alaskan heatwave - in january!!

Arctic Heat Wave Sets off Hottest Ever Winter-Time Temperatures, Major Melt, Disasters for Coastal and Interior Alaska

Major melt in the midst of winter. Doesn’t sound quite right, does it? We tend to think of winter as the time of freezing, as the time of ice accumulation. Not the time of melt and thaw.

Now try this — major melt in Alaska in the midst of winter. Average temperatures 40 degrees hotter than normal in the midst of winter. Rainfall over snow and ice causing avalanches, major road blockages and ice dams to rivers in the midst of winter.

In this instance we have been transported from the somewhat odd into a reality that is completely outside of our previously ‘normal’ context. In this instance we are transported to a time that may well seem like the beginning of the end of the age of ice on planet Earth.

And yet this is exactly what is happening: one of the coldest regions on the planet is experiencing melt and related record heat in January.

For the state of Alaska, the consequences are a strange and freakish winter heat wave, one that features the extreme temperatures mentioned above. For the city of Valdez, as we shall see below, the situation is far more stark.


(Massive Avalanche set off by rainfall, winter warmth, cutting off Richardson Highway to Valdez Alaska and forming a dangerous ice dam of the ironically named Keystone Canyon’s Lowe River. Image source: Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.)

Hottest ever Winter-time Temperatures for Alaska

On Sunday, a collapse event that flooded the Arctic with heat and ripped the polar vortex in half began. A freakish high amplitude ridge in the Jet Stream that had been pumping warmth over Alaska and into the Arctic for ten months running strengthened. The result was that many regions throughout the state experienced their hottest temperatures ever recorded for that day, month, or season.

According to reports from Weather Underground, Homer Alaska, for example, experienced an all time record high for the day of 55 degrees Fahrenheit, 4 degrees hotter than the previous all-time high set just a few years earlier. And Homer was just one of the many cities sitting in a broad region of extraordinary, 40 degree hotter than normal temperatures. A region extending from the interior to the southern and western coasts. Bolio Lake Range, about 100 miles south of Fairbanks in central Alaska, saw temperatures rocket to 60 degrees, just 2 degrees short of the all-time record high for any part of the state during January (the previous record high of 62 was set in Petersburg, nearly 700 miles to the south and east).

Typically colder high mountain regions also experienced record warmth for the day. A zone 10,600 feet above Fairbanks hit 32 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, the highest temperature ever measured for this region during any winter-time period from November through February.

Even before the most recent extreme Arctic temperature spike, January saw numerous powerful heat influxes for Alaska with Nome, Denali Park, Palmer, Homer, Alyseka, Seward, and Talkeetna each setting all-time record high temperatures during the month.

These records come on the back of a long period of rapidly increasing Alaskan heat stretching all the way back to the 1970s. In many cases, we are seeing all-time record highs broken with 5-10 year frequency. In the most extreme cases, these records fall again after only standing for 1-5 years.

Taken in this context, what we are seeing is the freakish continuation of an ongoing period of inexorable Arctic warming providing yet one more major insult to the Alaskan climate during the winter of 2013-2014.

Rain and Melt Sets off Major, Spring-like, Outflows From Streams and Rivers

The same anomalous Jet Stream pattern that has acted as a conveyer belt continuously transporting heat into the high north over Alaska has brought with it an almost endless series of rain events to coastal Alaska. Storm after storm, fueled by heat and high rates of evaporation over the northern Pacific, slammed into the Alaskan coastline, disgorging record levels of precipitation.

With temperatures freakishly high, mirroring conditions typically present during late spring or early summer, much of this precipitation fell in the form of rain. Valdez, Alaska, for example, has likely experienced its wettest January ever with rainfall measures just 1.35 inches short of the record on Sunday and a series of strong storms rushing into the city on Monday and Tuesday. Given the nearly endless train of storms lining up to sweep over Valdez, it is possible that its previous record of 15.18 inches for January could easily be surpassed by an inch or two at month-end.

The storms and cloudiness make it difficult to peer down and get a good view of what all this heat and rainfall is doing to the Alaskan snow and ice pack. But, for brief respite, on January 25th, just ahead of the most recent influx of rain and warmth, the clouds cleared, revealing the land and sea surface. And what we witness is extraordinary:


(Southern Coast of Alaska with major sediment outflow from snow and ice melt, record heat and rainfall in January 2014. Image source: Lance-Modis)

The entire southern coast of Alaska from Prince William Sound to Cook Inlet are visibly experiencing major snow and ice melt along with flooded streams and rivers flushing out a massive volume of sediment into the Gulf Alaska. Clearly visible in the satellite shot, the sediment now streaming into the ocean is more reminiscent of a major late spring flood event than anything that should be ongoing for Alaska in the midst of winter.

