Climate Change

Northern ecosystems are seeing some of the planet’s most sweeping changes from climate warming. For some animals and plants, that has posed a threat to their very existence and, for humans, a couple complicated questions: Can we — and should we — do anything to save them?

In Alaska, one area where land managers and ecologists are wrestling with those questions is the boreal forest, home to spruce and birch trees, wetlands and many species of animals. But the boreal is warming more rapidly than anywhere on Earth and seeing more intense wildfires, invasive beetles decimating wide swaths and changing rainfall patterns that’ve caused some parts to shift to grasslands.

A story in the spring issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review by reporter Lois Parshley, in collaboration with the climate-focused magazine Grist, explores these issues of whether and when humans should accept, resist or direct climate change’s impacts.

And, Parshley says, there’s a lot at stake in the boreal forest.

Listen:

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Lois Parshley: The boreal forest is one of the world’s largest biomes. And it is filled with both trees and birds and many other different kinds of species that you can think about like pieces of a biological puzzle. The forest itself encompasses about a third of the world’s forests, but it also holds a lot of freshwater. When trees draw water up from the soil and into their needles, it can billow out as vapor when the needle pores open in the sun. And this is a process called transpiration. And it actually helps the boreal forest make its own rain. And collectively, these kinds of exhalations also make the boreal a really important worldwide source of oxygen. Some scientists even think it might change the planet’s air circulation.

Casey Grove: As climate change progresses and the planet gets warmer and warmer, what are we seeing happen to the boreal forest in Alaska?

Lois Parshley: So spruce trees are, in a lot of ways, made to burn. Their seeds are released after wildfires. But we’re seeing fires come back too quickly, while trees are too young to produce cones. And in many places, black spruce is now being replaced by trees like aspen and birch. And all of these trees are simultaneously confronting insects and new diseases. So in some places, trees aren’t re-growing at all. The landscape is actually in the process of converting to grassland. You might have seen these changes if you’ve driven the Parks Highway recently, around Cantwell, many spruce trees have died off and you can see them now standing dead on on either side of the highway.

Casey Grove: One thing I thought was interesting about your story, I got a sense that it was less about, you know, maybe we need to change what we’re doing to stop it and more about just kind of acknowledging what’s actually happening out there. Am I on the right track there?

Lois Parshley: Yeah, so wildlife managers are increasingly acknowledging that we’ve reached a point where, in some places, there’s simply no way to keep conditions as they were. And they’re now asking some pretty big questions about how much we should intervene. You know, it sounds deceptively simple, but is climate change something to be resisted, accepted, or directed? And these are terms that the National Park Service, for example, are using to try to make more realistic conservation goals. So accepting climate change in this instance might mean that we’re accepting that spruce trees might not regrow after wildfires. Or directing that kind of change might mean introducing bison to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge to try and help make new grasslands healthier. So across the country, scientists are now asking these kinds of questions and considering introducing species to new habitats where they’d never been previously, in order to help them try to avoid extinction.

Casey Grove: I mean, if if we lose the boreal forest or it’s significantly reduced, what’s at stake there?

Lois Parshley: Yeah, I think one of the most helpful answers I heard to that question in my interviews was talking to Jill Johnstone. She is a researcher who’s been working with the boreal forest for many years. And she told me that she sees its recent transformations like a big ship changing its course. It happens very gradually at first, and then you never really see the consequences further as time goes on. And her perspective was that there’s very little that can truly devastate an ecosystem. But those changes might not always be in a direction that we like. The forest itself maybe will just convert to grassland, and that’s something that will just happen. The value judgment about whether that’s a good or a bad thing comes from from us.

Casey Grove: Yeah, I think that was the thing that resonated for me in that story was it was like, “climate change beyond good and evil” or something like that, you know, that, like you said, like the value judgment placed on that change or what you get after that change is sort of on us.

Lois Parshley: Yeah, I think it’s important to distinguish there what we’re saying when we say “value judgment,” because, certainly to species that are depending on those ecosystems being spruce trees, those species aren’t going to do well. Humans have always had a significant impact on the environments they inhabit. But that has looked different ways throughout the course of human history. And in this moment, where we’re seeing rapid change, seems like a really good time to be asking questions about the landscapes we live in and their relationships and our impact on both of those things.

