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Alaskan Icemageddon | Earth Wise

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December saw some wild weather in Alaska.  A combination of record high temperatures and torrential rainstorms resulted in the coining of the term “Icemageddon” to describe what was going on with the weather.

Kodiak Island in southern Alaska saw a high temperature of 67 degrees on December 26, which was warmer than it was in Southern California that same day.  This set an all-time record for the warmest December day in Alaska.  Such a high temperature is amazing considering how little sunlight Alaska gets at this time of year.  And with warmer air comes wetter air, as the atmosphere is capable of holding more water vapor as temperatures increase.

As a result, that same day saw the interior of the state get an inch of rain in just a few hours, something that hadn’t happened for decades.  But then, when temperatures plummeted again, all that rainwater froze.

Huge sheets of ice blocked roads and choked traffic in Fairbanks, Alaska’s second largest city.  Indeed, it was the state’s transportation department that came up with the term icemageddon to describe the situation.

The extreme warmth in December is related to the same weather pattern that brought cold, wintry weather to the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.  Those weather conditions resulted in hundreds of cancelled flights in Seattle, where temperatures dropped into the 20s, and in massive amounts of snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.  A strong area of high pressure anchored in the Northern Pacific resulted in a clockwise flow around it drawing warmer, more tropical air from the Pacific up to Alaska.

Climate change continues to push the envelope on what sort of weather is possible all over the world.

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Alaska faces ‘Icemageddon’ as temperatures swing wildly

Photo, posted April 30, 2015, courtesy of Naql via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Smart Roof | Earth Wise

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Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have developed an all-season smart roof coating that can keep homes warm during the winter and cool during the summer, and the coating does not consume any gas or electricity.

Existing cool roof systems consist of reflective coatings, membranes, shingles, or tile that lower house temperatures by reflecting sunlight as well as emitting some of the absorbed solar heat away from the roof as infrared radiation.  The problem with such systems is that they continue to radiate heat during the winter, which actually drives up heating costs.

The new material is called a temperature-adaptive radiative coating or TARC.  It enables energy savings by automatically turning off the radiative cooling in the winter.  TARC reflects about 75% of sunlight year-round, but its thermal emittance is high when the temperature is warm – promoting heat loss to the sky – but decreases in cooler weather, helping to retain the heat in a building.

The researchers produced thin-film TARC material that looks like Scotch tape that could be affixed to a surface like a rooftop.  They applied the material to a balcony alongside a sample of commercial dark roof material and a sample of commercial white roof material.

In experiments simulating 15 different climate zones across the US, they found that the TARC material outperforms existing roof coatings for energy savings in 12 out of the 15 zones, particularly in regions with wide temperature variations between day and night, such as in the San Francisco Bay Area, or between winter and summer, such as New York City.

The researchers believe that installing TARC coatings on roofs would save the average U.S. household about 10% in utility costs.

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New Smart-Roof Coating Enables Year-Round Energy Savings

Photo, posted May 18, 2017, courtesy of Damian Gadal via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Coastal Northeast Is A Hotspot | Earth Wise

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Global warming is, obviously, a world-wide phenomenon.  When the concept of a 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise is discussed, it refers to the average global temperature and the effects that would have on such things as sea level rise and weather patterns.  But the effects of the changing climate are not homogeneous.  Very different things can happen and are happening in different places.

One such place is the coastal northeastern United States, which is a global warming hotspot.  The region is heating faster than most regions of North America and, indeed, 2 degrees of summer warming has already happened in the Northeast.

New research led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has determined that this heating is linked to significant alterations in the ocean and atmospheric conditions over the North Atlantic.

Several studies have found that the Atlantic Meridional Circulation is slowing down.  The AMOC conveys warm, salty water from the tropics north towards Greenland, where it cools and sinks.  The cooled water than flows back south as deep-water currents.  As the warming climate melts glaciers in Greenland, the circulation slows down, less cooled water arrives in the south, and there is more heating of the ocean off the Northeastern coast.

At the same time, the North Atlantic Oscillation, a weather phenomenon that governs the strength and position of the winds that blow from the U.S. over the Atlantic, has tended to settle into a pattern that enhances the influence of ocean air on the eastern seaboard climate.  Warmer ocean air being blown over the region has led to rising temperatures in Boston, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island.

As the average temperature of the world rises, some places will warm more quickly and others more slowly.

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The Coastal Northeastern U.S. Is A Global Warming Hotspot

Photo, posted August 8, 2010, courtesy of Doug Kerr via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Record Heat In The Arctic | Earth Wise

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By mid-November, the Arctic stays dark around the clock and twilight does not return until the end of January.  But even as winter darkness descended upon the Arctic this year, record-breaking high temperatures in the region continued.  In late November, temperatures across the entire Arctic basin were 12 degrees Fahrenheit above normal and some locations saw temperatures as high as 30 degrees above normal.

