Arctic Festival.....almost May s0ns!!

[skookerasbil]

Check out the pics from this Arctic Festival.......attended by thousands. The camp out and cook waaaaaaaaaay up north in Alaska!!

Arctic Man: the anti-Burning Man draws 'slednecks' to remote Alaska

Hmm......more laughter. Another place that hasn't been visited by global warming!!

 

[The Great Goose]

Nice aurora

 

[Old Rocks]

Ecological Drought in Alaska: Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change on a Large, Diverse, Remote Landscape | National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center

The interior part of Alaska receives about the same amount of annual precipitation as Tucson, AZ, but its landscape is far from desert-like: vast spruce forests punctuated by streams and fields of wildflowers in many places. This is due to Alaska’s unique hydrology and water-storage features. Snowpack storage, late snowmelt, a short snow-free season, and low evaporation and transpiration rates result in higher vegetative productivity and streamflow than would normally be expected.

Climate change, however, is threatening Alaska’s landscape and its water resources. On September 15-16, 2015, twenty-one scientists, managers, and communicators gathered in Fairbanks, AK to discuss and synthesize our existing knowledge of climate change and ecological drought impacts across the state. Over the course of the workshop, the group agreed on several important factors that exemplify the real, observable, and profound changes that are occurring in Alaska:

1. Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the United States...As Alaska continues to warm and the impacts of climate change are more widespread, the threat of ecological drought has the potential to result in major social and ecological impacts.
   
   
2. Alaska is getting warmer earlier in the year...Over the past 60 years, the average annual temperature in Alaska has increased by over 3 degrees Fahrenheit, with most of the change happening in winter and spring. This is likely affecting hydrology, vegetation, and animal migration patterns.
   
   
3. Alaska is burning more, and more often...As maximum temperatures in May and June rise, so does the threat of large-burned wildfires. In the past 15 years alone, there have been seven wildfires that burned one million or more acres.
   
   
4. 
   
   Alaska is getting less snow...Snow cover is important for water storage and insulation, soil temperatures, energy balance, habitat, and permafrost thickness. Less snow means drier landscapes and shrinking wetlands. Additionally, it can accelerate #1 (warming) and #2 (fire incidence).
   

Alaska is warming much faster than any of the other 49 states.

 

[Old Rocks]

Range expansion of moose in arctic Alaska linked to warming and increased shrub habitat

Abstract
Twentieth century warming has increased vegetation productivity and shrub cover across northern tundra and treeline regions, but effects on terrestrial wildlife have not been demonstrated on a comparable scale. During this period, Alaskan moose (Alces alces gigas) extended their range from the boreal forest into tundra riparian shrub habitat; similar extensions have been observed in Canada (A. a. andersoni) and Eurasia (A. a. alces). Northern moose distribution is thought to be limited by forage availability above the snow in late winter, so the observed increase in shrub habitat could be causing the northward moose establishment, but a previous hypothesis suggested that hunting cessation triggered moose establishment. Here, we use recent changes in shrub cover and empirical relationships between shrub height and growing season temperature to estimate available moose habitat in Arctic Alaska c. 1860. We estimate that riparian shrubs were approximately 1.1 m tall c. 1860, greatly reducing the available forage above the snowpack, compared to 2 m tall in 2009. We believe that increases in riparian shrub habitat after 1860 allowed moose to colonize tundra regions of Alaska hundreds of kilometers north and west of previous distribution limits. The northern shift in the distribution of moose, like that of snowshoe hares, has been in response to the spread of their shrub habitat in the Arctic, but at the same time, herbivores have likely had pronounced impacts on the structure and function of these shrub communities. These northward range shifts are a bellwether for other boreal species and their associated predators.

Many things changing for Alaska.

 

[skookerasbil]

National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center

Well of course this organization is going to present off the reservation findings. C'mon.......just like every time a skeptic presents something from the Hoover Institute, the AGW religion has heads exploding.

What "Climate Change Centers" do is take natural changes and present them as some kind of historic anomaly......and then the radicals throw in photos of these big fires for alarming effect.

Laughable!!

And btw.....the whole forest fires thing has been completely discounted. There has actually been an alarming decline in forest fires on the west coast of the US = not good.

www.metla.fi/silvafennica/full/sf45/sf451139.pdf

 

[jc456]

Ecological Drought in Alaska: Understanding the Impacts of Climate Change on a Large, Diverse, Remote Landscape | National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center

The interior part of Alaska receives about the same amount of annual precipitation as Tucson, AZ, but its landscape is far from desert-like: vast spruce forests punctuated by streams and fields of wildflowers in many places. This is due to Alaska’s unique hydrology and water-storage features. Snowpack storage, late snowmelt, a short snow-free season, and low evaporation and transpiration rates result in higher vegetative productivity and streamflow than would normally be expected.