A coalition of environmental groups has filed a legal petition with the federal government to reconsider how the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System contributes to climate change and to begin phasing the 800-mile line out of existence.

The government first authorized the pipeline right-of-way across federal land in the 1970s, sparking an economic boom that transformed the state. The government reauthorized the pipeline in 2002. But a lot of new information about climate change has come to light in the past two decades that merits a reconsideration, the groups say.

“The federal government has a lot of both responsibility and authority to address the climate crisis, and that’s what we’re asking that they do,” Kay Brown, Arctic policy director for Pacific Environment, said in a phone interview.

The other groups making the petition are Center for Biological Diversity, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

They’re asking the Department of Interior to begin scoping a new environmental analysis for the pipeline, which isn’t due for a renewal until 2034, and to draft a plan to dismantle the pipeline and restore the land corridor.

The pipeline has transported 18 billion barrels of North Slope crude since 1977. Brown said the earlier studies of the pipeline didn’t consider the greenhouse gas emissions that resulted once the oil was refined into fuel and burned.

“There’s a lot that we need to be doing, and this is one of the tools in the toolbox to look at the impacts, figure out remedial actions and start a phasedown so that we can transition the state off of fossil fuels,” said.

Brown is a former director of the state’s Division of Oil and Gas. In the 1980s, she supervised leasing and development of North Slope oilfields. She says little was known then about what was driving climate change.

“I’ve changed my perspective a great deal over the years on the need for — the necessity of getting off fossil fuels,” she said.

The petition also says that thawing permafrost is undermining the integrity of the pipeline, which the government should evaluate.

The Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. issued a written response saying the pipeline is in excellent operational condition. The company says it ensures safety by monitoring, maintaining and modifying the infrastructure in an unending cycle.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy responded with derision on social media. He called the petitioners “nuts” and accused them of wanting to destroy Alaska more than they want to protect the environment.

Brown said Alaska could be rich with renewable energy, but the transition has to begin soon.

Linnea Lentfer grew up in Gustavus, a town of 600 people tucked into the vast, scenic wilderness of Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast Alaska.

Her father first set eyes on Gustavus on a high school biology trip, visiting from nearby Juneau.

“[He] fell in love with the place and then stayed for the community,” Lentfer said. “And that’s how we ended up in Gus.”

Lentfer was raised with a deep sense of connection to the environment around her. But she said climate change is making her hometown unrecognizable. Glaciers surrounding the town are rapidly retreating. Drought and warming oceans threaten the salmon her family fishes for each summer.

“There’s this really eerie, scary question of salmon,” she said. “Whether runs are going to come back.”

Lentfer is 20 and now a student at Carleton College in Minnesota. She said she’d like to return to Gustavus to raise a family one day, but worries that the things she loves best about the community are disappearing.

“There’s no way that I can imagine that being a realistic thing, that I would be able to raise children the same way I was raised with how fast things are changing,” she said.

Lentfer and seven other Alaskans between the ages of 11 and 22 are plaintiffs in a new climate lawsuit against the state. Their case, Sagoonick v. State II, argues that the Alaska constitution includes a right to a livable climate.

They’re asking the court to block the state-backed proposal for a massive natural gas pipeline, known as the Alaska LNG project. Alaska leaders have argued over the pipeline for four decades, and its $44 billion price tag has so far prevented it from moving forward. But Andrew Welle, an attorney representing the plaintiffs said the state shouldn’t even be pursuing it.

“This project would absolutely explode Alaska’s emissions at a time when scientists are telling us we need to be moving exactly in the opposite direction and reducing climate pollution as fast as possible,” he said.

Welle is a senior attorney for Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit representing the eight young Alaskans.

The Oregon-based nonprofit has filed dozens of lawsuits around the country on behalf of young people demanding more action on climate change.

The strategy has had mixed results. Our Children’s Trust won a similar lawsuit in Montanalast summer. But just last month federal judges dismissed its landmark case Juliana v. United States.

Alaska is experiencing climate change twice as fast as the rest of the country. At the same time, fossil fuel production has been the key driver of its economy for more than 50 years. The oil and gas industry supports thousands of jobs and in recent years, provided half of the state’s annual revenue.

Leila Kimbrell, head of the Alaska Resource Development Council, said the right to develop natural gas and other resources was written into the constitution when Alaska became a state.

