Climate Change in Alaska: Monitoring and Assessing the Vulnerability of Alaska's Ecosystems and Population

Climate is changing at a much faster pace in the Arctic than at lower latitudes. A changing climate impacts ecosystems in multiple ways. In turn, impacts on the ecosystem might have substantial effects on local communities, especially in northern regions where the population strongly relies on ecosystem services.

As State Climatologist Office of Alaska, we focus on how observed changes in temperature and precipitation impact directly and indirectly the subsistence of local communities across the entire state. Reduced Arctic sea ice extent is threatening Arctic indigenous people both by affecting hunting and fishing activities, and by increasing coastal erosion. Extreme drought conditions, experienced in the Southeastern Panhandle, impact local populations due to their reliance on hydroelectric power and favor the spread of pests. In addition, persistent dry and warm weather increases the number and severity of wildfires in the Interior and throughout the state, generating harmful air quality levels and relocation of the population.

We perform a statistical analysis of in-situ observations of climatic variables across the entire state of Alaska, and produce indexes to quantify departures from normal climatic conditions, distributed in space. We combine this quantitative analysis with qualitative information on impacts on the environment and on local communities to monitor and assess the degree of vulnerability of Alaskan ecosystems to a changing climate.

In addition, we present our forecasting tool of atmospheric dispersion of smoke from wildfires, as an example of coping with the high vulnerability that characterizes Alaska. To this end, we apply the WRF-Chem model on the entire Alaska territory to produce up to 72 hours forecast of concentrations of black carbon and particulate matter in wildfire smoke.

The results of our analysis offer an insightful overview of the multiple challenges Alaska is currently facing due to a changing climate.