Alaska forests hit with more wildfires, infestations as climate changes
Published Tuesday, July 29, 2008
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BONANZA CREEK — It was just getting cool when Glenn Juday went out to see his trees. The leaves were still on the birch and aspen, and the summer growing season was lingering. But it was already October, and gathering data would be much harder once it snowed. So Juday had to hurry.
“I’ll work till dark,” he had declared that morning in his office at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he teaches forest ecology. “We’re seriously behind.”
Now Juday was about 20 miles from the university — down the George Parks Highway, across a rutted dirt road and down a worn footpath crossed by the fallen trunks of old white spruce.
He’s been here every year since 1988.
Juday has come to know trees almost like children. He knows, for instance, exactly how old each tree is, how tall and thick it is, how much it has grown over the last year and whether it’s getting pestered by bugs.
This time he came with a graduate student from Germany and a lab technician he had hired.
The lab tech carried a small metal case with papers showing the research plots and the individual white spruce trees in them.
There were 2,200 trees in all.
Juday started in section 2.05 with tree No. 36.
He measured its height — it was tiny — and its circumference at the base, then looked around for signs of a bud-eating insect that’s been showing up more and more in white spruce trees in Interior Alaska.
“This one is budworm free,” he said, not quite believing it.
Juday checked again.
“No, sorry, very light.”
The lab tech wrote down the new figures, and Juday moved on to the next tree.
Juday started his research 20 years ago to unlock the secrets of the boreal forest, as he says. He chose a site in the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest that had recently burned so that he could track new trees from seedling to maturity. He learned a lot, published papers on his research, and could have stopped at any time.
He didn’t stop, and over the years climate change worked its way into his research and another finding emerged — things are not looking good for white spruce in the Interior.
“We’re in the biggest period of change that has happened in this part of the world for several centuries at least,” Juday said. “No matter what you do, or what interest you have in this part of the world, it’s very likely to be affected.”
Alaska’s forests have looked relatively the same for thousands of years. Tree species shifted in range and elevation as the climate warmed and cooled, but the same species stuck around.
Now the climate is changing again — at least in part because of human-induced climate change — and the forests are responding.
Changes in temperature and precipitation are favoring some species over others, and weather-related threats like wildfires and insect infestations are becoming more common.
According to Juday, the warming is already stressing many Interior trees and could bring them to the limits of their survival within decades.
“It’s not just one species, it’s all species,” he said. “And it’s not just some places, it’s most places.”
A forest to match the climate
Climate change is affecting Alaska’s forests in a number of ways, many of them complex and indirect. But warming temperatures themselves are also affecting forests and are likely to cause the most dramatic impacts in the future.
As the climate warms, Alaska’s trees are expected to gradually shift their ranges to cooler areas but also give way to species more suited to the new climate.
If white spruce start to die in upland areas, deciduous trees could start to take over in Interior forests, says Terry Chapin, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Some south-facing slopes with lots of sun already resemble the aspen woodlands more common to Saskatchewan and Alberta, and if the warming continues, the forests could eventually become grasslands, according to Chapin.
“The climate is getting closer and closer to what you might expect for grassland,” he said last fall.
According to Juday, the birch and white and black spruce that dominate the boreal forest could all be eliminated from the Interior as the climate warms.
Consider white spruce, the trees Juday monitors at Bonanza Creek. By studying temperature records and tree ring data, as well as his own trees, Juday has figured out how white spruce respond to climatic conditions.
In general, they like it cold and wet. In fact, the colder and wetter, the better. A graph plotting growth against temperature should look something like a bell, with an ideal temperature in the middle and less and less growth if it’s too warm or too cold. But in the 20 years Juday has been keeping track, he’s only seen one side of the bell.
That is, it’s already warmer and drier than ideal.
None of Juday’s trees have died from the heat — most of the trees that have died were killed when standing, fire-killed trees collapsed on them — but in 2004 and 2005, when it was hot and dry for months at a time, some trees came close. Tree growth during those two summers was less than half the long-term average, and, judging by tree ring width, some trees grew about a fifth as much as they would normally.
Black spruce also tend to struggle in the heat, and some birch already seem to be stressed and dying from warm, dry conditions, according to Juday.
If temperatures rise as climate models predict, Juday figures all three boreal forest species could be eliminated from vast portions of the Interior by the end of the century.
