskans have mowed their lawns in November, golfed in February, and basked in record in record temperatures all summer.
"The most positive comments come from the more longtime Alaskans. They say, 'Heck, we've been through lots of tough winters. We deserve an easy one,'" says Jackie Purcell, meteorologist and weather anchor for Anchorage TV station KTUU.
Computer simulations of climate change have long suggested global warming's effects would be most pronounced at the poles. Researchers have tried to gauge the impact of the climate system's natural variations, and see if they can account for change over the last few decades.
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The world should take note, adds Gunter Weller, executive director of the University of Alaska's Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research: "We are the canary in the mine shaft." Indeed, melting Alaskan glaciers are shedding twice as much ice as in previous decades. And the Arctic ice pack has thinned by 40 percent since the 1960s.
"There's no greater threat to Alaska's ecosystem and indigenous cultures than global warming. Period," says Deborah Williams, executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation.
Global warming is believed to be the result of rising amounts of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases in the atmosphere. These trap the earth's radiant heat, creating a greenhouse effect.
Oil, erosion, and thinner polar bears
The effects are more dramatic here because of the temperature-sensitive overlay of permafrost and glaciers. Thawing permafrost plagues highway crews and operators of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which depends on supports to avoid sinking into the tundra. The oil industry has lost half its exploration season to the warmth, which keeps the tundra soft - and unable to support heavy vehicles or drilling equipment - for longer stretches of time.
Large sections of northern forests are collapsing into swamps of melting permafrost; sections of shoreline on the Arctic Coast have thawed, making them vulnerable to storms; and the Arctic's largest ice shelf, solid for 3,000 years, broke up last month due to warmer temperatures - though scientists were hesitant to blame global warming specifically.[...]
In rural villages, too, thawing permafrost wreaks havoc: Two Inupiat Eskimo villages on the northwestern coastline, Shishmaref and Kivalina, have lost so much ground they're in danger of washing into the sea. The villages are planning to relocate, at a cost of hundreds of millions.
Animals, meanwhile, are dealing with the retreating ice pack. With less time to escape from land in the spring, they sometimes wind up stranded on the outskirts of towns like Barrow. Polar bears have grown thinner in recent years, and some have to be killed as more migrate south. And the warming may have dire consequences for salmon in the Yukon River, the major food and income source for indigenous people along the 2,300-mile waterway.
Rivers have heated five degrees in 20 years, making mid-summer temperatures nearly lethal for salmon, says Richard Kocan of the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fisheries Science. With warmth comes increased infection by a parasite that seems to wipe out their reproductive abilities. And because the taste and texture of the meat has changed, fishermen harvest 150 salmon to get 100 usable fish, straining runs, Dr. Kocan says: "They don't feel right. They don't taste right. You can't sell them."
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The state has launched a study to reevaluate regulations on tundra travel, which oil companies claim are too strict. And Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) is pushing for a permanent gravel highway on the western North Slope to take the place of the temporary ice roads that the oil industry has touted as environmentally friendly.
"You and I know that ice roads work, but it seems like winters are coming later and breaking earlier," the governor told a pro-development group earlier this year.
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