EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Warming at the Edge

Arctic Ocean
Utqiagvik [Barrow], Alaska USA

Explanation:  Welcome to the northernmost town of the United States, Utqiagvik, Alaska.  This town is at the edge of the North American continent, here along the Arctic Ocean, where the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea meet.  Although it is mid-July in these photos, there still should be sea ice piled along the shoreline here.  Except ... welcome, also, to warming at the edge.

In years and decades past, dense sea ice would accumulate along the shoreline here, where the shallow depth allowed thick, multi-year ice to reach to the bottom and adhere to it as "fast ice."  The dense ice would, in turn, protect the coastline and inhabitants from storm surges.  

Just east of Utqiagvik along the Arctic Ocean,
the sea ice along the shore has fractured into
individual bergs and slabs, and is now
thinner than in past years and decades.

  
But no more.  You can see how the sea swells and storms can now erode the coastline, threatening the collapse of homes and other structures.  

This is regional climate warming in action.  But not just warming.  For some time, it has been known that this high arctic region has been warming at twice the rate as warming further south in temperate zones ... except more recently, that rate has accelerated to four times the rate compared to the rest of the world (Rantanen et al. 2022).  Such warming is called Arctic amplification, in play for the last 43 years at least.  

Currents along the shoreline here have created open water
where there is no protection of the shoreline.  

So this is the future:  eroding shorelines,
a dearth of "fast ice" to protect structures and habitations,
rising seas, and ... warming at the edge.

Information:
    Rantanen, M., A. Y. Karpechko, A. Lipponen, K. Nordling, O. Hyvärinen, K. Ruosteenoja, T. Vihma, and A. Laaksonen. 2022. The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979. Communications Earth & Environment 3:Article number: 168.

Notes:
     Just to note that I took these photos on one of my visits there, showing conditions on July 22, 2017.  Since then, warming has continued, as has the lack of shore-protecting "fast ice."