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Climate change report devotes chapter to Alaska
Alaska merits a chapter in a new White House report on climate change, which says temperatures in the state have climbed at twice the rate of the rest of the nation over the last half-century.
The report, a compilation of current science, says annual temperatures have risen 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit in 50 years.
Temperatures are projected to rise another 3.5 to 7 degrees by midcentury.
The report says sea ice is melting, meaning shipping and resource extraction can expand. It says arctic ice could be gone during summers by the end of the century.
Marine species moving north The report says that with marine species moving mostly northward, fishermen will have to travel farther. It might be difficult for Alaska Natives to find the walruses and seals they subsist on.
Coastal erosion is increasingly threatening communities, including the villages of Newtok and Shishmaref.
The Bering Sea and Alaska’s coastline are becoming stormier, throwing off autumn barge delivery schedules and making commercial fishing more dangerous.
Melting permafrost is sinking land, adding as much as $6.1 billion to costs for publicly owned infrastructure by 2030.
In past three decades, the number of days annually that oil-and-gas-related truckers may travel on tundra ice roads has halved, from 200 to 100.
The average area burned in North American wildfires each year tripled from the 1960s to the 1990s. In Alaska, the wildfire burn area is projected to at least double by midcentury and triple by 2100.
—The Associated Press
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