Dangerously hot in Alaska? New warnings show climate change impact.

USA Today

03-05-2025

Dangerously hot in Alaska? New warnings show climate change impact. National Weather Service to launch first heat advisories in Fairbanks and Juneau this summer in response to climate change.
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Alaskan glacial lake outburst prompts evacuations, floods communities
A glacial lake outburst flooded communities in the capital of Alaska with 16 feet of water.
Websites can be scrubbed of climate change references and the U.S. halted from international and national climate assessments, but rising temperatures leave their own evidence, especially in the nation's most northern state.
Temperatures have climbed for decades in Alaska, where it's warming two- to three-times faster than the global average. The heat warms surrounding waters, shrinks glaciers and sea ice and creates more hazardous conditions for people.
As a result, after batting around the idea for a while, National Weather Service offices in Juneau and Fairbanks, Alaska, will start issuing heat advisories for the first time this summer, said Rick Thoman, climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. In the past, special weather statements were used to communicate heat risks.
The new advisories starting June 1 will 'more clearly identify the hazardous heat' and allow easily seen heat alerts on websites, according to the public notice from the weather service.
For outlying regions around Fairbanks, such as the North Slope, an advisory will be sent out if the temperature is forecast to reach 75 degrees, and in the interior, 85 degrees, according to the weather service notice. In Juneau, advisories will kick in when the temperature is forecast for 80 degrees or higher.
When talking about those thresholds, Thoman joked with a colleague that 75 degrees would 'get some chuckles in the lower 48.'
Those who live in sunbaked southern states in the nation may scoff, but in parts of Alaska that's enough to make conditions dangerous.
These kinds of temperatures aren't new, but they're increasing in most areas, Thoman said. The 30-year average overnight minimum temperature has climbed more than 4 degrees in Fairbanks since 1960.
When homes are built to keep the heat in, it works 'whether it's 40 below outside or 85,' he said. When temperatures are that warm, it's also during the longest days of the year, when the sun is up 18 to 24 hours a day, beating down on buildings.
'It's not only that temperatures are going up, but in many areas we're getting increasing wildfire smoke in the summer,' Thoman said. 'So the impact of the temperatures is changing.'
When it's 85 degrees and smoky, Fairbanks residents have to ask themselves if they want to be cool, or have it smoky inside their homes, he said. 'If you have to have your windows closed for three days, you don't have air conditioning and your house is built to hold heat, pretty soon your indoor air temperature is higher than it is outside."
Even a small increase in temperature means more evaporation, which leaves plants and shrubs drier than normal and more likely to burn, Thoman said. In the more wildfire-prone parts of the state, there's also a trend to earlier snow melt, which dries things out sooner than it used to.
The start of Alaska's wildfire season has been moved forward from May 1 to April 1 and the frequency of 'really big' fire seasons, with 2 million to 3 million acres burning has doubled this century compared with the last half of the 20th century, he said. 'We are getting more wildfire in places that used to hardly ever see wildfire, particularly in Southwest Alaska."
The state is on the frontlines of climate change, with dramatic changes 'real and visible," according to The Nature Conservancy chapter in Alaska.
It's a reality that Alaskans, especially rural Alaskans and Indigenous Peoples have learned by experience, the conservancy says on its website. 'Alaskans are experiencing and adapting to a changing climate and its ramifications at breakneck speed.'
Studies have linked the deaths of billions of snow crabs in the region to warming temperatures.
Arctic sea ice set a record low in March, and has been melting earlier in the year and advancing later, affecting the accessibility to food for polar bears in the region. Lack of food can increase encounters between bears and people as they search for prey and other nutrition in new locations, according to a study by scientists at the University of Washington and the U.S. Geological Survey.
The shrinking sea ice also has been a concern of the U.S. military for decades.
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change and the environment for USA TODAY. She's been writing about wildfire since the Florida firestorm of 1998. Reach her at [e-mail] or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.