“Essentially the trees come to a point where they just won’t grow anymore,” said Val Barber, who studied with Juday and now teaches at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “We’re actually predicting that our trees aren’t going to be able to make it here in Alaska.”
Other impacts are less direct.
Warming temperatures are degrading permafrost, altering the hydrology over wide areas, and causing some places to get wetter and others to dry out. In the Tanana Flats southwest of Fairbanks, the changes have already killed stands of birch, according to Chapin.
“Those forests have drowned, basically, and are turning into wetlands,” he said.
In the rainforests of Southeast Alaska, scientists are blaming the widespread decline of yellow cedar on a changing climate. During the last century, trees that started growing hundreds of years ago in a cooler climate have been dying across roughly 500,000 acres of coastal rainforest — from north of Sitka to Ketchikan.
In an ironic twist, researchers from UAF and the U.S. Forest Service believe the trees are essentially freezing to death. February and March temperatures have warmed over the last 100 years, but there are just as many late-winter frosts. (Snowfall at low elevations has also decreased in the last 50 years.)
It’s more common now for the air to warm up, melt the snow insulating the ground, and then drop below freezing again. Scientists figure the thaw-freeze combination is killing the trees by freezing their roots after warm weather has jump-started tree growth.
“It’s kind of one of those things you would not have expected,” said Paul Hennon, a forest pathologist with the Forest Service.
Wildfires on the way
A week after Juday went to measure his trees, snow started to fall in the Interior.
On a chilly October morning, Marc Lee drove south from Fairbanks to check on a wildfire mitigation project he was overseeing for the state’s Division of Forestry.
He took a detour down a dirt road and studied the landscape. A few houses sat at the top of a valley filled with highly flammable black spruce.
“Those homes are toast, basically,” he said.
Lee turned off the road and drove down a hill through patches of white spruce and birch. He parked in a stand of black spruce and walked along an icy trail to a giant clearing in the woods — a fuel break covering 320 acres.
Piles of cut trees crackled with flames, and a tower of gray smoke rose thousands of feet in the air. Two men lit more piles on fire with a giant torch spitting gelled diesel fuel.
Wildfires are a natural part of the ecosystem, and they’re common enough in the Interior that they burn just about everything every few hundred years.
But as temperatures have warmed in recent decades, fires have increased in number and intensity, threatening communities and altering ecosystems. Fire seasons are starting earlier in the year, and big fire years are more common.
“Things are changing, there’s no doubt about that,” said Lee, who’s worked for the Division of Forestry for 27 years. “We’re seeing it in the fires.”
In 2004, fires consumed more than 6 million acres of forests across Interior Alaska, more than in any year since records began in 1950. In 2005, roughly 4 million acres of forests burned, making that year the third worst on record.
Increased fires are already adding to the costs of fighting fires, threatening homes and other infrastructure, and posing health risks for people with respiratory problems.
“It was pretty awful for people with problems,” James Conner, the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s air quality specialist, said of the thick smoke in 2004 and 2005.
It’s hard to pin any specific event on climate change, but warmer temperatures tend to result in more fires. When scientists at UAF studied the factors contributing to big fire years, they found a strong correlation between the area burned in any given year and how and dry the summer was. The number of fires started by people doesn’t seem to be a large factor.
The summers of 2004 and 2005 were unusually warm and dry and, according to Lee, never got the rains that normally come in July and August.
As the climate warms, researchers at UAF expect fires to increase in the Interior. Climate models project that Alaska will generally get more precipitation in the future, but warmer temperatures could dry out forests and even tundra by increasing evaporation. Last fall, a rare tundra fire spread across more than 220,000 acres north of the Brooks Range, sending smoke as far north as Barrow.
In part because of the increased fire risk, Lee said, the state is working with the Fairbanks borough on an ambitious wildfire protection plan that involves clearing wide swaths of flammable trees in key locations around the city. The goal is to cut of fires completely or at least allow firefighters a place to get in and fight.
The break Lee checked on was meant to stop fires rolling up the Goldstream Valley toward Fairbanks.
In addition to their direct impacts, wildfires also have the potential to reshape the forests themselves in connection with a warming climate.
In the past, Interior forests have generally grown back in predictable ways after fires.
Willow, alder, and poplar dominate at first, then birch and aspen, and finally, in upland areas, white spruce. In cold and wet areas, the forest might go straight from willow to black spruce.
