Registration is open with a reduced conference fee until April 14. Dorm housing on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus and Spaces in field trips can also be reserved MORE >>
COSEE Alaska’s Ocean Science Fairs and student winners’ work and COSEE Alaska--sponsored cliimate change videos were highlighted at the 2012 Alaska Forum on the Environment, Alaska's statewide gathering of more than 1,600 environmental scientists and professionals. MORE >>
Three Alaskan high school students took a giant step into the professional world of marine science in mid-January when they attended the Alaska Marine Science Conference (AMSS), a four-day series of presentations and workshops related to current research in Alaska's seas. The Alaska Marine Science Symposium attracts more than 1,000 participants. After winning awards at the 2011 COSEE Ocean Science "fair within a fair" at the Alaska State Science & Engineering Fair, China Kanter and Ember Eck, from Kotzebue, and Molly Brown, from Barrow, collaborated on a poster presentation for the AMSS with COSEE Alaska Executive Director Robin Dublin, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies Director Ray Barnhardt and Alaska Native Knowledge Network Manager Sean Topkok. The poster took top honors in the category of high school and undergraduate posters. MORE >>
A half-day workshop will feature Randy Olson and an opportunity for scientists and outreach specialists to consider how they tell the story of their scientific research in a manner that is compelling and informative. The workshop will also feature skill-building sessions. Randy will prove an Outreach and Communication keynote speech for the Symposium. Other symposium presentations will include a poster presentation by the award winners in COSEE Alaska ocean science "fair within a fair" at the state science fair and a presentation about the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem-scale scientist-teacher workshop that COSEE Alaska co-sponsored. MORE >>
Ray Barnhardt, Sean Topkok, Andi Anderson, Marilyn Sigman, and Asia Beder judged more than 40 projects at the Alaska State Science and Engineering Fair in Anchorage in March for COSEE Alaska awards. These projects qualified for COSEE's ocean science "fair within a fair" because of their focus on the ocean, watersheds, or climate change and cultural or community relevance in addition to scientific merit. Several students from schools in the Inupiaq cultural region in Northwest Alaska received awards following COSEE Alaska support for teachers to organize district fairs in the school districts. High school winners from Kotzebue, Barrow, and Petersburg will receive travel support to present their projects at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage in January, 2011. MORE >>
Tags: Walrus, Climate Change, Changing Arctic Sea Ice, Alaska Native Perspectives on Climate Change, Traditional Knowledge, Bering Sea, Arctic Ocean
Walrus, walrus hunters, and the study of sea ice is the focus of a [[LINK||http:// http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/08/10/10climatewire-another-symbol-of-the-arctics-complex-ecosyst-8466.html?pagewanted=3 ||New York Times Climate Wire story|||| target=']] by Lauren Morello that portrays the long-term dependence of Yupik and Inupiat hunters on the Pacific walrus for the meat, bone tools, skins to cover boats, gutskin clothing, clothing in the context of a rapidly-warming Arctic which is changing the icescape upon which both walruses and people depend. The behavior of sea ice is no longer predictable. MORE >>
Tags: Climate Change, Climate Change Impacts on Alaska Marine Ecosystems, Resiliency to Climate Change, Sticklebacks
A recent study provided additional evidence that sticklebacks have one of the fastest evolutionary responses in wild populations, which could make them particularly resilient to changes in water temperature. University of British Columbia researcher Rowan Barrett and colleagues in Switzerland and Sweden reported on the results of experiments demonstrated that, in little as three years, freshwater sticklebacks developed tolerance for water temperatures 2.5 degrees Celsius lower than their ancestors. MORE >>
The National Sea and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that a surge in late winter ice growth resulted in a delay of one week in the onset of ice melt in the Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, and Bering seas, compared to the 1979-2000 average. MORE >>
Tags: Climate Change, Alaska Native Perspectives on Climate Change, Arctic Ocean, Traditional Knowledge Changes in Alaska Marine Ecosystems
Mary Pete, recently appointed to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission to represent indigenous perspectives and to focus on anthropology, subsistence, and education; testified at a Senate field hearing on the implications for federal resources and local communities of a changing Arctic in Barrow on August 29, 2010. MORE >>
Tags: Communicating Science, Ocean and Climate Literacy
The Kachemak Bay National Research Reserve and Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge collaborated on new permanent exhibits to illustrate Kachemak Bay's extreme tidal range and show how the tides influence a key ecosystem where the rivers and streams meet the bay. The tidal exhibit includes films that show tides in action, including a time lapse film of various locations in the Bay. MORE >>
Tags: Polar bear, Climate Change, Changes in Alaska Marine Ecosystems, Changing Species Distributions
Local residents and biologists were startled by the sighting of a polar bear near the village of Emmonak at the mouth of the Yukon River. There have been other sightings of polar bears on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta this summer compared to only a few that have been seen this far south every three to five years MORE >>
Tags: Climate Change, Changes in Alaska Marine Ecosystems, Ocean Acidification
In its recent ocean news update, SeaWeb summarized several articles from the June 18, 2010, issue of Science related to the effects of ocean warming.