“We have a lot of natural resources, and the agreement was that the state would rely on the development of its natural resources so as not to become wholly reliant on the federal government,” Kimbrell said.

In a statement, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor called the lawsuit “misguided.” He argued that Alaska’s strict environmental standards make it a better, more responsible place to produce natural gas than elsewhere in the world.

A spokesperson for the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, a named defendant in the lawsuit, said the project carries “substantial environmental, economic, and energy security benefits” for Alaska and said AGDC would be reviewing the claims.

Our Children’s Trust has filed two similar lawsuits in Alaska in the last 15 years. Both were dismissed by the state supreme court.

Bruce Botelho, former state attorney general under Govs. Walter Hickel and Tony Knowles said this case has a better chance of making it to trial, because it targets a specific fossil fuel project.

“My sense is that it will survive a motion to dismiss,” he said. “How much farther it will get is hard to say.”

The Alaska constitution directs the state to both develop and conserve natural resources for the maximum benefit of its people. It also protects the “natural right to life [and] liberty.”

Botelho said between those two protections he thinks there is a good argument to be made that the state constitution does provide the right to a livable climate. But even if the court recognizes that right, that doesn’t mean it would stop all of Alaska’s fossil fuel development.

“No right in the constitution is absolute,” he said. “What is for the maximum benefit of the people is a determination that must be made, first and foremost, by the legislature and carried out by the executive.”

He said even if the court ruled to block the Alaska LNG project, it will be up to the legislature to balance future climate concerns and resource development.

Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said regardless of outcome, this case and others brought by Our Children’s Trust are pushing public opinion on climate policy forward.

“Just by virtue of bringing these cases, mobilizing public attention, putting the impacts and the issues of climate change front and center … I think that these cases have been very high impact, even where they have lost in court.”

Sagoonick v. State II is awaiting action in state superior court. Our Children’s Trust is preparing for trial on another youth climate suit in Hawaii at the end of this month.

Baked with the around-the-clock summer sunlight and regularly peppered with lightning strikes, the Yukon Flats region in eastern Interior Alaska is regularly set ablaze with fires that are considered part of the natural forest cycle. Standard practice is to let them burn out on their own, unless they threaten people, their homes or other economically valuable property.

That is set to change this summer.

At the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, managers are experimenting with a fire plan aimed at protecting the sequestered carbon on the boreal forest floor and in the frozen soil below. In the 8-million-acre refuge, 1.6 million acres are now moved from the “limited” protection category, the lowest priority firefighting priority and usually applied to fires that are merely monitored, to the “modified” category, the next-higher priority.

The point of the limited firefighting is to put the brakes on what has been a troubling trend in the world’s boreal forests: a transition from their function as sinks that absorb atmospheric carbon into sources that pump more climate-warming gases into the air.

If carried out, the practice of fighting fires to prevent carbon emissions would be a first not just for Alaska but likely for the world’s boreal forests, said Jimmy Fox, the refuge’s superintendent.

“There’s not been any land manager or land management agency that has made the decision that I’ve made,” Fox said. “It’s deemed a pretty radical idea. It’s controversial.”

Even if it is radical, the plan is also modest.

If a wildfire breaks out on any of those newly designated “modified” response areas of the refuge, the plan calls for smokejumpers to be dispatched to try to limit the spread. It will not be the large-scale effort that is typically mounted in areas assigned higher priorities for firefighting, Fox said. Rather than stay as part of a big firefighting army, smokejumpers would be given 72 hours to contain the fire, and then they would be pulled out to work at higher-priority sites. The plan would be in effect only through early July, depending on the way events unfold, Fox said.

The plan, created with the help of Fairbanks-based permafrost expert Torre Jorgensen, emphasizes the areas of the refuge with the most thaw-vulnerable sites: those with yedoma, the term for permafrost that is at least 50% ice. It would have been used last year, Fox said, but there were no applicable refuge fires in 2023.

Fox has been among those pushing for firefighting to prevent carbon releases from the boreal forest, and he admits that he has “a bee in my bonnet for climate change.” The Yukon Flats suppression plan is justified by new scientific findings about boreal wildfires, he said.

“There’s more and more research coming out making it so clear that there’s so much at stake here,” he said.

