Alaska

New study raises concerns as major icefield in Alaska melts at alarming rate

Published

2 years ago

July 13, 2024

New study raises concerns as major icefield in Alaska melts at alarming rate

JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU/Gray News) – A new study highlighted the shrinking Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska as an example of how Earth’s glaciers are nearing an “irreversible” tipping point for melting.

“If there are processes in Alaska that are accelerating the melt, they may be relevant to other parts of the world as well,” said Bethan Davies, the paper’s lead author, about the global significance of studying Alaska’s glaciers.

The Juneau Icefield is home to dozens of large glaciers — including the popular Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau — and many more smaller ones. By 2100, many of these glaciers are at risk of disappearing. Experts say if the Earth continues to warm, nearly 70% of the world’s roughly 200,000 glaciers will dry up by the end of the century.

The approximately 1,500-square-mile Juneau Icefield blankets the mountains north of Juneau.(U.S. Geological Service)

“When we look at the last 10 years worth of glacier change over all of Alaska, we are seeing a real uptick [in melting] that’s faster than in some other parts of the world,” said Davies, who is also the glaciologist and senior lecturer in Physical Geography at Newcastle University. “And it’s very interesting to ask why that’s happening and why these glaciers are not only accelerating but also how they might behave in the future.”

The study, published this month in the journal Nature Communications, showed from the years 1770 to 1979, ice volume loss remained fairly consistent, at roughly 1 kilometer cubed per year.

From 1979 to 2010, there was slightly more melting, but the loss at 3.1 kilometers cubed per year remained fairly consistent.

However, from 2010 through 2020, the Juneau Icefield’s melting rate doubled to almost 6 kilometers cubed per year. That’s the equivalent of 2.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools melting off of the icefield each year.

The Mendenhall Glacier is one of the dozens of major glaciers that extend out from the Juneau... — The Mendenhall Glacier is one of the dozens of major glaciers that extend out from the Juneau Icefield.(Alaska’s News Source)

That icefield thinning led to the formation of Suicide Basin, which saw its first glacial lake outburst in 2011.

“This can only happen because that whole glacier system, as was pointed out in the study, is thinning,” Alaska climate specialist Rick Thoman said. “It’s thinning a lot and it’s thinning rapidly.”

This water release will happen every year, with some years seeing the potential for historic flooding. But as the glacier keeps thinning, Suicide Basin will reach a point where a glacial lake outburst will no longer form.

However, Thoman says newer basins can form.

“It’s entirely possible given the complex nature of the Juneau Icefield, we might see a new glacier dammed lake form in some other part of the system,” Thoman said. “But as last year showed, when there’s a lot of water in these glacier-dammed lakes, and when they release all the water, we get the devastation that we saw last August.”

All of that melting eventually gets dumped into the ocean. According to Davies, glacier melt accounts for about a quarter of the total sea level rise. The remainder comes from the Antarctic ice, Greenland ice sheet and thermal expansion of the ocean.

“A part of the world that’s contributing the most to sea level rise is Alaska,” Davies said. “The Alaskan glaciers are really important in the global context because there’s a large volume of ice.”

She said this study isn’t relevant to just Alaska, because the same processes occurring here in Alaska may be relevant to other parts of the world.

“What’s happening is that the temperature is gradually increasing,” Davies said. “But as that happens, there’s a series of processes that are accelerating melt or amplifying melt.”

One of those processes is the snow line, which continues to dwindle during the summer months.

Davies said the end of summer snow line is actually reaching the top of the low slope, plateau area. This is historically lower than in previous decades when snow was covering the plateau all year round.

Another challenge is that as more of the plateau is exposed, it’s darkening the mountain as more rocks are exposed from the melting ice.

“When we remove the snow, we are reflecting less of the sun’s energy back into space,” Davies said. “Because snow is very bright and white and reflective. So what we’re doing when we raise that end of summer snow line is we expose much more of the glacier to that darker color so it can absorb more of the sun’s energy.”

Thoman said with the summer snow line dwindling, the atmosphere’s snow level rises with atmospheric rivers aiding in transporting warmer air.

“To hold as much water in the air as those atmospheric rivers bring, the air has to be warm,” Thoman said. “If it was colder it wouldn’t be able to hold as much moisture.”

Thoman said it’s both the high precipitation events and warm airmass that are helping to drive snow levels very high into the atmosphere, which can and do occur all winter long, some years.

Climatologically speaking, Juneau temperatures have warmed a few degrees over the last several decades. And while that may not seem like much, when temperatures are hovering around freezing, that can still have large impacts.

“We’re right around that freezing level,” Thoman said. “So an increase of 31 to 33 [degrees], say, as an average temperature is much more significant when you’re talking about snow and ice than say an increase of 40 to 43.”

Davies doesn’t think the Earth’s ice has passed the point of irreversible change but does argue that such a threshold could occur by the end of this century.

And if the feedback loop of melting continues, the icefield will eventually reach a point where it will be difficult to recover from.

