Far North Science

Syun-Ichi Akasofu

An international panel calls evidence for global warming “unequivocal,” with greenhouse gas emissions “very likely” the main cause.

Researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center declare that a summer meltdown of Arctic sea ice will occur within a generation or two.

Stern-faced U.S. senators pronounce the politcal debate at end. Hundreds of thousands of people urge federal protection for polar bears. Native elders tell us the world has quickened, that nature has gone askew. The day for global warming action has dawned.

Not so fast, says one of Alaska’s most distinguished scientists.

Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the former head of the Geophysical Insitute and the retired chief of the International Arctic Research Center, says he’s leery of so much concensus and questions the conclusions that rely so heavily on satellite age data.

“I always become suspicious when many scientists agree on some interpretation,” he says, in a new Alaska Science Forum by Ned Rozell.

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Will Polar Bears lose their habitat?
USFWS

Imagine a world where vast stretches of Arctic tundra have vanished. Where the jungled rain forests of the Amazon Basin and Indonesia have toppled. Where southeast United States sizzles and shrivels in summer heat. A world with ecosystems no one has ever seen.

Brace yourselves, people. “By the end of the 21st century, large portions of the Earth’s surface may experience climate not found at present, and some 20th century climates may disappear,” concluded a University of Wisconsin-Madison geographer after applying climate models to ecosystems around the world.

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Masatoshi Kuriaki on Denali in winter
Credit: Japanese Caribou

A man known as the “Japanese Caribou” for his trans-Alaska treks has become the first person to climb the fourth tallest peak in the United States alone during the winter season.

Masatoshi Kuriaki summited 17,400-foot Mt. Foraker on March 10, completing the first solo winter ascent of the peak, the sixth-highest in North America and widely rated a much more difficult climb than the 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley, only 14 miles to the northeast.

In late January, Kuriaki was dropped off by airplane onto the Kahiltna Glacier, where Foraker rises in a stunning massif that fills the entire western sky. In a dim, wind-scoured glacial basin where the sun never shines in winter, Kuriaki spent weeks ferrying loads through cold snaps and blizzards, gradually working his way up Foraker’s seldom-climbed Southeast Ridge.

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Traveling up the Porcupine

On its eighth trail day, SnowSTAR 2007: Barrenlands Traverse has reached the Alaska-Canada border and studied the eerie cut through the forest that traces the political line across the landscape.

The latest dispatch:

The SnowSTAR Expedition had another good run today up the frozen Porcupine River, making about 90 miles and arriving at the U.S./Canada Border at about 7:30 PM. Tonight they will spend their last night on U.S. soil (or ice!). Matthew said they were pitching their tents about 16 feet West of the dividing line between the two countries and from their camp they can see the one-hundred year old cut-line in the trees marking the border.

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Exxon Valdez hard aground
NOAA Gallery

More than 18 years after the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bly Reef and spilled at least 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound, buried remnants of largely unweathered oil continue to foul certain beaches and harm marine life.

The persistence of 85 tons of oil from the spill has surprised many scientists and confounded expectations that most of the crude would have long since disappeared and left the Sound’s marine species completely recovered.

Scientists at Auke Bay Laboratory in Juneau have tracked the fate of the crude oil for a decade. A study released in February, led by chemist Jeff Short, found alarming amounts of oil at 10 beaches studied in 2001 and 2005.

This remaining oil — about 26,600 gallons from the original 11 million — appears to be declining at only about 4 percent per year. It has seeped four to 10 inches beneath the surface, where it continues to leach into ocean and get ingested by sea life.

“Such persistence can pose a contact hazard to inter-tidally foraging sea otters, sea ducks, and shorebirds, create a chronic source of low-level contamination, discourage subsistence in a region where use is heavy and degrade the wilderness character of protected lands,” wrote Short and eight co-authors in the study, published Feb. 15.

Now, to help sort out why the oil still lingers, the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council has awarded a three-year $1.2 million grant to researchers at Temple University.

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Whale hunt — 1928
Edward S. Curtis / Library of Congress

Hunting for walrus and whale. Stretching hides over frames to make traditional boats. Carving ivory, making masks. These are the things that make Arctic life good.

Even when you pull down a paycheck and surf the web.

A new study and survey found that indigenous people across much of the Arctic see the pursuit of traditional crafts and subsistence hunting at the core of their identity, even amidst the 21st Century computer age and a society powered by modern technology.

The results came from interviews of more than 7,000 people living in hundreds of traditional communities across Alaska, Canada, Chukotka and Greenland. Additional interviews have been completed in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula.

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Credit: USGS

The devastating 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and the ocean-wide tsunami that followed killed almost 230,000 people in the third most powerful temblor ever measured on Earth.

It struck along one of the world’s great engines for producing large quakes — the subduction boundary between tectonic plates in the Indian Ocean. Yet scientists didn’t realize at the time that this particular area off the west coast of Indonesia posed such a terrible hazard.

“One lesson we should take away from the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake is that every subduction zone is potentially locked, loaded, and dangerous,” wrote geophysicist Robert McCaffrey in “The Next Great Earthquake,” published this week in the journal of Science.

With an immense tectonic collision grinding away only 20 miles beneath the Alaska’s southern rim, is there also a lesson for the Far North?

Be ready, Alaskans. Be very ready.

“We should not rule out completely another M9 (earthquake) in the not-so distant future,” McCaffrey said in an email message. “We don’t know the repeat time and the variability in that time.”

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Old Rocks in Greenland
Credit: AAAS

They might not look like much, but these weathered rocks have been chilling for a long time along the east coast of Greenland. Scientists believe they may be the oldest chunk of the Earth’s crust ever found.

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