Alaska

Arctic has changed dramatically in just a couple of decades • Alaska Beacon

Published

1 year ago

December 13, 2024

Arctic has changed dramatically in just a couple of decades • Alaska Beacon

by Twila Moon, Matthew Druckenmiller and Rick Thoman, Alaska Beacon
December 13, 2024

The Arctic can feel like a far-off place, disconnected from daily life if you aren’t one of the 4 million people who live there. Yet, the changes underway in the Arctic as temperatures rise can profoundly affect lives around the world.

Coastal flooding is worsening in many communities as Arctic glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet send meltwater into the oceans. Heat-trapping gases released by Arctic wildfires and thawing tundra mix quickly in the air, adding to human-produced emissions that are warming the globe. Unusual and extreme weather events, pressure on food supplies and intensifying threats from wildfire and related smoke can all be influenced by changes in the Arctic.

In the 2024 Arctic Report Card, released Dec. 10, we brought together 97 scientists from 11 countries, with expertise ranging from wildlife to wildfire and sea ice to snow, to report on the state of the Arctic environment.

They describe the rapid changes they’re witnessing across the Arctic, and the consequences for people and wildlife that touch every region of the globe.

Pace of change in the Arctic accelerates

The Arctic of today looks stunningly different from the Arctic of even one to two decades ago. Over the Arctic Report Card’s 19 years, we and the many contributing authors to the report have watched the pace of environmental change accelerate and the challenges become more complex.

For the past 15 years, the Arctic snow season has been one to two weeks shorter than it was historically, shifting the timing and character of the seasons.

Shorter snow seasons can challenge plants and animals that depend on regular seasonal changes. Longer snow-free seasons can also reduce water resources from snowmelt earlier in spring or summer and increase the possibility of drought.

The extent of sea ice, an important habitat for many animals, has declined in ways that make today’s mostly thin and seasonal sea ice landscape unrecognizable compared with the thicker and more extensive sea ice of decades past.

With a shorter sea ice season, the dark ocean surface is exposed and can absorb and store more heat during summer, which then adds to air and ocean temperature increases. This aligns with observations of long-term warming for Arctic surface ocean waters. Sea ice-dependent animals can also be forced ashore or into longer fasting seasons. The Arctic shipping season is also lengthening, with rapidly increasing shipping traffic each summer.

Overall, 2024 brought the second-warmest temperatures to the Arctic since measurements began in 1900, and the wettest summer on record.

Arctic tundra becomes a carbon source

For thousands of years, the Arctic tundra landscape of shrubs and permafrost, or frozen ground, has acted as a carbon dioxide sink, meaning that the landscape was taking up and storing this gas that would otherwise trap heat in the atmosphere.

But permafrost across the Arctic has been warming and thawing. Once thawed, microbes in the permafrost can decompose long-stored carbon, breaking it down into carbon dioxide and methane. These heat-trapping gases are then released to the atmosphere, causing more global warming.

Wildfires have also increased in size and intensity, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the wildfire season has grown longer.

These changes have pushed the tundra ecosystem over an edge. Susan Natali and colleagues found that the Arctic tundra region is now a source – not a sink, or storage location – for carbon dioxide. It was already a methane source because of thawing permafrost.

The Arctic landscape’s natural ability to help to buffer human heat-trapping gasses is ending, adding to the urgency to reduce human emissions.

Stark regional differences make planning difficult

The Arctic Report Card covers October through September each year, and 2024 was the second-warmest year on record for the Arctic. Yet, the experience for people living in the Arctic can feel like regional or seasonal weather whiplash.

Stark regional differences in weather can make planning difficult and challenge familiar seasonal patterns. These include very different conditions in neighboring areas or big changes from one season to another.

For example, some areas across North America and Eurasia experienced more winter snow than usual during the past year. Yet, the Canadian Arctic experienced the shortest snow season in the 26-year record. Early loss of winter snow can strain water resources and may exacerbate dry conditions that can add to fire danger.

Summer across the Arctic was the third warmest ever observed, and areas of Alaska and Canada experienced record daily temperatures during August heat waves. Yet, residents of Greenland’s west coast experienced an unusually cool spring and summer. Though the Greenland Ice Sheet continued its 27-year record of ice loss, the loss was less than in many recent years.

Ice seals, caribou and people feeling the change

Rapid Arctic warming also affects wildlife in different ways.

As Lori Quakenbush and colleagues explain in this year’s report, Alaska ice seal populations, including ringed, bearded, spotted and ribbon seals, are currently healthy despite sea ice decline and warming ocean waters in their Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort sea habitats.

However, ringed seals are eating more saffron cod rather than the more nutritious Arctic cod. Arctic cod are very sensitive to water temperature. As waters warm, they shift their range northward, becoming less abundant on the continental shelves where the seals feed. So far, negative effects on seal populations and health are not yet apparent.

On land, large inland caribou herds are overwhelmingly in decline. Climate change and human roads and buildings are all having an impact. Some Indigenous communities who have depended on specific herds for millennia are deeply concerned for their future and the impact on their food, culture and the complex and connected living systems of the region. Some smaller coastal herds are doing better.

