Climate Change

SEWARD, Alaska — Drip. Drip. Drip.

It's the sound of one glacier melting. It’s also the sound of a whole planet careening into uncharted territory.

I am crouching by the mouth of a little ice cave underneath the Exit Glacier, a huge river of ice on the Kenai Peninsula in southcentral Alaska. Ancient ice drips from the roof of the cave onto newly bare earth. Twice in a few minutes, I hear rocks fall from the freshly exposed landscape at the glacier’s snout and decide this is not the safest place to be.

Alaska’s most recent plan to address climate change was removed from the state’s website back in December. Meanwhile, some municipalities and tribal governments are moving ahead with their own ideas about how to respond to the growing problem.

On the North Slope of Alaska, the Iñupiat tradition of hunting bowhead whales has an ancestry more than 1,500 years old.

Today in Utqiaġvik there are two annual hunts when the whales pass by on their migration. The fall hunt has historically been done on open water, and the spring hunt from the ice that attaches to the coast each winter.

Aerial surveys of Sitka Sound showed a lot of active herring spawn this week, stretching over 31 nautical miles to date. But that wasn’t the only place to find roe. In the basement of the Sitka Sound Science Center  researchers are incubating thousands of herring eggs to determine the effects of warming ocean temperatures and ocean acidification on the species — now and in the future. 

Guests this Morning on Our Community were Sandy Harper and Shala Dobson, discussing a series of events surrounding an art installation at Side Street Espresso in Anchorage entitled No Planet B. 

Events include Chalk Art at noon Saturday the 12th,

Poetry readings by Joan Kane, Priscilla Hensley & Carrie Ojanen on August 19th at 1pm, and a Panel Discussion, Climate Change 101 moderated by Fran Ulmer August 24th starting at 5pm. 

The Alaska Dispatch News reports Edward Itta, a prominent North Slope leader, died Sunday of cancer. Itta was mayor of the North Slope Borough from 2005 to 2011, when Shell was seeking oil leases and permits for offshore Arctic development.