The entire summer and fall in the Arctic were characterized by exceptionally warm temperatures.  In June, the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk – located north of the Arctic Circle – registered a high temperature of 100.4 degrees.  The refreezing of the Arctic Ocean was greatly delayed this year.  The Northeast Passage along the Siberian Coast remained navigable for a record 112 days before freezing in November, breaking the previous record by more than a month.  The extent of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean in October was the lowest ever recorded for that month.

The strongest warming occurring in the Arctic is during the fall.  That is because rapidly disappearing sea ice is enabling the dark waters of the Arctic Ocean to absorb heat in the summer and then radiate it back into the atmosphere until late in the fall.  The Arctic region is heating up three times faster than the rest of the planet, which has led to the volume of sea ice decreasing by 2/3 in the past 40 years.

According to researchers, the extreme heat in Siberia this year would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change and became 600 times more likely because of human emissions of greenhouse gases.

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Record-shattering Warmth Pushes Arctic Temperatures to 12 Degrees F Above Normal

Photo, posted September 1, 2009, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey via Flickr. Photo Credit: Patrick Kelley, U.S. Coast Guard.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

American Robins And Climate Change | Earth Wise

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American robins are migratory songbirds that can be found throughout much of North America.  Named after European robins because of their reddish-orange breast, American robins are often found hopping across lawns and nesting on porches.  Their rich caroling is among the first pre-dawn bird songs heard in spring and summer.  

While some overwinter in northern parts of the United States and southern Canada, most American robins migrate south to overwinter in places like Florida and the Gulf Coast, as well as central Mexico and the Pacific Coast.  They typically head south by the end of August and return north sometime between February and March to their breeding grounds in Canada and Alaska.  They spend their short time there trying to find a mate, build a nest, raise a family, and consume enough food to sustain themselves on their long return journey south.

But climate change is making these seasonal rhythms less predictable.  According to a new study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, American robin migration is kicking off earlier by about five days each decade.  The birds now migrate 12 days earlier than they did in 1994.  

For 25 years, researchers at Canada’s Slave Lake have been recording the timing of American robin spring migration.  They attached GPS devices to 55 robins, tracking their movements from April through June. The researchers linked the birds’ movement with weather data, including air temperature, snow depth, wind speed, and precipitation.  The results showed that robins start migrating north earlier when winters are warm and dry. 

Understanding the influence over the timing of migratory events is important because the timing of migration can influence reproductive success.

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A Migration Mystery

American robins now migrate 12 days earlier than in 1994

Photo, posted January 1, 2020, courtesy of Becky Matsubara via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Record Low Ice In The Bering Sea | Earth Wise

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The Bering Sea is the area of the far northern Pacific Ocean that separates Alaska from Russia.  Sea ice in the Bering Sea shrank to its lowest levels in recorded history in 2018, an event with profound effects on northwest Alaska residents who depend on marine resources for food, cash, and culture.

The loss of ice is indicative of very rapid change in the entire northern Bering Sea ecosystem with ramifications for everyone in the region.  A new peer-reviewed study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society examined the details and consequences of the drastic changes in the Bering Sea.

The study found that the maximum daily Bering Sea ice was the lowest on record, and the widespread impacts of that fact include unprecedented weather effects, marine wildlife die-offs, and sightings of animals outside of their normal range.  Ecological changes included the first documented mass strandings of ice-associated seals, a redistribution of thermally sensitive fish, and a multispecies die-off of seabirds due to starvation.

Persistent and anomalous warm winter weather contributed to poor ice conditions that resulted in a fatal accident on an ice road and retreating and fractured sea ice led to ice-laden flooding that caused power outages and infrastructure damage.  In addition, there have been more than 50 reports of unusual events related to weather and marine wildlife.

The record-low sea ice is a consequence of the warming climate resulting in a warmer ocean, later arrival of sea ice, and more frequent storms than in the pre-industrial era.  These conditions are continuing to increase in occurrence.

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Record low level of Bering Sea ice causes profound, widespread impacts

Photo, posted April 7, 2014, courtesy of Allen Smith via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Rapid Antarctic Melting

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The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is the world’s largest ice shelf, covering an area roughly the size of France.  Scientists have spent several years building up a record of how the northwest sector of the enormous ice shelf interacts with the ocean beneath it.  Their results show that the ice is melting much more rapidly than previously thought because of in-flowing warm water.

In general, the stability of ice shelves is thought to be mostly influenced by their exposure to warm deep ocean water.  But the new research has found that surface water heated by the sun also plays a crucial role in melting ice shelves.

The interactions between ice and ocean water that occur hundreds of meters below the surface of ice shelves have a direct impact on long-term sea level.  The Ross Ice Shelf stabilizes the West Antarctic ice sheet by blocking the ice that flows into it from some of the world’s largest glaciers.