Indigenous peoples in the Arctic have deep knowledge of their region that has been passed on for thousands of years, allowing them to flourish in what can be an inhospitable region. Today, their observations and knowledge provide vital support for Arctic communities forced to adapt quickly to these and other changes. Supporting Indigenous hunters and harvesters is by its very nature an investment in long-term knowledge and stewardship of Arctic places.

Action for the Arctic and the globe

Despite global agreements and bold targets, human emissions of heat-trapping gasses are still at record highs. And natural landscapes, like the Arctic tundra, are losing their ability to help reduce emissions.

Simultaneously, the impacts of climate change are growing, increasing Arctic wildfires, affecting buildings and roads as permafrost thaws, and increasing flooding and coastal erosion as sea levels rise. The affects are challenging plants and animals that people depend on.

Our 2024 Arctic Report Card continues to ring the alarm bell, reminding everyone that minimizing future risk – in the Arctic and in all our hometowns – requires cooperation to reduce emissions, adapt to the damage and build resilience for the future. We are in this together.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com.

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Alaska

Peltola challenges Sullivan in Alaska

Published

2 hours ago

January 12, 2026

Press Room

Democrats are going after Alaska’s Senate race this year, and they’ve landed probably the only candidate that can make it competitive: Mary Peltola.

The former congresswoman on Monday jumped into the race against GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, adding yet another hard-fought campaign to what Democrats hope is shaping up to be a wave year that could carry them in red states like Alaska.

Peltola certainly doesn’t sound like a typical Democratic candidate as she starts her bid: She’s proposing term limits, is campaigning on “fish, family and freedom,” and has already name-dropped former Republican officials in her state multiple times.

“Ted Stevens and Don Young ignored lower 48 partisanship to fight for things like public media and disaster relief because Alaska depends on them,” Peltola says in her launch video, referencing the former GOP senator and House member, respectively.

“DC people will be pissed that I’m focusing on their self-dealing, and sharing what I’ve seen firsthand. They’re going to complain that I’m proposing term limits. But it’s time,” she says.

Peltola is clearly appealing to the state’s ranked choice voting system and its unique electorate, which elevated moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, over a candidate supported by President Donald Trump. The last Democrat to win an Alaska Senate race was Mark Begich in 2008, though Peltola won the state’s at-large seat twice — even defeating former Gov. Sarah Palin.

Sullivan defeated Begich in 2014, followed by independent Al Gross in 2020; Sullivan also recently voted to extend expired health care subsidies, a sign of the state’s independent streak.

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Alaska

Wayne and Wanda: I love Alaska winters, but my wife has grown weary and wants to move

Published

14 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Wayne and Wanda: I love Alaska winters, but my wife has grown weary and wants to move

Wanda and Wayne,

My wife and I moved to Alaska four years ago for work and adventure, thinking we’d stay a couple of years and see how it felt. We fell hard for it almost immediately. But by our second winter, my wife started talking about how hard the cold and dark were on her, and every winter since that feeling has grown heavier.

This recent cold snap and snow dump really pushed things over the edge. She’s deeply unhappy right now, withdrawn, sad and openly talking about how depressing it feels to live here, especially being so far from family and old friends. She tries to manage it with running, yoga, the gym, but even those things she often does alone. She hasn’t really built a community here, partly because she’s introverted and partly because she sticks closely to her routines and her co-workers aren’t the very social. Meanwhile, I’ve found connections through work and the outdoors, especially skiing in the winter (cross country and touring, downhill, backcountry, all of it!), and Alaska still feels full of possibilities to me.

But now she’s done. She wants to move back “home” soon. She wants to start trying for kids within the next year and doesn’t feel like Alaska is the right place to raise a family. She worries about schools, politics, the economy and being so far from family support. We both have careers that could take us almost anywhere, as well as savings, and a house we could sell quickly, and many of the Alaska toys we could also sell. Logistically, it would be easy. Emotionally, I feel like I’m being told to leave after I just got settled.

There are places I still want to explore, trips I’ve been planning, seasons I want to experience differently now that we’re more established. I keep thinking: If we can just get through to summer, maybe she’ll feel better. But I don’t know if that’s hope or denial, and yeah, summer feels a long ways away and goes by pretty quickly. Honestly, now I’m starting to get bummed about the idea of leaving.

I love my wife and I don’t want her to be miserable. But I’m scared that if we leave now, I’ll resent her, and if we stay she’ll resent me. Is there a way to buy time without dragging this out painfully? Or is this one of those moments where love means choosing between two incompatible futures?

Wanda says:

If this was your first Cheechako winter here, or your second, I could write off your wife’s apprehension to culture shock or a sophomore slump. But this is year four, which means she’s endured winters of record snowfalls, weird snow shortfalls, terrible windstorms, bleak darkness and desolate below-zero temps. Sorry to say, but it’s likely there’s no number of laps at the Dome or downward dogs on the mat that will make her find the special beauty of an Alaska winter.

