Climate Change Having Big Impact on Transportation

Climate change has already begun to make life difficult for state transportation managers, and they expect it to become a bigger and more expensive challenge if warming trends continue as predicted. New challenges include warming permafrost, coastal erosion, and the potential for more dramatic storms and flooding. These could lead to more highways and facilities cracking, icing up, or even washing away. The hardest-hit areas are northern, western, and Interior Alaska, where roads and structures are built over permafrost and near the coast (ADN, 1/30/11).

Most of the world's mountain glaciers and small ice caps will disappear or shrivel dramatically by the end of the century, with Alaska's glaciers and ice fields shrinking by 25 to 60 percent over the next nine decades. Alaska's portion of the projected meltdown raises questions about the future of regional hydroelectric projects like the proposed multi-billion-dollar Susitna Dam, as well as Anchorage's drinking water source in Eklutna Lake (Alaska Dispatch, 1/19/11).

A new analysis of the Arctic's "albedo feedback" concludes that the region's loss of reflectivity is more than double what state-of-the-art climate models estimate. The findings are important, researchers say, because they suggest that Arctic warming amplified by the loss of reflectivity could be even more significant than previously thought. Researchers discovered that variations in snow and ice result in different albedo impacts. For example, pools of melted water on top of sea ice can have significantly less reflectivity, which in essence may speed up the warming and possibly melting of that sea ice (Science Daily, 1/18/11).

Three local scientists merged their studies to provide a look at how the changing arctic environment can affect species through hybridization. Their article examines how climate change influences species to cross-breed, creating hybrids for offspring. They found that large losses of sea ice removed continent-sized barriers against interbreeding. The article describes how this can sometimes create new species, but is most often harmful to existing species. "We found 28 examples where hybridization might occur if formerly disjunct lineages are brought into contact by sea ice loss," one researcher said (Juneau Empire, 1/18/11).

Arctic Sea Ice Controls the Release of Mercury

An international research team has recently highlighted a new role that sea ice plays in the mercury cycle in the Arctic. By blocking sunlight, sea ice could influence the breakdown and transfer into the atmosphere of toxic forms of mercury present in the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean. These results suggest that climate plays a key role in the mercury cycle and that the release of mercury into the atmosphere could be accentuated by the melting of Arctic sea ice (Science Daily, 1/20/11).

Shrinking Sea Ice Sets Early Winter Record

Arctic sea ice covered the smallest area ever recorded by satellite for the month of December - largely due to record decreases near Hudson Bay, Baffin Island, and Greenland, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. How big is the loss so far? It's as though the average December ice cover has disappeared from an area as large as California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Idaho combined (Alaska Dispatch, 1/5/11).

Inuit Lives and Diets Change As Ice Shifts

Climate change is altering diets and lifestyles among Inuit people, according to a scientist who has studied the human face of global warming in the Arctic. Among his most striking findings was that increasing difficulty in hunting for traditional food was leading to much more junk food in the Inuit diet. He also noted that the shifting ice made hunting and traveling more dangerous. "There are social implications because the respect for elders has been maintained by their wisdom about when and where to travel on the ice," he said. "But now elders will say it's safe to travel to a particular place at a certain time, and people have problems there. That undermines the traditional knowledge of the elders" (CNN, 12/30/10).

Climate Change Caused Rural Alaska Power Outage

Savoonga, a community on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, is seeking disaster help from the state. A severe storm in late December sprayed the village with salt water that coated and froze on electrical transmission lines, causing power outages that lasted for days. The Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) concluded that a "lack of sea ice was a major contributor" to the power outage. Winter winds carried sea salt from waters that are normally covered with ice, coating and freezing to power equipment. "Having had no prior experience similar to this in the 42 years that AVEC has been serving rural Alaska, we are trying to understand exactly what happened," an AVEC executive said (ADN, 1/4/11).  

Castration Seen as Climate Change Aid for Reindeer

Indigenous Sami peoples in the Arctic may have found a way to help their reindeer herds cope with climate change: more castration. Research by Sami experts shows that sterilized males can grow larger and so are better at digging for food - as Arctic temperatures vary more, thawing snow often refreezes to form thick ice over lichen pastures. Neutered males are more able to break through ice with their hooves or antlers, and seem more willing than other males to move aside and share food with calves that can die of starvation in bad freeze-thaw winters (Reuters, 1/26/11).

Dueling bills to block federal climate change rules have landed in the Senate, signaling interest by conservative Republicans and centrist Democrats in curtailing the Environmental Protection Agency. But it's not clear whether the presence of two measures creates political momentum for halting greenhouse gas regulations, or instead reveals divides among EPA foes that can't be bridged (The Hill, 1/31/11).

One of the most worrisome national security threats of climate change is the spread of disease, among both people and animals, U.S. intelligence and health officials say. But more than a decade after such concerns were first raised by U.S. intelligence agencies, significant gaps remain in the health surveillance and response network - not just in developing nations, but in the United States as well. U.S. intelligence officials list the spread of disease as one of their top four climate change-related security concerns. Outbreaks of disease can destabilize foreign countries, especially developing nations, overtax the U.S. military, and undermine social cohesion and the economy at home (Vancouver Sun, 1/13/11).

A new report found that the CIA's Center on Climate Change and National Security is not prepared for threats posed by the changing climate. The research team reported that the United States is ill-prepared to cope with environmental issues that can destabilize places of interest both domestically and internationally. According to the report, the CIA lacks critical information that can help predict future climate change disasters, which in large part is due to skepticism from conservative lawmakers and pressure to slash the intelligence budget (Washington Post, 1/11/11).