Impacts of a lengthening open water season on Alaskan coastal communities: deriving locally relevant indices from large-scale datasets and community observations

Rolph, Rebecca; Mahoney, Andrew R.; Walsh, John E.; Loring, Philip A.

doi:10.5194/tc-12-1779-2018

Cited by 26 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Coastal communities in western and northern Alaska are increasingly vulnerable to such events with a reduced ice cover, which results in longer periods without the sea ice buffer that has historically protected these areas during the cold season. [17] document the increasing length of the open water season in this region.…”

Section: Model Outputmentioning

confidence: 95%

Wind Climatology for Alaska: Historical and Future

Redilla¹,

Pearl²,

Bieniek³

et al. 2019

ACS

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Wind is a climate variable with major impacts on humans, ecosystems and infrastructure, especially in coastal regions with cold climates. Climate-related changes in high-wind events therefore have major implications for high-latitude residents, yet there has heretofore been no systematic evaluation of such changes in a framework spanning historical and future timeframes. In this study, hourly winds from surface station reports and from dynamical downscaling of winds simulated by two different global climate models have been synthesized into historical and future wind climatologies for Alaska. Quantile mapping procedures are used to calibrate wind simulations driven by an atmospheric reanalysis, and the calibrated winds are then used to bias-adjust the full distributions of historical and future winds downscaled from the global climate models. In the resulting climatologies, winds are generally stronger at coastal and offshore (island) locations than at interior sites, where calm conditions are frequent in winter. The season of peak wind speed varies from winter in the coastal and offshore locations to summer in interior areas. High-wind events determined from the hourly data are most frequent during winter at coastal locations. Projected changes for the late 21 st century are statistically significant at many locations, and they show a qualitatively similar seasonality in the output from the two models: an increase of mean wind speeds in the cold season and a decrease of mean wind speeds in the warm season. High-wind events are projected by both models to become more frequent in the northern and western Alaska coastal regions, which are precisely the regions in which the protective sea ice cover has decreased (and is projected to decrease further), pointing to increased risks of coastal flooding and erosion.

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Section: Model Outputmentioning

confidence: 95%

Wind Climatology for Alaska: Historical and Future

Redilla¹,

Pearl²,

Bieniek³

et al. 2019

ACS

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“…Some research has investigated extreme weather events in Nome, including storm surge intervals and the oceanographic and climatological driving forces behind high-impact storm events in Nome (Mason et al 1996;Mesquita et al 2009). Sea ice regimes across north and northwestern Alaska have shifted over the past three decades, including delayed freeze-ups and earlier break-up events (Rolph et al 2018). Increases in open water days are linked to increased rates of coastal erosion (Overeem et al 2011).…”

Section: Nome Alaskamentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating archival analysis, observational data, and climate projections to assess extreme event impacts in Alaska

et al. 2020

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Understanding potential risks, vulnerabilities, and impacts to weather extremes and climate change are key information needs for coastal planners and managers in support of climate adaptation. Assessing historical trends and potential socio-economic impacts is especially difficult in the Arctic given limitations on availability of weather observations and historical impacts. This study utilizes a novel interdisciplinary approach that integrates archival analysis, observational data, and climate model downscaling to synthesize information on historical and projected impacts of extreme weather events in Nome, Alaska. Over 300 impacts (1990–2018) are identified based on analyses of the Nome Nugget newspaper articles and Storm Data entries. Historical impacts centered on transportation, community activities, and utilities. Analysis of observed and ERA5 reanalysis data indicates that impacts are frequently associated with high wind, extreme low temperatures, heavy snowfall events, and winter days above freezing. Downscaled output (2020–2100) from two climate models suggests that there will be changes in the frequency and timing of these extreme weather events. For example, extreme cold temperature is projected to decrease through the 2040s and then rarely occurs afterwards, and extreme wind events show little change before the 2070s. Significantly, our findings also reveal that not all weather-related extremes will change monotonically throughout the twenty-first century, such as extreme snowfall events that will increase through the 2030s before declining in the 2040s. The dynamical nature of projected changes in extreme events has implications for climate adaptation planning.

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“…In the Northern Hemisphere, when winds are primarily or drifts in again before the longer open water season. A false freeze-up is similar, when the ice forms or drifts in at the coast but then returns to open water before the longer ice-covered season (Rolph et al, 2018). The MK coastline faces northeast.…”

Section: Coastal Winds and Modelled Water Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

ArcticBeach v1.0: A physics-based parameterization of pan-Arctic coastline erosion

Rolph

Overduin

Ravens

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. In the Arctic, air temperatures are warming and sea ice is declining, resulting in larger waves and a longer open water season, all of which intensify the thaw and erosion of ice-rich coasts. This change in climate has been shown to increase the rate of Arctic coastal erosion, causing problems for industrial, military, and civil infrastructure as well as changes in nearshore biogeochemistry. Numerical models that reproduce historical and project future Arctic erosion rates are necessary to understand how further climate change will affect these problems, and no such model yet exists to simulate the physics of erosion on a pan-Arctic scale. We have coupled a bathystrophic storm surge model to a simplified physical erosion model of a partially frozen cliff and beach. This Arctic erosion model, called ArcticBeach v1.0, is a first step toward a parameterization of Arctic shoreline erosion for larger-scale models, which are not able to resolve the fine spatial scale (up to about 40 m) needed to capture shoreline erosion rates from years to decades. It is forced by wind speeds and directions, wave period and height, sea surface temperature, all of which are masked during times of sea ice cover near the coastline. Model tuning requires observed historical retreat rates (at least one value), as well as rough nearshore bathymetry. These parameters are already available on a pan-Arctic scale. The model is validated at two study sites at Drew Point (DP), Alaska, and Mamontovy Khayata (MK), Siberia, which are respectively located in the Beaufort and Laptev Seas, on different sides of the Arctic Ocean. Simulated cumulative retreat rates for DP and MK respectively (169 and 170 m) over the time periods studied at each site (2007–2016, and 1995–2018) are found to be within the same order of magnitude as observed cumulative retreat rates (172 and 120 m). Given the large differences in geomorphology and weather systems between the two study sites, this study provides a proof-of-concept that ArcticBeach v1.0 can be applied on very different partially frozen coastlines. ArcticBeach v1.0 provides a promising starting point to project the retreat of Arctic shorelines, or to evaluate historical retreat in places that have had few observations. Further, this model can provide estimates of the flux of sediment from land to sea for Arctic nearshore biogeochemical studies, while leaving an opportunity for further development of modelling the physics of a partially frozen shoreline.

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Impacts of a lengthening open water season on Alaskan coastal communities: deriving locally relevant indices from large-scale datasets and community observations

Cited by 26 publications

References 31 publications

Wind Climatology for Alaska: Historical and Future

Wind Climatology for Alaska: Historical and Future

Integrating archival analysis, observational data, and climate projections to assess extreme event impacts in Alaska

ArcticBeach v1.0: A physics-based parameterization of pan-Arctic coastline erosion

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