Absorption of carbon dioxide and heat - the scale and pace of change in chemical and physical conditions have set in motion a wide range of biological responses, including:
**Changes in the distribution, abundance, and productivity of phytoplankton communities
**Acidification and stratification of the ocean
**Decrease in annual productivity by at least six percent since the early 1980s with nearly 70 percent of this decline occurring in the polar and subpolar regions
**Rising temperatures in polar regions are reducing ice thickness and extent, removing habitat for species from polar bears to penguins and fundamentally altering marine ecosystems.
**Warming waters are prompting a poleward shift in the distribution of a number of species, resulting in an increase in the number of invasive or exotic species, including pathogens. (Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno)
**Ocean pH is lower now than it has been in 20 million years. (Kerr)
**The rate of ocean pH is unprecedented, a factor of 30 to 100 times faster than changes in the recent geological past, and perturbations will last many centuries to millennia. (Doney)
**Some marine species may benefit from higher CO2 levels such as phytoplankton, seagrass, and seaweed species that increase their rate of photosynthesis. (Doney) MORE >>
Tags: Climate Change, Squid, Gray Whale, Changing Species Distributions, Changing Ocean Current Patterns
In early May, 2010, Israel's Marine Mammal Research and Assistance Centre photographed and positively identified a gray whale off the coast of Israel, near Herzliya Marina. Gray whales are thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean, so the appearance of an individual within the Mediterranean Sea is a major surprise. MORE >>
Tags: Ocean and Climate Literacy, Alaska K-12 Science Education
More Alaska students scored proficient on science assessments when tested in April, 2010. More also tested proficient in math and reading but fewer tested proficient in writing. MORE >>
Tags: Ocean and Climate Literacy, Culturally-relevant Science Education
COSEE Alaska’s judges at the March, 2010, Alaska State Science and Engineering Fair were faced with a difficult task – to select award winners from among more than 50 projects. The judges included both elders and scientists who selected projects to judge for COSEE awards because they addressed a scientific problem and were also relevant to local culture or the coastal community. MORE >>
The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature was the warmest on record at 56.3°F (13.5°C), which is 1.39°F (0.77°C) above the 20th century average of 54.9°F (12.7°C).