When ice shelves collapse, the glaciers that feed them can speed up by a factor of two or three.  None of the collapsing shelves in the past have come anywhere close to the size of the Ross Ice Shelf, which is more than 100 times bigger.

The new study by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research showed that sun-heated surface water flowing into the cavity under the ice shelf near Ross Islands caused melt rates to nearly triple during the summer months.  This indicates that the loss of sea ice resulting from climate change is likely to increase melt rates in the future.  While the Ross Ice Shelf is still considered to be relatively stable, the new findings show that it may be more vulnerable than previously thought.

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Rapid melting of the world’s largest ice shelf linked to solar heat in the ocean

Photo, posted February 15, 2009, courtesy of Alan Light via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shrinking Arctic Glaciers

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The glaciers on Baffin Island, located in Canada’s northeastern Arctic, have been shrinking as the climate warms.  The melting, receding glaciers have exposed fragments of ancient plants that had frozen in the places where they once grew.  New research has shown that these spots have not seen the light of day for at least 40,000 years.

The entire planet has been warming since humanity started flooding the atmosphere with greenhouse gases at the start of the Industrial Revolution, but the effects are not uniform across the globe.  Some regions – like the Arctic – are seeing temperature rises that are greater and faster than anywhere else in the world.  As a result, glaciers in the Arctic have been melting away at rates never before observed in modern human history.

Researchers at the University of Colorado performed radiocarbon dating experiments in order to find out when the last time was that the Arctic was as warm as today.   There have been natural variations in Arctic temperatures caused by the complicated way the Earth wobbles on its axis.  For example, 10,000 years ago the northern latitudes pointed at the sun more directly during the summer than they do now, providing about 9% more sunshine during the summer.

The results of the study showed that the newly-uncovered plants had died at least 40,000 years earlier, indicating that the glaciers had not melted back to today’s size for at least that long.  Global measurements indicate that the planet as a whole has not been as warm as it is today for about 115,000 years, back then again a result of the orientation of the Earth.

Well, the Earth hasn’t wobbled recently.  The Arctic is melting because we are dumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

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These Arctic glaciers are smaller than ever before in human history

Photo, posted September 1, 2010, courtesy of Doryce S. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Protecting Reefs Of Hope

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One of the most harmful effects of the changing climate is what is happening to coral reefs.  Warmer ocean temperatures and acidification are causing widespread bleaching of coral.  Stressed corals expel the algae living in their tissue, turning the corals white and robbing them of nutrients.  When bleaching events persist, the corals starve and die.   Reefs everywhere have been experiencing mass bleaching events in recent years with over 70% of the coral reefs around the world being damaged.

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The Sahara Desert Is Expanding

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Deserts are barren areas of land where little precipitation occurs, resulting in living conditions that are hostile for plant and animal life. These regions are typically defined by low average annual rainfall—usually 100 millimeters (less than 4 inches) of rain per year or less. 

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Cold And Snow From Global Warming

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The Arctic has been experiencing record warm temperatures and record low sea ice levels.  During February, there were nine days in a row with temperatures averaging 27 degrees above normal and often above freezing.  Over the previous 20 years, there were only two previous readings above freezing in February – once in 2011 and once last year.

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Carbon And Heating Soil

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Plants are a critical part of the Earth’s carbon cycle.   They take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.   Eventually, dead leaves, branches and other materials fall to the ground where bacteria and fungi decompose the materials and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere.  This carbon-soil feedback loop is a complicated one that is critical to the overall carbon balance because soils actually contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere.

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Winter Outlook

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Each year around this time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, releases its U.S. Winter Outlook that predicts overall weather trends around the country for the upcoming winter.  They produce these seasonal outlooks to help communities prepare for the weather that is likely to be forthcoming.

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Spreading Like Wildfire

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Last July 7th, 140 wildfires started up in British Columbia, triggering a state of emergency.  By the end of the summer, more than 1,000 fires had been triggered across the Canadian province, burning nearly 3 million acres of forest, about 10 times more than the average over the past decade.

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The Effects Of One Degree

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In discussions of global warming, we often hear about the effects of a 2-degree rise in temperature or a 1-degree rise in temperature.   For most of us, such changes seem pretty insignificant.  Of course, in our daily lives, a one-degree temperature change is not particularly noticeable.   But in the context of climate change, we are talking about a change in average temperature over time, not the temperature on a particular day or at a particular time.

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‘Noah’s Ark’ Takes On Water

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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into a hillside in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard far above the Arctic Circle, is often described as humanity’s last hope against extinction after some global crisis.  While there are more than 1,700 gene banks around the world that keep collections of seeds, all of them are vulnerable to war, natural disasters, equipment malfunctions, and other problems.  Except the Svalbard vault – or so we thought.  It has been dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of seeds and a last chance for the world to regenerate if the worst should come to pass.  It’s mission is to keep the world’s seeds safe. 

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