This place is tough. For every old-timer who jokes, “I came for two years and I’m still here,” there are plenty who maybe made it that long and bailed. While the state shines with possibilities, rugged beauty, unique traits and cool people, it’s also far from basically everything, pretty expensive and definitely extreme. Some people will thrive here. Some people won’t. No one’s better or worse, or wins or loses. Were you on your own, at a different point in life, you may have made your forever home here. But instead you pledged forever to your wife, and I’m afraid it’s time to start out on your next adventure — in the Lower 48.

Your wife gave this a real shot. She’s stayed four years. That’s four long — and for her, miserable — winters. It was also four seasons of no doubt incredible summers, full of fresh halibut and farmers markets and quirky festivals and blue skies at 11 p.m. If these special aspects of Alaska haven’t yet been enough to convince her the winters are worth it, they won’t ever be.

Wayne says:

Sure, your Alaska bucket list is still growing faster than you can check things off, but take it from a lifelong Alaskan: You’ll never do it all. People fall in love with this place in a million different ways. You and I? We believe there’s always another season of adventures ahead, another trail and another corner of the state to explore, and we’ll always feel some serious AK FOMO when we’re stuck at the office working while everyone else is ice skating on a perfect winter day or dipnetting during a hot salmon run.

Here’s the perspective shift you need. You love your wife. You’re committed to a happy life together. And by any reasonable measure, you’ve made the most of your four years here. So ask yourself this honestly: Is another spring of shredding pow in the Chugach more important than her mental health and your marriage? And why resent her for being ready for a new chapter after she showed up and gave Alaska a chance? When you frame it that way, “incompatible futures” sounds dramatic and “buying time” sounds selfish.

And Alaska isn’t going anywhere. You know that. It’s a flight or two away no matter where you end up Outside. Maintain your friendships, stay on the airline alerts, narrow your must-do list to the Alaska all-timers, and plan to come back regularly. And imagine this: years from now, bringing your kids here after years of telling them stories about the winters you survived and the mountains you climbed. That’s not losing Alaska, that’s carrying it with you wherever you go, along with your wife and your marriage.

[Wayne and Wanda: How can I support my partner’s hardcore New Year’s reset, even if it’s not for me?]

[Wayne and Wanda: I kissed my high school crush during a holiday trip home. Now I’m questioning everything]

[Wayne and Wanda: My girlfriend’s dog fostering has consumed her life and derailed our relationship]

[Wayne & Wanda: My husband has been having a secret, yearslong emotional affair]

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Alaska

The Alarming Prices Of Groceries In Rural Alaska — And Why They’re So Expensive – Tasting Table

Published

1 day ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

The Alarming Prices Of Groceries In Rural Alaska — And Why They’re So Expensive – Tasting Table

ViDI Studio/Shutterstock

Many households across America have been struggling with their grocery bills due to inflation that hit the global markets after the COVID-19 pandemic, but for families in Alaska, especially in rural communities, the prices of basic goods have reached alarming heights. Alongside inflation, the main issue for the climbing prices is Alaska’s distance from the rest of the U.S., which influences the cost of transport that’s required to deliver the supplies.

Given that Alaska is a non-contiguous state, any trucks delivering grocery stock have to first cross Canada before reaching Alaska, which requires a very valuable resource: time. According to Alaska Beacon, “It takes around 40 hours of nonstop driving to cover the more than 2,200 highway miles from Seattle to Fairbanks” on the Alaska Highway. That’s why a fairly small percentage of the state’s food comes in on the road. For the most part, groceries are shipped in on barges and are then flown to more remote areas, since “82% of the state’s communities are not reachable by road,” per Alaska Beacon. As such, even takeout in Alaska is sometimes delivered by plane.

Planes, trucks, and boats all cost money, but they are also all vulnerable to extreme weather conditions, which are not uncommon in Alaska. Sometimes local stores are unable to restock basic staples like bread and milk for several weeks, so Alaskans struggle with high food insecurity.

How much do groceries cost in Alaska?

The storefront of a local City Market in Alaska

Ruben Ramos/Getty Images

Groceries in Alaska cost significantly more than in the rest of the U.S., but even within the state itself, the prices vary based on remoteness. You’ll find that prices of the same items can double or even triple, depending on how inaccessible a certain area is. The New Republic reported that prices in Unalakleet, a remote village that’s only accessible by plane, can be up to 80% higher than in Anchorage, Alaska’s most populated city. For example, the outlet cited Campbell’s Tomato Soup costing $1.69 in Anchorage and $4.25 in Unalakleet. Even more staggering is the price of apple juice: $3.29 in the city, $10.65 in the village. Such prices might make our jaw drop, but they’re a daily reality for many Alaskans.

As one resident shared on TikTok, butter in his local store costs $8 per pound — almost twice the national average. Fresh produce is even more expensive, with bananas going for $3 a pound, approximately five times the national average. It’s therefore not surprising that most of the people who live in Alaska have learned to rely on nature to survive.

Subsistence living has great importance for many communities. They hunt their own meat, forage for plants, and nurture their deep cultural connection to sourdough. For rural Alaskans, living off the land is a deep philosophy that embraces connection with nature and hones the survival knowledge that’s passed down through generations — including how to make Alaska’s traditional akutaq ice cream.

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