Climate Change

The common theme among policymakers and scientists meeting in Fairbanks this week is that the Arctic is warming at an accelerating pace, and climate change is inevitable and irreversible. What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, and what happens in the mid-latitudes also affects the Arctic.

Steve Ginnis of the Fairbanks Native Association switched back and forth between Gwich’in and English as he welcomed a thousand people from 30 countries during International Arctic Assembly Day on Tuesday. Ginnis said climate change is affecting their way of life.

“It’s not a myth like some people might claim. It’s real. It really affects us up here, big time,” he said. “Our fish, returning of our king salmon, is affected with the warming of the ocean, ocean water among other things.”

Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott said his eldest son, a lifelong commercial fisherman in Yakutat, can’t reconcile his early experiences with current weather and ocean conditions.

“It doesn’t work anymore. He said, ‘I feel disoriented in my own place.’ He said, ‘All of those sixth senses that you brought to bear from your total work experience in this field really don’t fit anymore.’”

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Robert Papp, who is the State Department’s special representative for the Arctic, quoted a naval admiral who warned there is no sharp boundary line between safety and fatal danger. There’s no such thing as a blinking red light that warns ship captains before they head into bad weather.

“So, the analogy is there’s no little red light that’s going to go on and tell us when the Arctic has gone too far and is unrecoverable,” Papp said. “It’s going to be shaded. If there was a little red light, that red light is probably going on right now. How long must we wait to take appropriate action to make sure that we preserve this environment?”

Ambassador David Balton, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries, said Arctic nations have informally committed to not allowing commercial fishing in the ice-free waters of the Arctic Ocean. But a donut hole exists in the center of the ocean that is outside of any country’s jurisdiction. Other non-Arctic countries may want to fish there, soon.

“At least from the point of view of the United States, what we are trying to do is get all of these players to agree to a binding regime (as) enshrined in the principles of this declaration,” Balton said. “There should be no commercial fishing in this area until there is adequate science, and until there is some framework for actually managing the fisheries in place. I don’t know where this negotiation will take us. As we stand here today, this is an unanswered question.”

Inuuteg Holm Olsen is a University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate who now serves as minister plenipotentiary for Greenland representation at the Danish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

“The policy-science interface quickly can become a sensitive one,” Olsen said. It can either become too political if you have opposing agendas, which can be a hindrance to adopt policy in combating climate change. When we talk about the Arctic, there is a multitude of layers with a sizable presence of indigenous peoples that has to be incorporated in new ways of handling issues today.”

Olsen said scientists and policymakers should not work in isolation. They need to build trust to engage each other.

Hotels are booked up solid in Fairbanks this week, and rental cars are hard to find. Over a thousand people from 30 countries are in the Golden Heart City for a meeting of Arctic scientists and policymakers called Arctic Science Summit Week.

One highlight is a meeting of the Arctic Council, a multinational governmental forum created to address the Arctic’s pressing issues.

“Good public policy, including good foreign policy, which is the main work of the Arctic Council, must be based on facts on the ground, which is to say it must be based in reality,” said Julia Gourley, the United States’ senior Arctic official on the Arctic Council.

Gourley said they rely on good, solid science to tell them what is really happening in the Arctic. That science helps shape their recommendations that go to key policymakers in various Arctic nations.

It’s not just environmental science. Gourley said the Arctic Council recently heard about the latest in social science on the economy of the north, living conditions and human development.

“These kinds of social science studies, which have shaped the Arctic Council agenda over the years, really have contributed much to how we decide what we’re going to work on in the council,” she said. “And the social science work in particular has contributed to very real topics in the council such as mental wellness and suicide prevention, reindeer husbandry, the role of salmon as a key food source for the Arctic people, and other sociological aspects of living in the Arctic.”

The Arctic Council includes representatives from eight Arctic member nations and six permanent participant delegations from various indigenous groups. The permanent participants can provide input and advise the council on policy issues. But they do not have a vote.

The Arctic Council’s recommendations aren’t binding on participating governments.

There are nearly two dozen observers from other European and Asian countries, and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations who are also allowed to sit in on council meetings.

“I would argue that with the Arctic Council there’s a lot more dialogue going on with the nations that are engaged in Arctic dialogue than perhaps anywhere else,” said University of Alaska Fairbanks Vice Chancellor Mike Sfraga.

He’s leading the creation of a new Center for Arctic Policy Studies. Sfraga said the Arctic Council’s work does not seem to be colored by other worldwide conflicts and disputes like Crimea and Syria.

