Amid Record-Crushing Early Spring Melt, Barrow AK Brushes Against 420 ppm Atmospheric CO2
Bryan Thomas doesn't want any more "wishy-washy conversations about climate change." For four years, he has served as station chief of the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, America's northernmost scientific outpost in its fastest-warming state. Each morning, after digging through snow to his office's front door, Thomas checks the preliminary number on the observatory's carbon dioxide monitor. On a recent Thursday it was almost 420 parts per million - nearly twice as high as the global preindustrial average. It's just one number, he said. But there's no question in his mind about what it means.
Alaska is in the midst of one of the warmest springs the state has ever experienced - a transformation that has disrupted livelihoods and cost lives. The average temperature for March recorded at the NOAA observatory in Utquiagvik (which was known as Barrow before 2016, when the city voted to go by its traditional Inupiaq name) was 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
Fairbanks notched its first consecutive March days when the temperature never dropped below freezing. Ice roads built on frozen waterways - a vital means of transportation in the state - have become weak and unreliable. At least five people have died this spring after falling through ice that melted sooner than expected. "Climate change is happening faster than it's ever happened before in our record," Thomas said. "We're right in the middle of it."
Utqiagvik set daily temperature records on 28 of the first 100 days of this year, according to the Alaska Climate Research Center. In early February, residents awoke to find that the land-fast ice that usually clings to their shore until summer had been swept out to sea by strong winds - a sign that the ice wasn't as thick or well-grounded as it used to be. "It was like, 'Whoa, I've never seen that before,'" Thomas said. "It was surprising in a human way," he added. "But not necessarily surprising in a science way." The Barrow observatory has been monitoring climate for more than 40 years. Thomas knows where the trends are headed.
EDIT
https://www.sciencealert.com/one-of-alaska-s-warmest-springs-on-record-is-causing-a-dangerous-thaw
= new reply since forum marked as read
