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Arctic in Hot Water: Sea Ice Minimal in Chukchi, Bering Seas

Associated Press

   ANCHORAGE, ALASKA - The U.S. research vessel Sikuliaq can break through
   ice as thick as 2.5 feet (0.76 meters). In the Chukchi Sea northwest of
   Alaska this month, which should be brimming with floes, its limits
   likely won't be tested.

   University of Washington researchers left Nome on Nov. 7 on the
   261-foot (79.5-meter) ship, crossed through the Bering Strait and will
   record observations at multiple sites including Utqiagvik, formerly
   Barrow, America's northernmost community. Sea ice is creeping toward
   the city from the east in the Beaufort Sea, but to find sea ice in the
   Chukchi, the Sikuliaq would have to head northwest for about 200 miles
   (322 kilometers).

   In the new reality of the U.S. Arctic, open water is the November norm
   for the Chukchi. Instead of thick, years-old ice, researchers are
   studying waves and how they may pummel the northern Alaska coastline.

   "We're trying to understand what the new autumn looks like in the
   Arctic,'' said Jim Thomson, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics
   Laboratory.

   Chukchi sea ice in early November was at its lowest level on record,
   said Rick Thoman, a climate expert at the University of Alaska
   Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center and a former forecaster
   for the National Weather Service.

   Low ice is a problem for people of the coast. Communities north and
   south of the Bering Strait rely on near-shore ice to act as a natural
   sea wall, protecting land from erosion brought on by winter storms.

   Sea ice is a platform from which to catch crab or cod in Nome, a
   transportation corridor between villages in Kotzebue Sound and a work
   station on which to butcher walrus near Gambell.

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