Environment on ice
One of Alaska’s warmest springs on record is causing a dangerous thaw. By Sarah Kaplan.
Bryan Thomas doesn’t want any more ‘‘wishywashy conversations about climate change’’. For four years, he has served as station chief of the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, America’s northernmost scientific outpost in its fastest-warming state.
Each morning, after digging through snow to his office’s front door, Thomas checks the preliminary number on the observatory’s carbon dioxide monitor. On a recent Thursday, it was almost 420 parts per million – nearly twice as high as the global pre-industrial average.
It’s just one number, he says. But there’s no question in his mind about what it means.
Alaska is in the midst of one of the warmest springs the state has ever experienced – a transformation that has disrupted livelihoods and cost lives. The average temperature for March recorded at the NOAA observatory in Utquiagvik (which was known as Barrow before 2016, when the city voted to go by its traditional Inupiaq name) was 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit (7.4 degrees C) above normal.
Fairbanks recorded its first consecutive March days when the temperature never dropped below freezing. Ice roads built on frozen waterways – a vital means of transportation – have become weak and unreliable. At least five people have died this spring after falling through ice that melted sooner than expected.
‘‘Climate change is happening faster than it’s ever happened before,’’ Thomas said. ‘‘We’re right in the middle of it.’’
Utqiagvik set daily temperature records on 28 of the first 100 days of this year, according to the Alaska Climate Research Centre.
In early February, residents woke to find that the land-fast ice that usually clings to their shores
until summer had been swept out to sea by strong winds – a sign that the ice wasn’t as thick or wellgrounded as it used to be.
‘‘It was like, ‘Whoa, I’ve never seen that before’,’’ Thomas said.
‘‘It was surprising in a human way. But not necessarily surprising in a science way.’’
The Barrow observatory has been monitoring climate for more than 40 years. Thomas knows where the trends are headed.
Nearly 300 kilometres to the south, Marc Oggier, a graduate student at the University of
Alaska at Fairbanks, returned this month from conducting fieldwork to find the city completely clear of snow. It was the shortest-lived snowpack in recent history.
Oggier wrinkled his nose at the springlike scent in the air. ‘‘It smells weird. It smells like rain.’’
This time of year, he explained, ‘‘you shouldn’t be able to smell anything’’. The ground should still be frozen solid.
The historic warm temperatures are linked to vanishing ice on the Bering and Chukchi seas west of Alaska.
Warm weather threatens subsistence whaling – a centuriesold tradition in and around Utqiagvik, said Kaare Erickson, the North Slope science liaison for the Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation, which manages Inupiat land. Though the sea ice near the city refroze after the February wind event, many are concerned about whether it can provide a stable platform from which to hunt.
On Shishmaref, the barrier island where he grew up, ‘‘it’s an even heavier impact’’, Erickson said.
When ice forms later and melts earlier, it leaves coastlines vulnerable to erosion from autumn and spring storms. The shoreline on Shishmaref has retreated more than 30 metres in Erickson’s lifetime, and the town has voted to relocate to a new site. Residents who subsist on seal and walrus meat must navigate an increasingly unreliable ice pack as they search for food.
Unstable ice has already claimed lives. Two men died of exposure in late March when their vehicles fell through the frozen Kuskokwim River near Bethel, the Division of Alaska State Troopers said.
This week, three family members – including an 11-yearold girl – were killed after crashing through ice on the way to the small village of Noatak, which can be reached only by snowmobile, boat or air.
Sergeant Teague Widmier, who leads the Alaska State Troopers unit in Bethel, said authorities were urging people to stay off the increasingly weak river ice. But he acknowledged that residents had few other options for travelling in rural parts of the state.
Spring ‘‘breakup’’, when the Arctic defrosts, was always a dangerous time in Alaska, Widmier said. But this year it has come earlier than usual.
Ice thickness this winter was below average on rivers across the state, according to the National Weather Service. On the Kuskokwim near Bethel, where the two men died in March, it was just 19 per cent of normal. Many parts of the river are already icefree – even though it usually remains frozen well into May.
All of this was on Thomas’s mind as he went about his Thursday routine at the Utqiagvik observatory. The building is modest – just three small rooms, no bathroom (‘‘We use a bucket,’’ he explained) – and crowded with devices. Air samplers measure every problematic molecule: carbon dioxide, methane, ozonedepleting chlorofluorocarbons. Meteorological instruments track the fluctuating weather.
Each measurement helps to explain the transformation occurring outside his window. ‘‘I think, OK, this [greenhouse gas measurement] is going to help people understand how much energy from the Sun is being absorbed by the atmosphere,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s that visceral connection to what’s happening.’’
His next task was clearing off the intake lines, tubes that pull gases from the atmosphere into the observatory’s instruments. Donning insulated pants and a face mask, he trudged back outside to a rickety, 15m tower and began to climb. Strong winds rattled the metal and blew snow into his face.
Thomas used a paintbrush to wipe ice from the instruments, making sure they continue to capture the changing climate for another day.
– Washington Post