Community-scale changes to landfast ice along the coast of Alaska over 2000-2022

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2024-02-01

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Abstract

Landfast sea ice that forms along the Arctic coastline is of great importance to coastal Alaskan communities. It provides a stable platform for transportation and traditional activities, protects the coastline from erosion, and serves as a critical habitat for marine mammals. Here we present a full assessment of landfast ice conditions across a continuous 7885 km length of the Alaska coastline over 2000-2022 using satellite imagery. We find that the maximum landfast ice extent, usually occurring in March, averaged 67 002 km2 during our study period: equivalent to 4% of the state’s land area. The maximum extent of landfast ice, however, exhibits considerable interannual variability, from a minimum of 29 871 km2 in 2019 to a maximum of 87 571 km2 in 2010. Likewise, the landfast ice edge position averages 22.9 km from the coastline but, at the community-scale, can range from 2.8 km (in Gambell) to 71.1 km (in Deering). Landfast ice breakup date averages 2 June but also varies considerably both between communities (3 May in Quinhagak to 24 July in Nuiqsut) and interannually. We identify a strong control of air temperature on breakup timing and use this relationship to project future losses of ice associated with Paris Climate Agreement targets. Under 2 °C of global air temperature warming, we estimate the average Alaskan coastal community will lose 19 days of ice, with the northernmost communities projected to lose 50 days or more. Overall, our results emphasize the highly localized nature of landfast ice processes and the vulnerability of coastal Arctic communities in a warming climate.

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10.1088/1748-9326/ad1c7b

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Cooley, SW, and JC Ryan (2024). Community-scale changes to landfast ice along the coast of Alaska over 2000-2022. Environmental Research Letters, 19(2). pp. 024013–024013. 10.1088/1748-9326/ad1c7b Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31552.

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Scholars@Duke

Cooley

Sarah Cooley

Assistant Professor of Planetary Health

Dr. Sarah Cooley is an Assistant Professor of Planetary Health in the Division of Earth and Climate Sciences at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke. As PI of the Cryo-hydrO Observation Leaders (COOL) Lab at Duke, her research group investigates how climate change is affecting dynamic cryospheric and hydrologic processes in the Arctic and globally. Her research primarily uses satellite data to better understand fine-scale hydrologic change, but she has also conducted field multiple field campaigns in Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland. Her primary research focus areas include Northern surface water dynamics, Arctic coastal environmental change and its impact on communities, and global variability in surface water storage. She is also especially interested in how new technologies and big data approaches can revolutionize our ability to observe surface water from space, and she has worked extensively with both new NASA satellites (e.g. ICESat-2, SWOT) and startup commercial earth observation companies (e.g. Planet, ICEYE).

Sarah received her PhD in Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University in 2020. She has an MPhil in Polar Studies from the University of Cambridge where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a BS in Geophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Prior to starting at Duke, she was part of the inaugural cohort of Stanford Science Fellows at Stanford from 2020-2021 and was an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Oregon from 2021-2024. Sarah is especially passionate about all things Arctic, new satellite technologies, and making academia a more accessible, inclusive and healthy place for all. 

Ryan

Jonathan Ryan

Assistant Professor of Ice and Climate Sciences

Dr. Jonathan “Johnny” Ryan is a glaciologist who is interested in ice sheet surface processes. His research has investigated several key components that influence the accumulation and ablation of ice sheets, including snowfall, clouds, melt-albedo feedbacks, and supraglacial hydrology. To conduct this research, Johnny primarily relies on satellite remote sensing. This expertise has earned him selection onto NASA’s ICESat-2 and Terra/Aqua/Suomi Science Teams. Johnny also conducts field research and has spent many summers surveying ice sheets and glaciers with uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) or drones. His primary research site is the Greenland Ice Sheet, where he has worked out of Kangerlussuaq and Uummannaq. He has also conducted research on the Northern Patagonia Icefield and the Oregon Cascades. By combining fieldwork with new satellite remote sensing technology, Johnny’s research bridges spatial and temporal scales to generate new insights into ice sheet surface processes. The significance of his research is reflected by recent first- and second-author publications in journals such as Nature, Environmental Research Letters, Science Advances, Nature Communications, and Geophysical Research Letters.


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