Latest news with #Thoman
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Trump administration stopping NOAA data service used to monitor sea ice off Alaska
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways A walrus mother and calf rest on an ice floe in Alaska's Chukchi Sea in 2010. Other resting walruses are in the background. Sea ice extent is tracked by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a Colorado-based facility that uses data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Photo by Sarah Sonsthagen/U.S. Geological Survey) The Trump administration is ending National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration services that monitor Arctic sea ice and snow cover, leading climate scientists said on Tuesday. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information has decommissioned its snow and ice data products as of Monday, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced. The data collected by that NOAA office is critical to the daily updates provided by the Colorado-based center, which tracks one of the most obvious effects of climate change: the long-term loss of Arctic sea ice. It is also critical to the regular sea ice reports produced by Rick Thoman at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, as well as to research done by his UAF colleagues. Thoman said he learned about the decision Tuesday morning. 'I was completely blindsided,' he said. Other Arctic-related information that the NSIDC said will be limited by NOAA's discontinuation of services include gridded monthly analyses of sea ice extent and concentration, a dataset that goes back to 1850; photographic records of glaciers and the World Glacier Inventory, which monitors over 130,000 glaciers worldwide; and a dataset tracking snowpack properties. The NSIDC, in its notice, said the loss of NOAA data means that regular reports published by the center will be limited to 'basic' levels, 'meaning they will remain accessible but may not be actively maintained, updated, or fully supported.' Arctic sea ice extent on Sept. 11, 2024, illustrated by NASA Earth Observatory using information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The image shows the annual minimum extent for 2024. (Image by Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory) For Thoman, who produces regular reports about ice conditions in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska that put current conditions in historic context, the gap in information is a big loss. The National Weather Service's Alaska Sea Ice Program remains in place – for now – so a person in Utqiagvik, for example, will be able to know in real time how far the ice edge is from shore, Thoman said. But 'how is this comparing to last year or 10 years ago, 20 years ago? That will be much more difficult,' he said. Unless the dataset is restored or provided by other sources, that trend analysis may be lost for good, he said. Gaps in such information pose practical problems in Alaska for activities like infrastructure planning, Thoman said. 'You're doing the Port of Nome construction, you want to know that kind of stuff, right?' he said. There are some other sources of ice and snow data available to the NSIDC and to Thoman and other scientists at UAF. The European Union's Copernicus program monitors sea ice, as does the Japan Space Agency, also known as JAXA. But those data collection programs do not provide the same kind of regional information that the NSIDC has been able to provide through the NOAA services, Thoman said. He sees a common thread in the Arctic data services that NOAA is discontinuing. 'They're all things that are useful for illustrating change,' he said. 'I mean, why on earth would you take away a glacier photo collection?' NOAA officials did not respond Tuesday to requests for comments. Arctic sea ice has diminished in extent and thickness over the half century in which satellite observations have been made. Annual summer melt has become more extensive, leaving far wider areas of the Arctic Ocean open. The annual minimums have declined by about 12.4% per decade since the 1980s, according to the NSIDC. The dark surfaces of open water exposed by ice melt absorb more solar heat than white, ice-covered surfaces do, so loss of sea ice is part of a self-reinforcing warming loop called Arctic Amplification. Historical ice trends in August in the Beaufort Sea are shown in this graph compiled by Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. It is an example of the illustrations that Thoman creates using information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which in turn has relied on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Graph from Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy/University of Alaska Fairbanks) Last September's annual minimum extent was the seventh lowest in the 47-year satellite record, according to the NSIDC. Even winter sea ice has been declining. This year's maximum extent at the end of the freeze season in March was the lowest in the satellite record, according to the NSIDC. What ice exists now in the Arctic Ocean is younger and thinner than sea ice was in the past. In the 1980s, about a third of the sea ice at the peak of the freeze season was over four years old, and a third was thinner, single-year ice, according to government scientists. But in recent years, less than 5% of peak winter sea ice has been over four years old, and two-thirds of that winter ice has been thinner single-year ice, according to the center. Up to now, NOAA has been deeply involved in tracking climate change in the Arctic. It has been issuing an annual Arctic Report Card since 2006, for example. Last year's report card provided information about how the tundra regions of the Arctic have become net carbon emitters, a change from their past status as carbon sinks. But NOAA's climate change research is a specific target for elimination in Project 2025, a governing plan published by the conservative Heritage Foundation prior to last year's election. Seen as a blueprint for a second Trump administration, the document refers to NOAA and several of its agencies, including he National Weather Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, as 'a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry' that is 'harmful to future U.S. prosperity.' Several Project 2025 authors are now members of the Trump administration, and the administration has already fired large numbers of NOAA employees and slashed the agency's funding. The Arctic data services are not alone in being discontinued by NOAA. NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service has announced plans to end data services about ocean currents, underwater terrain, the U.S. hot springs inventory and earthquakes, among other subjects. One of the services on the chopping block is NOAA's Marine Environmental Buoy Database, scheduled to be discontinued at the end of the month. The buoys collect and transmit data on weather and ocean conditions, and they are used to increase marine safety. Last month, the Alaska state Senate passed a resolution asking NOAA to not only maintain the buoy system it has in marine waters off the state's coast but to improve the system by repairing buoys that are currently out of service. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
USA Today
03-05-2025
- Climate
- USA Today
Dangerously hot in Alaska? New warnings show climate change impact.
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. Show Caption Hide Caption 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 dpulver@ or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.
