Far North Science

“With respect to global warming, 2007 is starting out with a bang,” writes Deborah Williams, of Alaska Conservation Solutions, in the January 2007 edition of Global Warming News from Alaska /Reporting from The Front Line.
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“The International Polar Year is like the March Madness of science,” University of Alaska Fairbanks glaciologist and sea ice researcher Hajo Eicken said during a lecture this week in
Anchorage.

“It’s like the big playoff where all the scientists get together (in cyberspace) and everybody compares notes, then people set off to make coordinated measurements.”

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Scientists using NASA data have traced soot drifting from Southeast Asian residences to Alaska and Arctic regions, possibly contributing to climate change as the particles absorb more energy from the sun.

It’s all part of a NASA effort to track the drift and flow of smoke and aerosols across the globe.

This pair of images from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite shows smoke measurements over Alaska and western Canada on August 15, 2005 (top) and August 21, 2005 (bottom). Increasing amounts of smoke are shown as an aerosol index with shades of blue (little or no smoke) to dull red (thick smoke). Credit: NASA/OMI Science Team

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A news story by AP science writer SETH BORENSTEIN was zooming around the planet this morning with an early glimpse of controversies arising from a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, due out Friday, doesn’t take into account the accelerating meltdown observed in the past few years on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, according to several scientists.
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Homer children’s book author and adventurer Shelley Gill is touring the Far South this winter. Her ship is anchored along an icy coast of Booth Island. Check out the newest update and some stunning whale photos at her blog.

I woke up at 9. The wind was screaming. I made coffee, climbed up to the wheelhouse and talk about visual shock. There was the National Geoship Endeavor parked 100 feet away and 5 floors up.

The rocks were covered with folks in red coats with ski poles tramping around. I was ready to tramp too.

Blood on the ice. A torso ripped open. Bits of hide scattered to the wind.

On the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, these signs usually chronicle a quick meal by the Earth’s largest non-aquatic predator.

Polar bears have always made their living by scarfing down ringed seals, what federal biologist Steve Amstrup likes to call “fat pills.” Over tens of thousands of years, the bears have evolved the curiosity and patience to find these subnivian lairs hidden to human eyes — and the lightning reflexes to bust in and seize the seal before it can escape into the sea below.

But this was no seal carcass. It was a female polar bear. And it had been stalked, killed and consumed by an adult male bear.

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