Article on northern climate change

EOSC 112: The Fluid Earth	Article on northern climate change
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Site Map EOSC 112 Homepage Announcements Lecture Summaries Lab Assignments Special Topics Course Syllabus Web Contact: Phil Austin Site created with Cheetah. Last updated: Dec 7 2001	Sunday, July 15, 2001 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific Close-up Amid global-warming debate, Alaskans' landscape shifts By Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times SHISHMAREF, Alaska - As world leaders debate the possibility of global warming and its uncertain threat, the reality of climate change has closed in on this small Eskimo village on the Chukchi Sea - to be precise, on a rusty fuel-tank farm holding 80,000 gallons of gasoline and stove oil. Several years ago, the tanks were more than 300 feet from the edge of a seaside bluff. But years of retreating sea ice have sent storm waters pounding, and today only 35 feet of fine sandy bluff stands between the tanks and disaster. The airport runway - the only way to haul in wintertime food and supplies from Anchorage, 625 miles away - has seawater lapping near its flank. Seven houses have been relocated so far, three others have fallen into the swirling drink and engineers say the entire village of 600 residents could disappear into the sea within the next few decades. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who is trying to get millions of dollars in federal aid to help, blames the problem on cyclical changes in ocean temperature. But in Alaska, where receding glaciers, melting permafrost and advancing forests have placed the state on the front lines of climate change, many people scoff at that. Since the 1970s, Shishmaref residents have seen their drinking water inundated with advancing seawater, an ocean ice pack that melts earlier each year, unusual tides and difficulty hunting ice-bound sea creatures, such as seals and walruses. Gunter Weller, director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, said mean temperatures in the state have increased 5 degrees in the summer and 10 degrees in the winter over the last 30 years. Moreover, the Arctic ice field has shrunk by 40 to 50 percent the last few decades and lost 10 percent of its thickness, studies show. "These are pretty large signals, and they've had an effect on the entire physical environment," Weller said. "The only question is, is it man-made? Is it the greenhouse effect? Or is it natural variability? I think the consensus in the scientific community almost certainly is that it is both," Weller said. Glaciers shrinking The Malaspina and Seward glaciers, at the top of the Alaskan panhandle, shrank 15 cubic miles of water since the early 1970s - the equivalent of a month's worth of water from Canada's largest river system. The Harding Ice Field on the Kenai Peninsula has receded 85 feet over the last 40 years, along with many glaciers on Prince William Sound. In many areas of interior Alaska, the permafrost has warmed to within 1 degree of freezing - a phenomenon that could threaten everything from roads and houses to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline built atop it - and residents near the Arctic Circle say spruce forests and shrubs have been advancing north into the once-frozen tundra, apparently affecting, for example, caribou migration. As the political debate over the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty unfolds, rural residents in Alaska are seeing the effects of a changing climate all around them. Global warming is a phenomenon caused by increasing concentrations of certain gases in the Earth's atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides and water vapor. The gases trap solar heat, causing surface temperatures to rise over time. In Shishmaref and other villages along the Chukchi coast, the threat is substantial. In these remote towns, where steak costs $22 a pound at the market and villagers rely on sea mammals for survival, sea ice that is unstable all winter long and early to retreat in the spring means walrus and seal hunters no longer can rely on snowmobiles to hunt on the pack ice. In Shishmaref this month, hunters are launching their 22-foot plywood-and-fiberglass boats 100 to 200 miles from town in search of walruses and have had to use boats even closer to shore for seal hunting that normally would be done more cheaply by snow machine. "This year the ice was thinner, and most of the year at least part of the ice was open. We don't normally see open water in December," said Edwin Weyiouanna, an artist who has lived most of his life on the Chukchi Sea. The biggest effect, however, has been the unusually brutal storms Chukchi has been able to muster in the fall, when sea ice normally would halt wave action against the shore. Coastal villages up and down the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, including Barrow, Kivalina and Point Hope, are experiencing serious erosion. Shishmaref, built on a narrow barrier island off the Seward Peninsula, has been victimized by unusually high wave and tide action and the melting of permafrost that underlies its ocean bluffs. Now there is seawater within 8 feet of its main road and dangerously close to homes, utility lines, the fuel storage tanks and the town dump - which, if inundated, could pollute the nearby marine environment for years. A succession of sea walls has been demolished by the sea, and town leaders say there is no longer any safe place to relocate threatened houses. Near the airport, the island is barely a half-mile wide. "This fall we had 28-mile-an-hour winds, which is normal for us during the fall. But during a high tide, we lost 8 feet of bluff," said Richard Kuzuguk. "And every full moon is a high tide." Mayor Daniel Iyatunguk is resigned. "I guess the whole town will have to go. They figure we shouldn't last more than 30 to 50 years. They figure most of it will be underwater by then." Short-term help In the short term, town leaders are seeking help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build a stronger sea wall. Next, they will seek help from the state transportation department to protect the runway. But simply moving the town, at some point, seems inevitable. "If a good, strong wave action were to hit Shishmaref, and I think we're due for a major storm, Shishmaref is in imminent danger. It could really flood the whole community," said Robert Iyatunguk, co-coordinator of the local erosion commission. Town leaders have identified a potential new site on the mainland about 22 miles away that would enable them to use what's left of the original town site as a base camp for seal hunting. But such an enterprise could cost tens of millions of dollars. They fear they will be forced to move onto the outskirts of a large town, such as Nome or Kotzebue, a death knell for their culture as a community. "We know this area. We know where to hunt, we know where to pick berries, we know where to fish. We can't move to another town," said Mayor Iyatunguk. "Nome told us, `Move to Nome.' Well, no. The lifestyle of Nome is not for us." So they wait for the next storm and try to figure out where they can move the next few houses most threatened by the ravenous waves. "It looks like we're going to have to move a couple more real soon," said Wayne Mundy, director of the Bering Straits Regional Housing Authority. "The problem is, where do you move them to? Floats? Pontoons?" Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company