Scientists warn of irreversible climate crisis

Current arctic sea ice cover is at its lowest levels since before 1850 and is likely to reach practically icefree conditions at its summer minimum at least once before 2050, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC for short.

The report, released earlier this month, is almost 4,000 pages in length, and paints a grim future for a world where climate change is “widespread, rapid and intensifying,” and in some cases, irreversible. Scientists who compiled the report explored different scenarios over the next several decades, including how sea ice cover might change if the United States significantly changes its practices regarding carbon emissions, or if it stays the course.

“The sea ice cover actually stabilizes in the extreme mitigation scenario, whereas it essentially goes away for a good part of the year with the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario,” explained Arctic climate expert John Walsh, chief scientist and professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “If we don’t get our act together, we will lose the sea ice, even in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, for most of the year.”

According to the IPCC report, the Arctic region has warmed at more than twice the global rate over the last 50 years and will continue to do so at a higher rate than the global average. The rapidly-heating waters will impact more than just sea ice cover.

“The water will warm up because it has lost the reflective ice cover, which will enhance the warming, making it even stronger, and that will impact the marine ecosystem,” Walsh said. “There’s going to be marine mammal impacts. Any marine mammal that depends on sea ice will essentially be out of luck.”

Marine mammals are not the only ones at risk. Other marine wildlife, including fish, may see significant population shifts as warmer waters force fish north.

“There’s a potential impact to things like fisheries and a massive impact to climate,” according to climate specialist Rick Thoman, climate specialist at UAF’s Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. “There are potential impacts, not just on the climate system, but on the economics ecosystem and the impacts on economic activities, whether that’s subsistence activities or commercial fishing.”

This is the sixth report from the IPCC, an organization created by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in the 1980s. The reports are designed for policymakers around the globe to explore the future impacts of climate change in their region. In Alaska, the anticipated effects are significant.

“We’re seeing the effects of climate change right now on the fishing industry,” said Nome City Manager Glenn Steckman. “The questions we need to be asking ourselves are ‘can we slow down the climate change,’ or what is the thought process right now that we’re going to be able to sail around the Northwest Passage year-round?”

Steckman says that, while some of Nome’s infrastructure is already built to withstand further climate change

and melting permafrost, the city has a lot of work to do before it’s prepared to face the impending crisis.

The City of Nome does not have any sort of climate change mitigation plan in place at this point.

“We’re talking about a report that is almost 30 years down the road,” he told the Nugget. “As the weather changes and we see more and more potential challenges, then yes, we may need to be more proactive in addressing and protecting the City of Nome.”

“It is a discussion that is going on with the planning commission and internally with the staff,” Steckman said. “Obviously we are seeing the effects of climate change in Nome. Portions of our community are sinking… but there’s no plan to formally address how to handle this.”

Across the region, less sea ice coverage means less protection from increasingly worse fall and winter storms, more erosion and damage to already-blemished roads. Other impacts include melting of permafrost resulting in shifting buildings that need more frequent leveling.

“Just because we have these potentially severe storms does not mean that our community is going to be brought to a halt,” Steckman said. “It’s not the end of the world. We shouldn’t take this as the end of the world, but at the same time, we should also be looking at what we can do to protect our environment.”

The IPCC report detailed several aspects of climate change that may impact the Arctic region in the coming years.

“Extreme heat events have increased around the Arctic since 1979, and minimum temperatures have increased at about three times the global rate,” according to the Arctic Regional Fact Sheet. “Permafrost warming and thawing have been widespread in the Arctic since the 1980s, and there is high confidence in future permafrost warming, decreasing permafrost extent with increased risk of hazardous impacts, including carbon release.”

The report also detailed that shorelines will continue to retreat and coastal communities may experience “severe coastal flooding” in the future.

In nearby villages like Shishmaref, the effects of the climate crisis are more pronounced.

Following severe storms in 1997, more than 30 feet of the north shore in the village eroded, requiring the National Guard Armory to be relocated, according to the Kawerak, Inc., “Bering Straits Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for 2019-2024” document. In the years following, several more homes were relocated, and the shoreline continues to crumble at the average rate of about 7.5 feet per year. In 2002 and again in 2016, village residents voted to relocate the community to a location less susceptible to intense climate change.

Other villages, like Diomede, rely heavily on subsistence hunting, meaning their food sources will be at significant risk of disappearing in the coming years.

“There’s no going back to the way it used to be,” Thoman told the Nugget. “The changes that we’ve already seen, which are very dramatic, are here to stay. People need to just accept where we’re at now and plan as if this is the new normal.”

Walsh says the best mitigation strategies are ones on the national scale. “Most emissions come from the Lower 48 in the U.S., just because there are far more people there, far more industrial activity, far more cars,” he said. “We can certain push at the state and community level for our own local actions, but the big difference is really going to be made at the national and international level.”

Locally, there are several steps communities can take to start combatting the effects of the climate crisis.

“The thing to do is to try to come up with longer term solutions now,” he said. “If you know of places, roads that are repeatedly washing out during these heavy storm events, you can be sure that the kinds of rains that produce the wash out are going to reoccur.”

Regional residents need to start planning for sea ice-free Decembers, Thoman said.

“The best time for action was decades ago, but the second-best time for action is now,” Thoman said. “A transition to a greener economy, burning less fossil fuels, it all still matters. Yes, it would have been better to do it long ago, but we’re here today, and there’s still reason to take all the actions that we can to help improve things for our children, our grandchildren, and so on.”