Alaska warming is look at future

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Alaska warming is look at future

 

 

Seth Borenstein

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Aug. 10, 2003 12:00 AM

 

 

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska is melting.

 

Glaciers are receding. Permafrost is thawing. Roads are collapsing. Forests are

dying. Villages are being forced to move, and animals are being forced to seek

new habitats.

 

What's happening in Alaska is a preview of what people farther south can expect,

said Robert Corell, a former top National Science Foundation scientist who heads

research for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment team.

 

" If you want to see what will be happening in the rest of the world 25 years

from now, just look at what's happening in the Arctic, " Corell said.

 

In Alaska, year-round average temperatures have risen 5-degrees Fahrenheit since

the 1960s, and winter temperatures soared 8 degrees in that period, according to

the federal government. The entire world is expected to warm 2.5 to 10 degrees

by 2100, predict scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change.

 

Last year was the hottest year in Alaska history, and this past winter was the

second warmest on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center in

Asheville, N.C., which found that Alaska's temperatures began to rise

dramatically in 1976. This July, Anchorage recorded its second-highest

temperature ever.

 

Deborah Williams, head of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, used to take

visitors from the Lower 48 to the Portage Glacier outside Anchorage, where an $8

million visitor center opened in 1986. By 1993, glacier had receded so much that

it no longer could be seen from the center.

 

" Alaska is the melting tip of the iceberg, the panting canary, " said Williams,

who was the chief Interior Department official for Alaska during the Clinton

administration.

 

Portage is " a glacier that's almost out of water; it's thinned dramatically, "

said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Bruce Molnia, author of Glaciers of

Alaska. About 98 percent of Alaska's glaciers are retreating or stagnant, he

said.

 

Alaskan glaciers add 13.2 trillion gallons of water to the seas each year,

University of Alaska-Fairbanks scientists concluded after a decade of studying

glaciers with airborne lasers. The rate of glacier run-off has doubled over just

a few decades, they found. Alaska's melting glaciers are the No. 1 reason the

oceans are rising, Molnia said.

 

Another frozen staple of Alaska's northernmost lands, permafrost, is also

thawing and " is probably the biggest problem on land, " said Gunter Weller,

director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the

University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

 

Permafrost is land that stays frozen year-round. Villages rely on it to prevent

beach erosion from violent ocean storms. Two Alaskan native villages, Shishmaref

and Kivalina, must relocate because melting permafrost has caused beach erosion,

leaving the towns vulnerable to storms.

 

Melting permafrost also means trouble for the oil industry. Oil companies build

pipelines and roads on it to support North Shore drilling. To minimize damage to

Arctic tundra, oil companies explore for oil on Alaska's North Slope only when

roads are frozen with a foot of ice and 6 inches of snow. The ice-road season

has dropped from 200 days a year in 1970 to 103 days in 2002, according to state

documents.

 

Permafrost lies under 166 Alaskan towns and 1,700 miles of Alaskan highways.

Melting is causing chunks of the Alaska Highway to come apart, state officials

said at a January global-warming conference.

 

Some scientific reports also blame global warming for plummeting herring and

salmon populations, Williams said.

 

 

 

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