Yet here we are. A situation of continuous, never-before seen heat for Alaska during winter time bringing on a flooding thaw that is far, far too early.

Rainfall over Glaciers, Snow Pack Triggers Massive Avalanche that Cuts off Valdez

The constant assault of heat and record temperatures combined with an almost endless flow of moisture riding up from the Gulf of Alaska set off a devastating and freakish event near Valdez on Saturday. Severe and record rainfall over the mountain regions have continuously softened glacial ice and snow packs above this major Alaskan city. On Monday, the continuous insults of heat and water passed a critical threshold.
As the warm water filtered down through the colder snow and ice, the anchoring base was lubricated even as the capping snow grew heavily burdened with water. Eventually, the insults of heat and rainfall became too great and a major snow and ice slope system above the main road linking Valdez to mainland Alaska collapsed. The immense volume of snow and ice unleashed, spilling down to fill the base of Keystone Canyon, blocking both the Lowe River and the Richardson Highway running through it.

This snow and ice dam rose as high as 100 feet above the Canyon floor, causing the Lowe River to rapidly flood, inundating the already snow-and ice buried road under an expanding pool 20 to 25 feet deep and filled with ice-choked water.


You can see the massive avalanche-created ice dam and related road inundation in the video provided by akiwiguy below:
(video source: akiwiguy)

Warming-related rainfall events of the kind that has now cut Valdez off from the mainland are just one of the extraordinarily dangerous consequences of human-caused climate change. They are a phenomena linked to the massive glacial outburst flood that killed thousands in India this year together with other dangerous snow and ice melt events. Should such major heating and rainfall events impact Greenland and West Antarctica, the consequences could be even more extreme than what we are currently witnessing in Alaska.

Conditions in Context

In the context of our present extreme Jet Stream pattern that is setting off warmest-ever conditions for Alaska during January together with dangerous melt-outburst related events while at the same time periodically flushing Arctic air and extreme winter weather south into the United States, it is important to remember a few things. The first is that the Arctic is now experiencing never-before observed warmth with stunning frequency. Scientific papers now show that the Arctic is hotter than it has been for at least 44,000 years and possibly 120,00 years.

By comparison, the cold snaps, that could very well be seen as the death gasps of the Arctic we know, impacting the eastern US are relatively minor when put into this larger, more ominous context. Similar cold events were last seen about 20 years ago in the US. And so there is simply no comparison that can generate a rational equivalency between the, hottest in an age, Arctic temperatures and the, coldest in a few handfuls of years, temperatures in the Eastern US.

And if you’re one of those sensitive, perceptive souls who feels that the weather events you’re seeing, the extreme swings from very hot to somewhat cool temperatures, the extreme swings from drought to record rainfall, and the extreme events now accelerating the melting of the world’s ice and snow, are freakish, strange, and terrifyingly abnormal, then you are absolutely correct. Don’t let anyone, be they friends or family, or journalists in the media, tell you otherwise. There is reason for your discomfort and there is very serious cause for concern.

why it can still get cold ...

Abnormal is the New Normal: Shifting Baselines, Polar Vortices, and Climate Change

The Polar Vortex, a mass of cold air usually centered around points within the Arctic Circle, made a visit south for the second time in 2014. The Vortex brings freezing weather, snow, and ice to regions that are unaccustomed to such extreme conditions. It also brings with it a new spate of “so much for global warming” talking-points, fresh on the heals of a recent report revealing that Climate Change Denial is at an all time high.

Unfortunately for the climate change denial industry, Polar Vortices are well-understood atmospheric phenomena. They were documented as early as 1853 as currents of cold air that essentially circle the poles. High-altitude observations in the 1950′s revealed the occurrence of sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) in the Arctic Polar Vortex. These SSW’s can cause a the vortex to weaken or reverse directions, allowing it to drift off axis or split into several smaller vortices. When weakened vortices contact the jet stream, cold arctic air is forced south, resulting in anomalously cold temperatures.

The obvious next question is: Is the weakened polar vortex caused by climate change?

There’s certainly a compelling argument to be made that climate change does influence the Arctic Polar Vortex. The Vortex is regulated by the heat balance of the arctic, a region that is being disproportionately affected by climate change. Not only is the arctic warming, but the transition from ice-covered to open sea changes the absorptive and reflective properties of the planet’s surface, further altering the arctic’s energy balance. Warming events drive weakening within the vortex, so it would seem like a warmer arctic would experience more variability in the Polar Vortex. Climate scientists are still working on establishing the extent to which global warming will affect Polar Vortices.

