Climate Watch

Climate Watch

By Rick Thoman

Alaska Climate Specialist Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, UAF Recent advances in climate analysis through computer modeling allow us to refine our understanding on what has happened at a much smaller scale that we’ve ever been able to do before. This in no way replaces place-specific experience and understanding or detailed measurements, but rather is an additional tool in the toolbox for getting a feel for what’s occurred over a larger area.

Using this tool, the graphic shows the December 2020 through February 2020 total precipitation as compared to the 1981-2010, 30 year normal binned into three categories: near normal (90 to 110% of average), below normal (less than 90% of normal) and above normal (more than 110% of average). From this, we can easily see that the entire Seward Peninsula had significantly less than normal precipitation for mid-winter (remember, this only goes through the end of February and does not include all the snow this month). In contrast, St. Lawrence Island had more precipitation than normal, not surprising given the photos from Gambell and Savoonga, while the Yukon Delta coast saw near normal precipitation for the three months as a whole. Not shown on the graphic but in the model analysis, precipitation was way below normal for the area between about Nome and Teller (can anyone give an opinion on the February snowpack in this area?) as well as from Kotzebue northward.