Additionally, the National Sea Ice Data Center reported that Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent for the year on March 31, 2010, at 15.25 million square kilometers (5.89 million square miles). MORE >>
Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in the April 15 issue of Science. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system. MORE >>
COSEE Alaska is promoting ocean and climate change literacy through a planning effort to develop an Alaskan Environmental Literacy Plan (AKELP). The plan is being designed to connect youth with the natural world and the communities within which they live. The plan will promote learning and physical activity in outdoor settings. MORE >>
Tags: Communicating about Climate Change, Ocean and Climate Literacy
On February 16-17, the Project 2061 program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sponsored a climate literacy conference for informal educators before their annual meeting in San Diego. A series of presenters provided background on the status of climate science, public opinion, and climate literacy, then provided advice about how informal science institutions such as museums, aquaria, zoos, and nature centers could best promote an increase in climate literacy and actions. MORE >>
One of the positive feedbacks from global warming is the thawing of Arctic permafrost. This releases methane, a greenhouse gas over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. Investigations into Arctic methane have tended to focus on land permafrost. However, there are also vast amounts of methane held underwater in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS). MORE >>
Andrew Pershing of the University of Maine School of Marine Science and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute presented his calculations of carbon recycling through whale bodies at the Ocean 2010 conference of the American Geophysical Union in Portland, Oregon. MORE >>
The evidence of climate change presented for Alaska's seas at the 2010 AMSS included effects of both warmer years than on average and colder years than on average as well as evidence that different areas and species will respond differently to climate change. MORE >>
NOAA scientist Sue Moore reported at the 2010 Alaska Marine Science Symposium on a study that related the changes in Arctic sea ice extent with the movements and habitats of polar bears, walruses, and gray whales in the Pacific side of the Arctic region. MORE >>
A suite of studies presented at the 2010 Alaska Marine Science Symposium focused on humpback whales as a potential culprit restricting the recovery of herring stocks in Prince William Sound MORE >>
A research team at the NOAA NMFS Auke Bay Lab explored the physiological effects of acidification on marine fishes with an experiment to determine the effects of lowered pH on survival and growth of Pacific herring embryos. MORE >>
Tags: Climate Change, Red Algae, Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Changing Ocean Current Patterns, Alaska Marine Ecosystems
University of Toronto graduate student Phoebe Chan won an award at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium for one of the best student presentations for the story told to her by the growth rings laid down by coralline red algae. MORE >>
Tags: Ocean Acidification, Climate Change, Noise in the Ocean
Researchers realized that human-made carbon dioxide not only warms and acidifies the ocean -- it also affects acoustical properties of seawater, making it more transparent to low-frequency sound. MORE >>
Tags: Communicating about Climate Change, Ocean and Climate Literacy
The Washington Post and ABC News conducted a telephone poll of about 1,000 Americans on December 13 during the Copenhagen Climate Conference which included questions to gauge whether Americans think that scientists agree that global warming is happening, how much they trust scientists, and their own attitudes about efforts to reduce green house gas emissions. MORE >>
Tags: Communicating about Climate Change, Ocean and Climate Literacy
The Ocean Project released the results of 2009 surveys of American awareness, attitudes, and behaviors concerning the ocean, climate change, and related environmental issues and compared them to similar surveys they conducted in 1999. MORE >>
Over the decade's first nine years, global temperatures averaged 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees F) higher than the 1951-1980 average, NASA reported. And temperatures rose faster in the far north than anyplace else on Earth. MORE >>
With growing concerns about the effects of global warming on polar bears, it's increasingly important to understand how other environmental threats, such as mercury pollution, are affecting these magnificent Arctic animals. MORE >>
A new study has yielded surprising findings about how the shells of marine organisms might stand up to an increasingly acidic ocean in the future. Under very high experimental CO2 conditions, the shells of clams, oysters, and some snails and urchins partially dissolved. But other species seemed as if they would not be harmed, and crustaceans, such as lobsters, crabs, and prawns, appeared to increase their shell-building. MORE >>
Tags: Communicating about Climate Change, Communicating Science, Climate Change
One of the purposes of this site is about how best to communicate about climate change. The reactions to stolen email communications among climate scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit are providing an interesting lens into how scientists communicate informally about science, how some nonscientists interpret “proof” and “disproof,” and how scientists defend both the scientific method and the process of peer review. The interpretation of the emails is having political consequences related to deliberations in Congress on the climate change bills and discussions at the Copenhagen Climate Conference. MORE >>
