After a colder-than-average spring, Alaska is suffering a sudden and record-breaking heatwave. Temperatures on Monday, June 17th hit a stunning 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) in Talkeetna, Alaska, just below the state’s highest temperature ever record of 98 degrees Fahrenheit in 1969. On the same day, NASA’s Terra Satellite’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) took a rare image of a cloud-free Alaska.
“Other towns in southern [besides Talkeetna] Alaska set all-time record highs, including Cordova, Valez, and Seward. The high temperatures also helped fuel wildfires and hastened the breakup of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea,” a press release from NASA reads.
Climate change is impacting Alaska and other high-latitude regions quicker than rest of the world. In fact, the state is likely to see the first climate change refugees in North America, due to rising sea levels swamping native villages on the Arctic Ocean.
Last year the Arctic saw the lowest sea ice extent on record, dropping to just below 3.4 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). While the decline in Arctic sea ice has long been expected to impact local wildlife, recent evidence has also shown it may be influencing weather patterns across the northern hemisphere, including unusual jet stream patterns that get stuck longer than usual causing extreme weather in many parts of the world.
To date, global temperatures have risen approximately 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.44 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last hundred years mostly due to burning fossil fuels for energy. Experts believe temperatures will rise between 2 degrees Celsius and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, depending on how quickly global society weans itself off fossil fuels. Nations worldwide have already committed to keeping temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius, but greenhouse gas emissions are still on the upswing.
Alaska on June 17th. Image courtesy of NASA. Click to enlarge.
Related articles
Seabirds face big problems as sea levels rise
(06/19/2013) Migratory shorebird populations are at great risk from rising sea levels due to global climate change, warns a recent paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. These birds play an important role in the distribution of nutrients within wetland and coastal ecosystems, and their loss could have unknown consequences for the rest of the world.
Warming world hits fig wasps and figs
(06/19/2013) Recent experiments concerning hugely-important fig plants (Ficus) and their relationship with small, short-lived fig wasps suggest dire potential consequences due to human induced climate change, finds a study published in the journal Biology Letters. The researchers collected four species of adult female fig wasps from the lowland tropical forests of Singapore to test their tolerance to gradually increased temperatures.
Should zoos educate the public about climate change?
(06/18/2013) Zoos are usually thought of as entertainment destinations. As a place to take the kids on a nice afternoon, they are sometimes perceived to lack the educational heft of an art museum or a theatre. However, over the past few decades many of the world’s best zoos and aquariums have also worked to educate their visitors about conservation issues, in addition to funding and supporting programs in the field to save the ever-growing number of imperiled species. But as threats to the world’s species mount—including climate change—many are beginning to ask what, if anything, zoos and aquariums should do to address the global environmental crisis.
NASA: 3% of Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010
(06/08/2013) 33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers) or 2.8 percent of the Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010 finds new NASA-led research that measured the extent of fires that smolder under the forest canopy.
Rainforests will survive extreme global warming, argues study
(06/02/2013) Rainforests in South America have endured three previous extreme global warming events in the past, suggesting they will survive a projected 2-6 degree rise in temperatures over the coming century, reports a study published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science. The research, published by Carlos Jaramillo and Andrés Cárdenas of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, reviewed some 3,800 published estimates of temperature over the past 120 million years and compared them to the existence of tropical plants in the fossil record.
Millennium Development Goals falling short on environmental ambitions
(05/30/2013) This week in New York City, the 27 members of the high-level panel of eminent persons appointed by the U.N. Secretary General will deliver a report providing recommendations on the post-2015 development agenda. This is a critical opportunity to address the inadequacies of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to chart a new course for sustainable development.
Earth likely to warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius this century
(05/30/2013) A new study by Australian scientists projects that the world will likely warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels by 2100. The study published in Nature Climate Change finds that exceeding the 2-degree threshold is very likely under business-as-usual emissions scenarios even as scientists have long warned that passing the 2-degree mark would lead to catastrophic climate change.