Published Jul 25, 2023 by Shondiin Mayo

This heat is no stranger because the hottest months in the greater Fairbanks area are typically June and July. Normally, the highs are in the 70′s with a few days that reach into the 80′s. This week, the temperature has been 15 degrees above normal.

Ryan Metzger, meteorologist at the National Weather Service located at the Syun-Ichi Akasofu Building on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Troth Yedda Campus explains much of what we feel. “We have this big area of high pressure that’s come into eastern Alaska from Canada and that’s brought a lot of hot air with it so that area of high pressure is over top of us and helping us keep pretty warm,” said Metzger.

This high pressure is not an anomaly but a pattern that occurs multiple times each summer. In short, we can expect this hot weather for a short period of time over summer. Although, these temperatures feel record breaking when outside, they are not.

Published Jul 25, 2023

Detecting changes in permafrost can take years and sometimes decades, delays that cannot keep up with the transformations in the rapidly warming Arctic.

Now, thanks to a project funded by Google, scientists will develop new technology to track those changes in real time.

The company awarded a $5 million grant to the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center to create a system that combines satellite data with artificial intelligence to see the changes as they happen. The project is led by Anna Liljedahl, an Alaska-based Woodwell climate scientist.

Using artificial intelligence, computers can identify and delineate individual polygons, determine whether they are low- or high-centered, detect changes to them and, if there are changes, help determine the cause, such as unusual summer heat, deep winter snowpack, rainfall or wildfire, she said.

“If we didn’t use AI, we’d be stuck doing what we already do: looking at isolated places across the Arctic and guessing that those few areas (0.001% or less of the Arctic) represent the entire Arctic.

Assumptions are so unnecessary when we can do better!” Liljedahl said by email.

Woodwell has numerous academic and scientific partners in the project. Alaska institutions that are part of the project are the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. The project will collaborate with the Permafrost Pathways Program led by Woodwell Climate and supported by the Arctic Initiative at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Alaska Institute for Justice.

Published Jul 25, 2023 by Mark Thiessen

Daanen and his wife, Ina Timling, also competed in the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks. They created elaborate sculptures that usually had a science theme, using them as an opportunity to teach people about permafrost and Arctic landscapes, said Anna Liljedahl, an associate scientist with the Woodwell Climate Research Center and an affiliate professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“We’ve lost an amazing friend and colleague,” she said of Daanen, who was a geologist for the state.

Permafrost, frozen ground and water were key components of his work, but she said he was a brilliant scientist who had wide and varied interests.



Published Jul 24, 2023 by Jan Gehler

Sadly, Mr. Red Bradley’s letter (ADN, July 14) missed the mark in describing the value and performance of the University of Alaska, or UA. His research focused alone on the standard Integrated Postsecondary Education System — commonly known as IPEDS — as a single measure of the system’s productivity. In higher education since 1989, I know well the tendency of others to focus on efficiency measures, which are important, but significantly different, from effectiveness.

President Pat Pitney’s piece painted a more comprehensive picture of the university’s value and contribution to the state, i.e., solid general education (science, humanities, the arts), the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, career and technical programs, University of Alaska Fairbanks arctic research and more.

An effectiveness measure, rarely captured because it is difficult and costly — is the measure of a student’s “intent,” i.e., their purpose in seeking instruction. Throughout UA, students seek other than a baccalaureate or graduate degree. Remember two things. First, locally, the 1987 University of Alaska Anchorage merger with the Anchorage Community College integrated the often diverse missions of a community college and a comprehensive university. That’s a lengthy and fascinating story, well beyond the scope of this letter.

Second, since then, many local students now enroll at UAA, UAF and UAS to seek new knowledge or skills through a course, several courses, a certificate or even an associates’ degree. By virtue of their life situation — children, aging parents, work demands, etc. — many are not able to study full time, taking longer to “complete” their objectives, than traditional full-time students. By IPEDS definition, those would be non-completers, or some today would say “unsuccessful.” Mr. Bradley also referred to students “unprepared” for college-level study. Local access to adult basic education, or ABE, has dwindled since the 1980s. Providing developmental English and math, often through ABE, was traditionally part of a community college curriculum. That it is now part of university offerings reflects the diversity of UAA’s mission post-merger.

At a time when Alaska, and Anchorage specifically, are losing the talent needed to support our struggling economy, and to address our most pressing societal and natural challenges, I suggest we recognize the value of all of UA’s student accomplishments, no matter their original “intent.”

Published Jul 24, 2023 by Ned Rozell

A rock glacier is a stream of rocks held together with ice. The glaciers flow down from mountain bowls in colored bands that look like velvet fingers. Rock glaciers are born of rocks that fall from the walls of a cirque — a bowl high in the mountains. When the bowl gets filled up, the mass of rock on top of ice starts to flow.

Most rock glaciers in Alaska creep a few inches downhill each year, but Fireweed flows; it advanced more than 12 feet in one year. Elconin said Fireweed’s movement supports the theory that rock glaciers form independently, after snow glaciers have disappeared. Another theory, now becoming outdated, is that rock glaciers are dying snow glaciers covered with rocks.

Alaska hosts rock glaciers in the Brooks and Alaska ranges and in the Wrangell Mountains. Drivers on the Richardson Highway can see a rock glacier on Rainbow Mountain, highway milepost 207.7.

Elconin and Bucki will occasionally return to Fireweed rock glacier to measure its movement and to determine the mixture of rock and ice in the glacier farther up the mountain. They hope to find out more about the mysterious nature of rock glaciers and how the frozen rivers of rock are affected by changes in Alaska’s climate. They also hope to stay away from bears, which is why they each carry that indispensable research tool, pepper spray.