Two scientific journal articles published in November, 2009, related the extent of sea ice melt to undersaturation of aragonite which is required for shell-building by many plankton and invertebrate species in Arctic waters. A combination of processes are now working to increase acidification and lower the concentrations of forms of calcite used for shell-building:
**increased carbon dioxide in the ocean from anthropogenic sources,
**freshening and dilution as ice melts,
**increased biological activity after the ice melts which takes up calcite from surface waters and depletes it in subsurface waters as organic matters decays and produced CO2, and
**upwellings of low pH waters. MORE >>
Arctic sea ice has duped satellites into reporting thick multiyear sea ice where in fact none exists, a new study by University of Manitoba researcher David Barber has found. In 2008 and 2009 satellite data showed a growth in Arctic sea ice extension leaving some to reckon global warming was reversing. But after sailing an ice breaker to the southern Beaufort Sea this past September Dr. Barber and his colleagues found something unexpected: thin, "rotten" ice can electromagnetically masquerade as thick, multiyear sea ice. And contrary to what satellites recently suggested, we are actually speeding up the loss of the remaining, healthy, multiyear sea ice. MORE >>
A species of sea star (the ochre star, Pisaster ochraceus) has figured out a novel way of keeping cool on rocky shorelines. The animal literally soaks up chilly water during high tides to protect itself from the blazing temperatures that persist when the tide goes out. MORE >>
Tags: Arctic Ocean, Climate Change, Ocean Water Temperatures
Recent, end-of-arctic-summer ship journeys have helped scientists discover that waters of the Arctic Ocean have cooled, at least in the area they surveyed. MORE >>
Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb. MORE >>
The World Ocean Database 2009 is the largest, most comprehensive collection of scientific information about the oceans with records dating as far back as 1800. The 2009 database, updated from the 2005 edition, is significantly larger providing approximately 9.1 million temperature profiles and 3.5 million salinity reports. The 2009 database also captures 29 categories of scientific information from the oceans, including oxygen levels and chemical tracers, plus information on gases and isotopes that can be used to trace the movement of ocean currents. MORE >>
According to a new study, ecologists estimate that Arctic lands and oceans are responsible for up to 25 percent of the global net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Under current predictions of global warming, this Arctic sink could be diminished or reversed, potentially accelerating predicted rates of climate change. MORE >>
The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic on Tuesday, noting a substantial expansion of the extent of “second-year ice” — floes thick enough to have persisted through two summers of melting. The result could be a reprieve, at least for a while, from the recent stretch of remarkable summer meltdowns. MORE >>
The Arctic Ocean is becoming acidic so quickly that it will reach corrosive levels within 10 years, a leading scientist has warned. Waters around the North Pole are absorbing carbon dioxide at such a rate that they will soon start dissolving the shells of living sea creatures. MORE >>
Tags: Salmon, King Salmon, Climate Change, Alaska Marine Ecosystems
King salmon play an outsize role in villages along the Yukon River. Fishing provides meaningful income, feeds families throughout the year, and keeps alive long-held traditions of Yup’ik Eskimos and Athabascan Indians.
However this year, a total ban on commercial fishing for king salmon on the river in Alaska has strained poor communities and stripped the prized Yukon fish off menus in the lower 48 states MORE >>
Tags: Climate Change, Changing Arctic Sea Ice, Arctic Ocean, Water Temperature Patterns
The National Climatic Data Center has released its review of worldwide sea surface temperatures for August and for the stretch from June through August and finds that both the month and the “summer” (as looked at from the Northern Hemisphere) were the warmest at least since 1880, when such records were first systematically compiled. MORE >>
Two German cargo ships have successfully navigated across Russia's Arctic-facing northern shore from South Korea to Siberia without the help of icebreakers MORE >>
Tags: Arctic ocean, Climate Change, Long-term Temperature Patterns
Although the Arctic has been receiving less energy from the summer sun for the past 8,000 years, Arctic summer temperatures began climbing in 1900 and accelerated after 1950. The decade from 1999 to 2008 was the warmest in the Arctic in two millennia. MORE >>
Thousands of walruses are congregating on Alaska's northwest coast, a sign that their Arctic sea ice environment has been altered by climate change. MORE >>
Scientists carrying out studies of wildlife in the Arctic say global warming is causing dramatic changes in animal and plant life, threatening some species with extinction. The report is a compilation of studies of Arctic ecosystems by an international team of scientists who have been collaborating during the fourth International Polar Year, which ended in 2008 MORE >>
COSEE Alaska Office: 1007 West Third Avenue, Suite 100 • Anchorage, AK 99501 • tel (907) 274-9612 • fax (907) 277-5242
email • Nora.Deans@nprb.org, Program Director or msigman@alaska.edu, Program Manager