 

Vast stores of carbon

The world’s boreal forests are estimated to hold about a third of the world’s terrestrial carbon. While fires have been part of the boreal forest cycle for millennia, increased frequency and intensity means that wildfires that used to be considered normal and even beneficial can now cause harm. The most intense fires are burning duff, the soft mat of vegetative material on the forest floor, and — more worryingly — expose and thaw the permafrost the duff would have protected.

“The thicker it is, the more it’s insulating the permafrost,” he said. But when the duff burns, the insulation is gone.

Fire experts will be paying a lot of attention to what happens with this pilot project in the Yukon Flats, said Randi Jandt, an ecologist with the Alaska Wildfire Science Consortium.

The standard practice up to now, Jandt said, is for wildland firefighting to be focused on protecting resources of local and regional value. In the Lower 48, that includes timber, with a goal of protecting local or regional economic values, she said. The Yukon Flats firefighting goal represents a significant shift, she said.

“It’s a new concept for managers to even think of carbon as a value at risk,” she said. For the most part, preventing carbon emissions is about addressing global values, not local or regional values, she said. “They would be doing it to help the whole planet, and that’s different.”

A big question concerns cost. Is it worthwhile to deploy firefighting resources in areas where people and property are not at risk?

Researchers from the Woodwell Climate Research Center, who helped craft the Yukon Flats pilot project, say it is. They have penciled out the added fire-response costs and, for comparison, the costs of other actions that would reduce carbon emissions.

In a 2022 study published in the journal Science Advances, the Woodwell researchers used data from Alaska firefighting efforts mounted between 2007 and 2015 in calculations that found that increasing expenditures in Alaska by 1% reduced boreal fire size by 0.21% and that the direct firefighting cost of avoiding release of a metric ton of carbon dioxide was $12.63.

That compares favorably to the costs of reducing carbon emissions through solar arrays and offshore wind energy, the study found. Not taking the extra fire-suppression action, in contrast, would make it more difficult for the world to keep global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the scientists found.

Boosting suppression to limit Alaska boreal wildfires to their historic levels would avoid the release of 0.89 gigatons to 3.87 gigatons of carbon dioxide through 2050, at an average annual response cost of $696 million per year, on average, according to the Woodwell scientists’ calculations.

A related study, by some of the same Woodwell scientists and colleagues from Tufts University, uses Alaska data to project boreal firefighting needs through the end of the century. To prevent massive carbon emission from boreal forests, spending on firefighting might have to be five to 10 times as much as it is now, said the study, published in 2022 in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The cost may be worthwhile, said the study: “When the alternative is skyrocketing carbon emissions with a social cost of billions of dollars per year, increased fire management may be a prudent and essential investment in the years to come.”

For now, Alaska gets considerably less wildfire funding than what the scientists consider necessary to control carbon emissions.

Despite holding a fifth of the nation’s land mass and producing about half of the nation’s wildfire emissions, Alaska gets only a tiny sliver of annual federal wildfire funding, scientists and fire managers say.

Annual federal firefighting costs averaged over $2.8 billion from 2018 to 2022, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In comparison, in 2019 – a year with the long-burning Swan Lake Fire on the Kenai Peninsula and other serious wildfires – about $300 million was provided from both the state and federal government for firefighting, according to experts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

While the refuge is gearing up for a new type of fire management to stem climate change, Gwich’in tribal members want to achieve the same goal by reviving a tradition.

The Gwich’in Council International, which represents Gwich’in Athabascan people in Alaska and Canada, and the Yukon Flats-based Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments are promoting cultural burning, a practice that is, in various forms, part of Indigenous traditions around North America.

The Gwich’in practice involves controlled fires lit in open meadows areas during the spring, when exposed plants are dry but the ground below them remains snowy and frozen, said Ed Alexander of Fort Yukon, the Gwich’in Council International’s chair.  As carried out in the past, the practice created breaks that limited the spread of big summer fires once they arrived.

Full-out suppression, which is costly, is not desirable because it interferes with the natural cycle and is “not great for forest health,” Alexander said. But the early season mitigation, as the Gwich’in International Council is advocating, is seen as a low-cost, low-risk way to keep wildfires at manageable levels once the summer heat and lightning strikes arrive, he said.