There is a common refrain in the climate change community that “you can’t blame any singular weather event on Climate Change”, because climate refers to long-term patterns in weather, not specific events. I reject this interpretation. Climate Change affects weather in complex and subtle ways that are exceedingly difficult to quantify. While it is impossible to determine precisely how much impact Climate Change has on a single weather anomaly, the reality is that all weather is influenced, to some extent, by global warming.
Two other, distinctly human, phenomena are driving climate change discussions about the Polar Vortex. The first is our tendency to extrapolate personal experiences to global generalities. Yes, the United States are colder than average, with parts of Florida dropping to a chilly 39°F, but much of the rest of the world is experiencing record heat waves. Parts of Australia peaked at a whopping 125°F while even the Arctic is experiencing a warmer than average year.  2013 was the fourth warmest year on record. Even more telling, while most “warmest years” get a boost in temperature from El Niño, 2012 and 2013 are the only years in the top ten that didn’t occur in conjunction with an El Niño Southern Oscillation.

The second phenomena is something we refer to in ocean conservation as Shifting Baselines Syndrome:

Essentially, this syndrome has arisen because each generation of fisheries scientists accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers, and uses this to evaluate changes. When the next generation starts its career, the stocks have further declined, but it is the stocks at that time that serve as a new baseline. The result obviously is a gradual shift of the baseline, a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species, and inappropriate reference points for evaluating economic losses resulting from overfishing, or for identifying targets for rehabilitation measures.
Pauly 1995

I attempted to capture the concept of shifting baselines in the prologue to to my climate change science fiction novel, Fleet: Shift – an adventure in marine science from the not-too-distant future. Shifting baselines syndrome is clearly not limited to fisheries issue, as the webcomic XKCD expertly pointed out:

Over the last several decades, we’ve experienced a major shifting baseline in how we interpret the weather. Winters in northern cities have been getting warmer, making the freezing days more pronounced. We see these freezing event as anomalous today, whereas as 50 years ago, they would be the norm.

New York City. From Climate Central.

Chicago. From Climate Central.

For almost four decades, our climate has been abnormal. If you were born after 1976, you have never experienced a “normal” year. For 37 years, the annual global temperature has been above the long-term average temperature. Our baseline for what constitutes a normal climate has shifted.

No, the dramatic cold brought on by a weakening Polar Vortex is not evidence against Climate Change anymore than the rising stern of the Titanic is evidence that the ship isn’t sinking. It is evidence that our perceptions regarding what constitutes “normal weather” has so shifted that something we would have considered an annoying cold snap in the 1950′s is treated as a major departure from normal weather in 2014. Abnormal is the new normal.

wood!

Early rails: A wooden balanced incline used for gold mining, at the Illinois Mine in the Pahranagat Mining District, Nevada in 1871. An ore car would ride on parallel tracks connected to a pulley wheel at the top of tracks

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149899/The-American-West-youve-seen-Amazing-19th-century-pictures-landscape-chartered-time.html#ixzz1xI0FiAni

Whilst the ideal material for rails is steel, there's no reason why, in the right circumstances (financial, resource availability, loadings) wood can't be used. This is a shot from an American wooden railway of the 1870s, used to transport ore.

And not just wood! Granite was used on the Haytor Granite Tramway on Dartmoor, sourced along the route, the route being used to transport granite to the coast.

The dystopia lot like to dishearten us by asking how even railways will survive Peak Oil because of the accompanying resource shortages - hopefully the above might shut 'em up a bit!

a cheap way of getting trains from a to b!

Just run 'em down the road! This is done even today, and in the USA of all places. This is Michigan City where the interurban trains run right down the street - an incredibly cheap and easy way of introducing rail that avoids land costs and new engineering. Although this film is from 1995 this line is not only still running but flourishing, using electricity and hardly seeming to bother road traffic. After Peak Oil with far less traffic on the roads this will be an increasingly common sight, allowing railways to reach places easily and linking markets and populations quickly and cheaply.

interurban rebirth

The Interurban is an idea whose time has come. Once the USA was covered in these electrified lines, which brought modern transport to many towns and villages for the first time.

Unfortunately the rise of cheap oil meant that in many cases they only had a short life span. Amazingly modern, cheap and fast travel was replaced by spluttering and 'cheaper' anti-social cars and buses. With the end of cheap oil the interurban will return, some of the new batch of American tramways and light railways already show interurban characteristics as they edge out of the city centres.

But this line, the Chicago and South Bend, has kept going the whole time. It includes sections of classic street-running as well as fast reserved sections. Soon this will be just one line among many, but for a while it was the only survivor!