“There are personal relationships, there are nation relationships that still have yet to be damaged by other international issues going on,” he said. “The tensions are there. But in the north there seems to just be a very different dynamic, and it is driven — of course — by resource development. But it is also driven by the fact that we have people reliant on the land, it’s a place where we have traditionally cooperated before, and there just seems to be a willingness in the Arctic Council, a consensus-building body, that we will leave the Arctic alone, as much as you can, from other international dynamics.”

The Arctic Council started its three-day meeting behind closed doors Tuesday at UAF.

Also Tuesday, the Model Arctic Council wrapped up a seven-day meeting. Over 60 students from 13 countries crafted position papers and drafted policy recommendations on cruise ship tourism, managing maritime traffic in the Arctic, improving access to running water and sewer, and reducing suicide among various indigenous groups. Model Arctic Council members were surprised when they learned that their final paper, called the Fairbanks Declaration, will become the starting point for discussions among Arctic Council members next year.

The Arctic Science Summit Week also includes hundreds of scientists from around the world who are coordinating research on the effects of climate change on the rapidly changing Arctic.

One man in Shishmaref is using a drone to keep track of sea ice conditions this winter. He’s using social media to share the footage he collects in an effort to raise awareness about the effects of climate change on Alaska’s Northwest coast.

Last fall, Dennis Davis bought a drone.

“One of the reasons why I got it was in the springtime, once everybody starts getting ready to go out ugruk hunting, you can’t really see what the ice is going to be like out there,” he said.

He said sea ice conditions have become less reliable and weather more unpredictable for his fellow seal and walrus hunters in recent years, so footage he collects with the drone “is like insurance.”

“I can shoot either a video or I can shoot still pictures and blow them up and look at the ice that way I can find a better trail for everybody to go on,” he said.

Davis can legally fly his drone as high as 400 feet. He can also capture images from more than a mile away. He shares it all through accounts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. He said the first photo he posted in November reached more than 14,000 people, but since then the attention has dwindled.

“At least, it’s getting out there and people are recognizing and seeing what we are going through,” he said.

Davis said he’ll continue to post his footage. He wants to stoke a bigger conversation about winter storms and coastal erosion in Western Alaska.

“I feel it’s a personal mission of mine,” he said.

This summer, he plans to travel more than 100 miles of coastline with his drone.

“From Cape Espenberg all the way down past (Shishmaref), just to see what the coastal erosion is up to – how bad it is,” he said.

Davis has considered using his photos and video to start a fundraising effort for the residents of Shishmaref and other villages seriously threatened by climate change, but he hasn’t quite figured out how.

After Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first official visit to Washington D.C. Thursday, he and President Barack Obama released an agreement on the Arctic, energy and climate. Alaska’s senators aren’t happy with it.

The Arctic portion of the agreement calls for a “new partnership” to build an economy that protects the environment. In a White House news conference, Trudeau said the partnership foresees science-based standards for various Arctic activities.

“From fishing in the high seas of the Arctic, as well as set new standards to ensure maritime transport with less emissions, the partnership will also support sustainable development in the region,” Trudeau said.

The Arctic statement says both countries “reaffirm” their national goals of protecting at least 17 percent of the land and 10 percent of marine areas by 2020. It also says they will also lead an effort to persuade other northern nations to develop a pan-Arctic network of marine protected areas.

Heather Conley, an Arctic expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says it’s important the Arctic was featured at the conference but she said it didn’t take top billing.

“It’s obviously a great day to celebrate a very close relationship. (It’s) phenomenal that (the) Arctic was so prominently featured, but understanding that this is primarily a climate change perspective,” Conley said.

The two leaders are also pledging to work together to establish low-impact shipping corridors. In the energy and climate portions of the agreement, they agreed to reduce methane emissions from their oil and gas industries by at least 40 percent by 2025 and end routine gas flaring. Environmental groups promptly lauded the agreement. Gov. Bill Walker said he was disappointed Alaskans weren’t consulted in crafting it.

“The Arctic presents great opportunity for our state and our nation to prosper in a global economy,” Walker said in a written statement. “However, the way to achieve that is by greater federal investment in our state’s Arctic development efforts, and not the restrictive policies that were presented today.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan says he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski couldn’t get information about the agreement until a briefing two days prior to the announcement. Sullivan says they even tried contacting the Canadian Embassy because no one from the U.S. government was returning their emails.