Climate change, however, is threatening Alaska’s landscape and its water resources. On September 15-16, 2015, twenty-one scientists, managers, and communicators gathered in Fairbanks, AK to discuss and synthesize our existing knowledge of climate change and ecological drought impacts across the state. Over the course of the workshop, the group agreed on several important factors that exemplify the real, observable, and profound changes that are occurring in Alaska:

1. Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the United States...As Alaska continues to warm and the impacts of climate change are more widespread, the threat of ecological drought has the potential to result in major social and ecological impacts.
   
   
2. Alaska is getting warmer earlier in the year...Over the past 60 years, the average annual temperature in Alaska has increased by over 3 degrees Fahrenheit, with most of the change happening in winter and spring. This is likely affecting hydrology, vegetation, and animal migration patterns.
   
   
3. Alaska is burning more, and more often...As maximum temperatures in May and June rise, so does the threat of large-burned wildfires. In the past 15 years alone, there have been seven wildfires that burned one million or more acres.
   
   
4. 
   
   Alaska is getting less snow...Snow cover is important for water storage and insulation, soil temperatures, energy balance, habitat, and permafrost thickness. Less snow means drier landscapes and shrinking wetlands. Additionally, it can accelerate #1 (warming) and #2 (fire incidence).

Alaska is warming much faster than any of the other 49 states.

it's funny how the warmers have no idea about jet streams, pressure systems and the convection process of the planet. As long as the polar vortex moves through Minneapolis, Chicago and eastward, Alaska will warm. it is how the natural jet stream works. Do you not know this? Really, you call yourself science tolerant and don't know that? you should also know that the heat comes from somewhere else and is blown in, it is not due to CO2 at all. zippo bubba.

Everytime, if it is warm in the winter in Alaska, it will be a fricken freezer in the Upper Mid region of the country moving south. EVERY fkn TIME. Stop already with the false premise that Alaska is warming. It isn't.

 

[Old Rocks]

National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center

Well of course this organization is going to present off the reservation findings. C'mon.......just like every time a skeptic presents something from the Hoover Institute, the AGW religion has heads exploding.

What "Climate Change Centers" do is take natural changes and present them as some kind of historic anomaly......and then the radicals throw in photos of these big fires for alarming effect.

Laughable!!

And btw.....the whole forest fires thing has been completely discounted. There has actually been an alarming decline in forest fires on the west coast of the US = not good.

www.metla.fi/silvafennica/full/sf45/sf451139.pdf

Yes, National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, a division of the USGS.

U.S. wildfires just set an amazing and troubling new record

Last year’s wildfire season set a record with more than 10 million acres burned. That’s more land than Maryland, the District and Delaware combined.

More than half the total was the result of mega-fires in Alaska, where dryness due to historically low mountain snowpack and a freak lightning storm created perfect conditions for a huge blaze. The nation’s overall toll was about 4 million acres more than the yearly average, scorching a record set in 2006.

The record was anticipated by the U.S. Forest Service, the Agriculture Department division charged with fighting fires, because of climate change and a prolonged drought in western states that parched wilderness areas. Alaska’s wildfire season was its second worst ever, and both Washington and Oregon suffered historic burns. Those two states were on pace to break records as early as September, with nearly 2 million acres charred between them.

[Wildfires cost more to fight, but Congress keeps refusing to foot the bill]

And, as usual, our GOP Congress refuses to foot the bill, forcing the Forest Service to use money that they need for the thinning of the forests to fight the fires. Then the Republican assholes will blame the Forest Service for not thinning the forests.

 

[skookerasbil]

Wildfires occur naturally and have always been a part of the seasonal cycle in the West, but the size and intensity of the fires have dramatically increased in recent years due, in large measure, to the gross mismanagement of the national forests by the U.S. Forest Service and the incessant lawsuits of radical environmentalists that have thwarted all reasonable attempts at proper forest management

Burning Up the West: Feds, Greens Cause Catastrophic Fires


duh

 

[skookerasbil]

A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service (The Political Economy Forum): Robert H. Nelson: 9780847697359: Amazon.com: Books


duh

The US Forest Service is an arm of the climate science nutter agenda.........IF you have the ability to connect the dots. Big-ass fires make the news s0ns.......and we all know what the commentary is going to be!!

 

[skookerasbil]

PS....on wildfire history >>>

Wildland Fire: History Timeline | U.S. National Park Service


Check the dates............the climate nutters would have you thinking these mega-fires are some kind of new phenomenon.


They would be full of shit!!!

 

[skookerasbil]

Oh....another ruse by the climate OCD's is to talk perpetually about Alaska and it becoming warmer.

But they never want to talk about south-eastern Canada in recent years and mega-frequency of record lows >>>

Record-Breaking November Arctic Cold

Hmmm.......but these asshats will probably blame the intense cold on "global warming".