“In order to have that situation here, humans need to be involved in our landscape like we have for thousands of years,” Alexander said. Keeping wildfires at manageable levels will do more than protect permafrost and avoid excessive carbon emissions, he said. It might also protect human health by keeping the air cleaner, he said. The hope is that “we don’t get late-season fires where you end up with smoke filling up Fairbanks from July through the end of August,” he said.

Wildfires have yet to arrive this summer in the Yukon Flats region. They usually break out there in late June, Fox said.

So far, the biggest Alaska wildfire this season is a tundra burn in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Western Alaska. That fire was estimated at 1,890 acres as of Sunday.

In Canada, which had a record wildfire season last year, several fires are burning in the boreal region. One fire in northern British Columbia prompted evacuations last month.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

Inventor Lance McMullan has a beautiful house on Douglas Island. But he spends almost all of his time in the garage. 

On one side of the room there’s camping gear, a set of winter tires and a small couch. On the other, an enormous 3D printer and dozens of boxes and garbage bags filled with pieces of bright yellow plastic. 

He reached into one of the bags and pulled out a cracked triangular fin. 

“Every part has failed at some point or another,” McMullan said. “I just stay in this room working for days.”

All that time and discarded plastic is a testament to the device hanging from a rope in the center of the room — a sleek tube with a large rotor on one end. It turns powerful ocean currents into renewable electricity. 

“Anyone who has met me in the last 14 years, this is all they have heard about. It’s all I can think about,” McMullan said. “Like, I can’t look at the moon without thinking about another tidal cycle passing.”

McMullan isn’t the only one who’s excited. Tidal power could be an alternative to burning fossil fuels like diesel and natural gas, which is driving human-caused climate change. 

And the prospect of tapping into ocean energy has received a lot of buzz and a lot of federal money in Alaska. Especially in Cook Inlet, where proposed large scale tidal projects could eventually power thousands of homes. 

McMullan is starting smaller. His company, Sitkana, makes small tidal generators that are perfect for individual fishing boats and liveaboards. He hopes they can revolutionize ocean power the way rooftop panels revolutionized solar power.

“It’s just so much power, and it’s not being touched,” McMullan said.  “I feel like I have almost a responsibility to bring it to reality.”

Finding a niche for tidal power

Alaska has long been considered the ideal place for developing tidal power. Steep fjords and inlets along the coast amplify the natural rise and fall of tides. When water rushes into those channels, it’s concentrated into a strong current that’s perfect for generating electricity. 

“It’s kind of hard to go anywhere in Alaska without tripping over a good tidal energy site,” said  Brian Polagye, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington and a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory.

Because water is so dense, ocean power could be more potent than wind energy. And because tides are consistent and predictable, energy drawn from them could be more reliable than solar, which fluctuates with the weather and the seasons.

But it’s far less popular. That’s mostly because it costs a lot more. 

“If tidal power was the cheapest form of energy, it would be as ubiquitous as a solar panel,” Polagye said.

Standardized designs and mass manufacturing of parts has drastically reduced the cost of solar and wind energy technology over time. So when a tidal project tries to tap into a large grid like the Railbelt, it has to compete with those much cheaper alternatives.

But Polagye says tidal energy could find success by exploiting unique niches in the market. In Alaska, that might mean building in remote places where the grid is less robust. 

He points to the village of Igiugig, which is experimenting with a similar turbine that generates electricity using currents from the Kvichak River. 

“The turbine there is really the best source of power. It’s competing with diesel that’s flown in,” Polagye said. “The fact that it is more expensive than other sources that would be on the grid doesn’t matter if you don’t have a grid.”

Sitkana’s tidal turbines may be best suited to diesel-dependent coastal communities like Angoon, Hoonah and Kake in Southeast Alaska, where energy prices are much higher than in the Lower 48. 

Those places have explored solar and hydropower, but large utility projects take a lot of time and money to build. And as communities adopt things like electric vehicles and electric heat pumps in an effort to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions, demand for renewable energy keeps growing. 

Experts say decarbonization will likely require a mix of renewables. McMullan believes that mix should include tidal power. 

The Chinook 3.0

His effort to make ocean energy accessible began while he was working as a deckhand on a troller in Sitka. From the back of the boat, he would watch the hooks bobbing through water and imagine a tidal generator that could be dragged along like that. 

“It was that summer I started sketching designs,” McMullan said. “But I realized I had no idea what they were or if I could make them work. I didn’t know anything about fluids or mechanical engineering.”

