Since 2002, Octobers in Barrow, Alaska—America's northernmost town—are regularly near the warmest on record, thanks to the retreat of sea ice. The warming hinders traditional hunting activities, makes the town more vulnerable to storm surge flooding, and thaws the frozen ground to greater depths, which destabilizes roads, house foundations, and traditional underground freezers.
Shallow melt ponds on the surface of consolidated sea ice act as skylights that promote massive under-ice phytoplankton blooms. These under-ice blooms may boost estimates of Arctic phytoplankton productivity by a factor of 10.
Alaska’s statewide warming rate of +5.3°F per century since 1950 is faster than any other state in the Union, by a comfortable margin. In our latest Beyond the Data blog, NCEI's Deke Arndt talks about how the interplay between climate and landscape and the soil itself put the Last Frontier on the front lines of climate change.