Far North Science

Source: NCDC

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.

My memories of growing up in New York include a blanket of snow on the ground from about Thanksgiving until March. After I moved to Alaska a few decades ago, the snow Back East seemed less dependable on each winter visit, with rain often wiping it out. I thought maybe I had noticed a change, but memories are the most unreliable of data sets.

Last week, at a poster session at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting, which attracted about 15,000 scientists to San Francisco, a scientist chatted about “a region-wide winter warming trend” for New England. She had checked out regional weather records from 1965 to 2005 (which also happens to be the middle 40 years of my life).

“People who have lived in New England a long time always seem to tell you that it used to snow more and that it’s warmer now,” said Liz Burakowski of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire at Durham. “Maybe this study shows that anecdotal evidence can sometimes be right,”

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The Russian nuclear icebreaker 50 let Pobedy (right) cuts a path
through the Arctic ice for the Swedish icebreaker Oden (left)
during the 2007 LOMROG expedition.
Image courtesy of Ohio State University

The Arctic has revealed yet another mystery: Colossal mud waves that form 100-foot-wide ripples across the ocean floor, plus ancient tracks carved by half-mile-deep glaciers. Who knew?

A team of scientists working to trace the impact of prehistoric ice sheets on Arctic Ocean bathymetry have uncovered sonar images and measurements that show startling formations in waters long thought too deep and too serene.

Although powerful currents can create a wavy surface on the ocean floor, scientists always thought the Arctic was too calm, according to a new online story by the Ohio State University.

And so far, no one has been able to explain how the waves got formed, says research scientist Leonid Polyak, from the Byrd Polar Research Center.

“The mud waves could be caused by tidal fluctuations,” he said. “But that’s really just speculation at this point.”

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Barrow Sea Ice Cam on 12-19 at 15:25:41 AST
View latest image

Here are some new Far North Climate tidbits:

November dried out Fairbanks, delivering the 6th lowest precipitation on record, only .11 inches. Four of the six driest Novembers have struck since 2001. Turkey day baked at 43 °F — second warmest Thanksgiving ever.

A bold Chinook scoured the Alaska Range between November 20 to 24 with 66 mph winds at Antler Creek and 50 mph peaks at Otto Lake in Healy. The mercury chipped 51 °F near Fort Greely, far above normal.

Barrow saw the 3rd warmest November of record, with 3 November days Zero or below. If you stood on the Arctic shore and scanned north, you would have seen not a single pan or floe of frozen water. Supposedly that’s never happened before.

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Source: NSIDC

Here’s more insight into the solar influence behind the Arctic Ocean’s record meltdown, released last week during the American Geophysical Union’s annual conference in San Francisco.

Portions of the sea surface in the Arctic Ocean just north of the Chukchi Sea beyond Alaska warmed about 9 ° F more than historical averages — rising from a “normal” average summer temperature of about 30.2 ° F to more than 39 °F.

The data comes from a study led by Washington oceanographer Michael Steele, who has appeared in several FNS dispatches and national climate news this past week.

Steele and his co-authors worked data showing the summertime ocean surface temperatures and heat content, with a particular concentration on the Arctic’s “peripheral” seas, he wrote in the abstract published by the AGU.

Many areas cooled almost 1 deg;F per decade between 1930 and 1965, when the Arctic Oscillation pattern fell. The same areas warmed by the same factor during the next 30 years.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Summer warming of the ocean between 1965 and 1995 stored enough heat in the water to actually thin the next winter’s ice pack by about 50 cm, or about 20 inches.

As the heat oozes back into the air, it can delay fall freeze-up up to 10 days. Further, the extra warmth rides the wind to shore, where it can deliver an extra 15 to 20 watts/m2 to Alaska’s North Slope, Steele and his authors wrote.

This process feeds on itself: More heat, later freeze up, thinner ice, bigger meltback. And the heat goes on….

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Tagging a beluga in Cook Inlet near Anchorage
Credit: NMML

The official count of Cook Inlet’s beluga whales has increased for the first time in six years, suggesting that the depleted population that haunts the ocean near Anchorage may be holding steady instead of slipping further toward extinction.

Aerial surveys conducted in June and August — using trained observers and painstaking video of the fast-moving, difficult-to-see animals — produced an abundance estimate of 375, according to a report posted online this week by NOAA Fisheries.

That’s significantly above the 302 estimated for 2006, but generally in line with other estimates since 1998.

How should people read this latest news? With caution.

“While we are encouraged by this higher estimate, further surveys will be required to determine if this is a reliable upward population trend,” said Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director Doug DeMaster, in the agency’s release.

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Sea ice off Gambell, Alaska.
Photo by Ned Rozell.

This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.

SAN FRANCISCO — For the past few years, vanishing northern sea ice has been a theme of many talks and posters here at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which draws about 15,000 scientists to the Moscone Center during the weeklong conference.

At a press conference here on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007, scientists revealed that the ice on top of the northernmost ocean took a punch in the summer of 2007 that might be a knockout blow.

In 1980, the dense ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean like a large, moving jigsaw puzzle took up about the same area as the entire Lower 48 states; in September 2007, it was about as big as the U.S. east of the Mississippi River, said Don Perovich of the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and