So he went back to school to study engineering, then spent time as a maintenance technician building wind turbines in the Lower 48 before returning to Alaska.

It took him years to develop Sitkana’s current prototype, the Chinook 3.0. The small tidal turbine has a few key differences compared to other tidal generation designs. 

While many tidal projects are anchored to the ocean floor, the Chinook 3.0 is free-floating and portable. It weighs less than a hundred pounds.

“It swims through the water sort of like a fish,” McMullan said. “And installing these is no different than dropping an anchor.” 

The Chinook 3.0 can be hooked up to a small crane or pulley on the back of the boat, then lowered when the tide is rising or falling. 

Tidal currents spin the rotor, which turns a generator inside the body of the turbine to create 1.6 kilowatts of electricity. That’s enough to meet one person’s daily needs, assuming the generator stays in the water for most of the day. 

So a family might need multiple generators. But at just over $1,000 per kilowatt, the cost of energy is relatively low — comparable to the price of wind power. That’s thanks in large part to the Chinook 3.0’s plastic construction. 

Using plastic might also be a solution to maintenance problems, another common hurdle for tidal power. The ocean’s powerful currents and corrosive seawater are harsh on tidal turbines. Constant repairs can disrupt power and challenge communities that might not have the expertise or manpower to keep the turbines running. So Sitkana plans to let the ocean do its worst.

“What we’re doing is accepting that these are going to get destroyed,” McMullan said. 

When a generator breaks, they’ll pull it out, replace it, and recycle the plastic from the broken unit. 

Soon, McMullan will send the Chinook 3.0 prototype across the country, to a tidal testing facility in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. There, they’ll monitor the turbine in the water to see how fish and other wildlife respond to it. 

“But we’re getting very close. It’s here, it works,” McMullan said. “Now it’s just about scaling it and getting it out there and producing the power.”

Sitkana expects that the generators will hit the market sometime next year, for about $2,000 each. 

Correction: A previous version of this story referred to the price of energy in cost per kilowatt hours. Cost is measured per kilowatt.

On a foggy afternoon in April, scientists Matt Druckenmiller and Josh Jones revved a pair of snow machines to the edge of the shorefast sea ice, the wide sheet of ice connected to the coastline off Utqiaġvik.

As they neared the end of the trail, the sun broke through the fog, illuminating miles of chunky, translucent blue ice blocks.

“Turned out to be quite an afternoon. It’s nice out here,” Druckenmiller observed. He and Jones parked at the end of a whaling trail, one of the paths that local whalers carve every year to reach the open water of the Chukchi Sea.

For Druckenmiller, who has been studying this ice since he was a graduate student in 2007, the landscape of jagged ice shards and boulders seemed flatter than usual.

“This year, there’s a lot fewer grounded ridges than you would maybe normally see. But there are some out here,” he said.

Grounded ridges are tall, thick formations anchored deep in the water below. Ice formations vary from year to year but as climate change progresses, whalers say the big ridges are harder to find.

This ice landscape supports Utqiaġvik’s annual spring bowhead whale hunt, a vital part of the community’s subsistence hunting calendar. And it’s changing fast. Sea ice extent in the Arctic last year was the sixth lowest on record since 1979.

Utqiaġvik’s shorefast ice formed within the last six months, and in another few months, it’s likely to completely disappear.

Multi-year ice, sea ice that sticks around through the summer and into the next winter is also becoming rare.

“Last I remember was maybe 2021,” said Jones. “There was a small piece of multi-year ice off town.”

Every spring, Druckenmiller and Jones spend a few weeks in Utqiaġvik monitoring ice thickness along the sprawling network of whaling trails the community builds and relies on. The data they collect becomes a helpful tool to understand each year’s ice conditions — and how climate change is shaping the ice long-term.

Druckenmiller, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, and Jones, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, are with a UAF initiative called the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub. AAOKH compiles data and observations from local Indigenous knowledge holders and scientists to provide coastal Arctic communities an ongoing record of how the environment is changing.

AAOKH’s research is meant to center Indigenous knowledge and support the priorities of local communities, like subsistence hunting and fishing.