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Alaska

West Valley’s Jayden Miranda named Gatorade Alaska Boys Basketball Player of the Year

Published

6 hours ago

March 22, 2026

Press Room

West Valley’s Jayden Miranda named Gatorade Alaska Boys Basketball Player of the Year

West Valley Wolfpack junior guard Jayden Miranda looks to pass the ball during a 56-38 loss to the Forest Wildcats from Ocala, Florida during the opening round of the Alaska Airlines Classic at West Anchorage High School on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Bill Roth / ADN)

Junior Jayden Miranda on Friday became the latest player from West Valley High School to be named Gatorade Alaska Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

“It feels good and it was definitely one of the goals that I had to check off my checklist,” he said. “I woke up, and I didn’t know. My coach told me, and it was just excitement in my heart. My heart was beating and I was just smiling.”

Miranda led the Wolfpack boys basketball team to a Mid Alaska Conference championship and the No. 1 seed at the 2026 ASAA 4A state tournament.

The 5-foot-11 guard also helped lead West Valley to a 22-4 record, and through 23 games, he averaged 14.7 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists as well as shooting 51.8% from the floor and 39.7% from the perimeter.

“Miranda is a great kid on and off the court — gets good grades and never gets in trouble,” North Pole head coach Travis Church said in a statement. “Looking around 4A, I don’t see anyone who would measure up. He’s the best player on the best team in the state. It’s hard for me to imagine going with anyone else.”

Miranda is the second player from the program to receive the award. The first was two-time recipient Stewart Erhart, who was honored in back-to-back years from 2022-23.

The award acknowledges a student-athlete’s athletic achievement, and also recognizes outstanding academic excellence and exceptional character displayed on and off the court.

Miranda maintained a 3.36 GPA and volunteered locally with the Fairbanks Community Food Bank, donated time as a youth basketball coach and is a practiced artist who has also taken multiple cooking classes in high school.

He and the top-seeded Wolfpack fell short of advancing to the finals Friday after losing 59-52 to fifth-seeded South Anchorage.

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Alaska

Noordam Starts Repositioning Cruise to West Coast – Cruise Industry News

Published

18 hours ago

March 22, 2026

Press Room

Noordam Starts Repositioning Cruise to West Coast – Cruise Industry News

The Noordam sailed from Australia earlier this month to kick off a 36-night repositioning voyage to the West Coast. Sailing between Sydney and Seattle, the month-long itinerary started in mid-March and includes destinations in the South Pacific, French Polynesia and Hawaii. The cruise is highlighted by overnight visits to Honolulu…

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Alaska

Big Oil Flocks to Alaska in Record-Setting Petroleum Lease Sale | OilPrice.com

Published

1 day ago

March 21, 2026

Press Room

Big Oil Flocks to Alaska in Record-Setting Petroleum Lease Sale | OilPrice.com

The first lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in seven years became the most successful auction in the area ever, as oil majors bid on hundreds of tracts, signaling they haven’t given up on Alaska’s petroleum resources despite development and court challenges.

This week’s oil and gas lease sale for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, one of five mandated in the next decade under the Trump Administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), drew a record high of $163.7 million in high bids and resulted in 187 leases in total, awarded to companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and a consortium of Repsol and Shell subsidiaries.

The lease sale set a record for Alaska with the most revenue generated ever, the most tracts receiving bids, and the second most acreage sold in a single sale, the Bureau of Land Management said.

The BLM offered 625 tracts across about 5.5 million acres for bid in the sale, revived at the end of last year by the Trump Administration. No lease sales were held in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska under President Biden.

In the first sale since 2019, a total of 11 companies submitted bids on 187 tracts covering 1,334,967 acres.

The Trump Administration, the state of Alaska, and the local oil and gas association welcomed the results of the record-setting lease sale as a vote of confidence for Alaska’s role in American energy dominance, while environmentalists vowed to challenge any oil and gas drilling in court, the way they are already doing for the lease program itself.

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“Today’s lease sale underscores the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s vital role in strengthening America’s energy security while fueling economic growth across Alaska,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said.

Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy noted that the lease sale “reinforces Alaska’s role as a reliable energy producer, supports high-paying jobs for our families, provides additional revenue to the state, and strengthens American energy security at a time when energy security is more important than ever.”

The Alaska Oil and Gas Association and other business organizations in the state said that the “strong participation and unprecedented results underscore renewed investor confidence in Alaska’s North Slope and the state’s long-term resource potential.”

“The Trump administration deserves credit for helping restore access and certainty in the petroleum reserve, allowing industry to step forward with meaningful commitments,” said Steve Wackowski, president and CEO of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association.

“That confidence is critical to advancing responsible development of Alaska’s vast resources, supporting jobs, sustaining the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, and strengthening U.S. national security in an increasingly uncertain world.”

The National Petroleum Reserve already hosts one massive oil development— the $9-billion Willow project by ConocoPhillips, which was approved by the Biden Administration in 2023, and is expected to start producing oil in 2029. Peak production is designed to be about 180,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude.

Going forward, the development of any additional resources in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve would not be a fast and easy task. The conditions are harsher than in other areas, while environmentalists have vowed to fight both the latest lease sale and any future oil and gas drilling and development plans.

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Two groups represented by Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Friends of the Earth, restarted litigation last month challenging the lease sales and the underlying management plan, which opens 18.5 million acres within the 23-million-acre Reserve to potential oil and gas drilling and infrastructure.? Three other lawsuits also challenge the lease sale or decisions related to it.

“The results of this sale will spell disaster for the surrounding area,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth U.S.?

“We will continue to see the Trump administration in court over its blatant disregard of federal law and complete failure to protect this vulnerable and rapidly shrinking area of our planet.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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