Title: What climate change looks like in Alaska now - Anchorage Daily News
Headings: What climate change looks like in Alaska now
What climate change looks like in Alaska now
Since the mid-20th century, Alaska and the Arctic have been warming about twice as fast as the global rate. Over the past five decades, average Alaska temperatures have increased by 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit, with the increases most pronounced in winter -- a change noticed by Native elders decades ago.
Winter 6.3 degrees warmer
Weather changes, weather extremes
Melt and thaw  glaciers and permafrost
Forests, fires and plants
Wildlife on thin ice
Erosion, villages and culture
Food security, health and safety
Ocean acidification pronounced in Alaska waters
Cold Rush
About this author

Content: The Arctic as a whole has gotten warmer and wetter since the start of the 21st century, a change attributed to sea-ice reduction. Other forces like reduced snow cover — which this year hit a near-record June low in the Northern Hemisphere — and cloud formation amplify the warming. Records show that Alaska's North Slope has warmed dramatically, most so in autumn, the time of minimal ice when more summer heat absorbed by the ocean is emitted into the atmosphere, thanks to ever-bigger areas of open water in that season. Lack of sea ice means fall storms are more destructive. On the Bering Sea coast, storms are sending seawater far inland, as much as 20 miles in southwestern Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim region, the U.S. Geological Survey reports. For Alaska, history is being used to make predictions about what appears to be a vastly different future. UAF's Scenarios Network for Alaska and Arctic Planning, led by Fresco, gives community-by-community predictions for higher temperatures and shifts to rain rather than snow. A hanging glacier above the Ruth Glacier, Denali National Park, Alaska on July 19, 2012. Mountain glaciers hold only 1 percent of the world's glacial ice, but they are contributing 30 percent of the water that is increasing sea levels. A hanging glacier above the Ruth Glacier, Denali National Park, Alaska on July 19, 2012.