“Before, research was not necessarily trying to meet community needs. It was more science for the sake of science,” said Roberta Tuurraq Glenn-Borade, AAOKH project coordinator. Glenn-Borade, who grew up in Utqiaġvik, spoke to Alaska Public Media in December, after AAOKH’s research was included in NOAA’s 2023 Arctic Report Card.

“I think that’s one thing that AAOKH has made a difference in, to really listen and understand what we can do today to start meeting those needs,” she said.

Druckenmiller and Jones’ project monitoring the ice along whaling trails began in the early 2000’s, when longtime North Slope Borough wildlife biologist Craig George partnered with local whaling captain Warren Matumeak to map trails and record ice conditions.

More than two decades later, whaling trail data collection is still going strong. That afternoon on the ice, Jones opened a plastic tote tied to a sled behind one of the snow machines and pressed a few buttons. Inside, an electromagnetic conduction device began to chime.

“You can think of it as kind of similar to a metal detector in a way,” Druckenmiller said.

As it’s dragged down the trail in the sled, the device emits electromagnetic waves to calculate how thick the ice is. Later, Druckenmiller and Jones download the data and compile it into a map of the community’s whaling trails, color coded for ice depth – blue lines indicate the thickest ice, red lines show the thinnest, at just two feet or less.

They send the maps out on social media, email them to whaling captains and drop printed copies around town.

Druckenmiller says there’s value in maintaining a long term record of the ice to track climate change. But this science has a more immediate impact too.

“We also really appreciate being able to provide something to the whaling community that’s helpful,” he said. “It facilitates a relationship, it facilitates sharing knowledge, and that enables us all I think, to better understand the ice.”

Billy Adams, a longtime whaler and sea ice expert in Utqiaġvik, agrees.

“People are excited when the maps are out,” he said. Adams also serves as an observer for AAOKH.

Whaling crews spend a lot of time scouting the ice each spring, but Adams said the maps are a helpful tool for determining where the thickest ice is. They also serve as a resource in emergencies, to make it easier to locate crews on the ice.

Adams and other whalers have helped support the mapping efforts for nearly two decades by sharing sea ice knowledge and identifying trails. Adams said it’s a good example of science and traditional knowledge partnering to protect subsistence resources.

“When you bridge science with local experts, using Indigenous people, I think it’s a way to find the truth,” he said. “That can be fairly done – equitable research involving Indigenous communities around the Arctic.”

Druckenmiller and Jones’ maps are just one tool to provide whalers with information. A radar station and webcam set up on top of an Utqiaġvik office building in 2008 provide snapshots of the ice that crews can check to monitor how conditions are changing.

Jones said they know these tools are helpful because they get a flood of texts and emails whenever the site crashes.

“We don’t know how many people are using it until it goes down,” Jones said. “And then we hear from a bunch of people.”

Arctic sea ice is rapidly disappearing due to climate change. In the last 10 years Adams said he’s seen dramatic changes, from thinner ice to ice-free seas well into the fall and early winter.

Druckenmiller and Jones’ maps are just one tool to provide whalers with information. A radar station and webcam set up on top of an Utqiaġvik office building in 2008 provide snapshots of the ice that crews can check to monitor how conditions are changing.

Jones said they know these tools are helpful because they get a flood of texts and emails whenever the site crashes.

“We don’t know how many people are using it until it goes down,” Jones said. “And then we hear from a bunch of people.”

Arctic sea ice is rapidly disappearing due to climate change. In the last 10 years Adams said he’s seen dramatic changes, from thinner ice to ice-free seas well into the fall and early winter.

Asisaun Toovak, mayor of the city of Utqiaġvik and a whaler herself, remembers the shorefast ice stretching eight miles wide.

“Now, it’s maybe half of that,” she said.

Toovak and other whalers say it’s harder to find the thick, flat ice crews rely on to support the 40 or 50 ton bowhead whales they pull in. She said tools like the whaling trail maps and radar images are part of a process of adaptation that help make whaling “more efficient and more safe.”

“We’re not sitting here, hoping the ice doesn’t start to melt. We’re sitting here, first thinking about how are we going to adapt to that environment?” she said. “How are we going to continue food sovereignty and our cultural practices by adapting to that change?”

Toovak said she doesn’t worry her community will lose the ability to hunt bowheads, even as the sea ice declines. She said they’ll find a way to adapt. They’ve been whaling for 10,000 years, and she expects they’ll be whaling for another 10,000.