“The president and the Secretary of State are making commitments on the Arctic. What are they doing? They’re making commitments about Alaska,” Sullivan said before he and other senators met with Trudeau at the Capitol. “That’s the Arctic. We’re an Arctic nation only because of Alaska and they’re making these big commitments. Not one of them reached out to us. Not one of them asked us what we thought. Not one of them was seeking input from us.”

Sullivan says promises in the agreement are “legally suspect” oil and gas regulations and are often vague.

Murkowski said in a statement that the agreement seems to give Canada a partial veto of development decisions in Alaska. Her spokesman pointed to a sentence that says if Arctic oil and gas activity proceeds, it must align with “science-based standards between the two nations” that ensure operators are prepared for Arctic conditions.

Neither Alaskan was among the border-state senators invited to the state dinner at the White House. The guest list included prominent Canadians in entertainment, such as “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels, and actors Sandra Oh, Mike Myers and Michael J. Fox, as well as Trudeau’s mother, Margaret Trudeau, and his in-laws. Alaska was represented on the menu, with halibut “casseroles” as the first course.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported the lowest January Arctic sea ice extent in the satellite record. The center also says Arctic sea ice growth has stalled.

Alaska’s coastal sea ice is thin this year, but it’s too soon to connect large-scale regional data with this year’s local conditions. That’s according to Becki Heim who leads the sea ice program for the National Weather Service in Alaska. She said it’s difficult to directly correlate data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center with what’s happening locally this year.

“There’s so many small scale influences.,” said Heim. “One low-pressure system coming into the Bering Sea near Norton Sound can pump up warm air and liquid precipitation that can help melt ice out while a week later we could have a high-pressure system come sit over the Bering Strait and pump in cold air growing our ice again.”

Sea ice is highly variable, explained Heim.

“Just like snow pack cover like over Southcentral Alaska has gone from very maximum snow extent to like what we’re seeing this year with ‘where’s the snow, where’s winter?’ the same thing can happen with sea ice over the Bering Sea,” she said

Heim said sea ice off the coast of Western Alaska has been thin the last two years, but she credits that to wind driven mobility. She also says there’s no way to interpret a trend from only two years worth of data.

“This year and last year, we happen to be looking at years where we’re having thinner ice coverage and maximum extent in the Bering Sea might not be as south,” she said. “However within this decade we’ve had ice down to St. Paul island in January and this year, we’re just reaching St. Matthew island.”

The distance between the two islands is at 250 sea miles. Heim says really there are two ways to talk about sea ice — on a seasonal scale and on a climatic scale.

“We’re always going to have sea ice form in the Bering Sea and it’s always going to melt back in summer,” said Heim. “That’s one thing that’s never going to change. Now, how it forms, how early it forms and how early it breaks up, that’s the exciting part of the science right now and watching things on a daily basis. When does it come and when does it go?”

Heim said those are the extremes scientists are seeing more and more.

Fisheries biologists are worried that many of last year’s new pollock around Kodiak Island may not have survived recent warm ocean temperatures.

The findings of a study on the issue were announced in January at the Pacific Anomalies Workshop in Seattle.

Most people are familiar with the recent warm water anomaly by its nickname of The Blob. It’s a giant mass of warm water in the northeast Pacific Ocean that features temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal down to a depth of 300 feet. The Blob has persisted over the last two years and stretched from the Gulf of Alaska to Baja California. It’s different than El Niño, which is a phenomenon of equatorial warming in the Pacific.

“There was a remarkable decline in the pollock larvae that we’re seeing in that survey,” said Russell Hopcroft of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. He presented results of research and other surveys on behalf of other researchers. He showed maps of pollock larvae concentrations overlaid with increased ocean temperatures around Kodiak Island early last year followed by other maps showing the absence of new fish surviving into the late summer.

“It’s one of poorest recruitments that we can see in the time series,” Hopcroft said.

He also presented a chart showing the results of acoustic surveys in the Gulf of Alaska.

“You can see that the signal in the fall of (2015), literally there’s just nothing there,” Hopcroft said.

According to a 2014 report produced by the Juneau-based McDowell Group, the Alaska pollock fishery is the nation’s largest fishery. The value of all pollock exports reached $969 million in 2013. That included frozen pollock products like fillets. Exports also include roe, surimi, fish meal, and fish oil. Pollock accounted for 35% of all Alaska seafood exports by value.