But now that process is changing. Fires are burning hotter, destroying organic matter in the soils and thawing permafrost deep into the ground. According to Chapin, a burn area might come back as birch or aspen and transition very slowly — or not at all — to white or black spruce.
“The plant succession is different from what we might have expected 10 or 20 years ago,” he said.
A race against bugs
Juday grabbed the branch of a small white spruce near his research plot and studied the tip. It was brown, and bits of debris were nestled in the needles — budworm.
Spruce budworm caterpillars spin silken nests in tree needles in the summer and come out the next spring, Juday explained. If the spring is a cool one, the tree buds have a good chance to grow before the caterpillars emerge. If it’s warm, the caterpillars will hatch early and eat the buds, stunting the tree’s growth.
“It’s a race,” Juday said. “And that race is controlled by temperature — when it’s warm, the insect wins.”
Spruce budworm is just one of the insects affecting Alaska’s forests. Spruce bark beetles and engraver beetles also attack spruce trees; leaf miners feed on aspen and birch.
Each insect has its own life cycle and preferred host tree, but scientists say many of the bugs are already doing more damage as temperatures rise and will likely have a bigger and bigger impact in the future.
Warmer temperatures allow the insects to thrive while also stressing trees, making them more susceptible to damage.
The most devastating of the insects so far has been the spruce bark beetle.
Between 1989 and 2002, bark beetles killed white, Sitka, and Lutz (a cross between white and Sitka) spruce trees across more than 3 million acres in Southcentral Alaska, including roughly half of the forested land on the Kenai Peninsula.
It was the biggest single insect infestation recorded in North America until scientists this year documented an even larger outbreak of pine beetle in British Columbia.
Ed Berg, who has worked as the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge’s ecologist for the last 15 years, studied the outbreak on the Kenai. By looking at past outbreaks, he found that beetles thrived when the average summer temperature stayed above 51 degrees Fahrenheit for two or more years in a row. (The warmer temperatures can shorten the beetles’ life cycle from two years to one.)
Before the outbreak in the late 1980s, warm summers were typically offset by cool summers, keeping the outbreaks in check, he said recently. But starting in 1987, summer temperatures went into “overdrive” and stayed warm for 11 years in a row.
“Basically the beetles just kept building until they ate themselves out of house and home,” Berg said. “We’ve had warm summers since then, but there’s not much for the beetles to eat.”
In recent years, beetles have infested trees on the Kenai Peninsula that were too young and small during the main outbreak but have since matured. In 2006, beetles attacked tens of thousands of acres in Katmai National Park & Preserve in Southwest Alaska.
Other insects are affecting forests in the Interior.
Infestations of aspen leaf miner were hardly noticeable before 1999 but have ballooned in recent years. In 2005, insects affected aspen trees across more than 650,000 acres of Interior forests, according to the state’s Division of Forestry. In some cases, the bugs contributed to the death of trees already stressed by warm and dry conditions.
An outbreak of spruce budworm in the early 1990s defoliated trees across roughly 280,000 acres of forest along the Tanana and Yukon rivers.
The outbreak died down, but the insects returned.
In 2006, the bugs were “horrendous,” Juday said. Aerial surveys showed damage along ridges near Fairbanks — the Nenana, Parks, and Chena Ridges — and in the northern foothills of the Alaska Range. The outbreaks were so bad they spilled over from white spruce to black spruce.
Last year, budworm showed up in the spruce around Juday’s house.
A changing ecosystem
The extent to which climate change affects Alaska’s forests will depend on how fast things change and how various impacts play out together.
While disturbances like fires and bugs are a natural part of the ecosystem, a dramatic increase in the extent of those disturbances could overwhelm existing species, according to Juday. Black spruce forests could turn to white spruce, or lodgepole pine could extend into Alaska.
More severe fires could also change which trees grow in a given area, and severe droughts could make trees more susceptible to insect damage. Invasive plants and insects could pose additional threats to the species here now.
Juday is still trying to figure out exactly what climate change will mean for his 2,200 white spruce trees.
The tallest spruce in the plots is about 25 feet, and countless birch already rise well above that height.
Fifty years ago, the white spruce almost certainly would have won out on this south-facing hillside above the Tanana River.
But things are different now, and Juday figures the birch could possibly win out this time.
In 2007, Juday’s trees did OK. Tree growth wasn’t back to normal, but the trees were recovering from the warm summers of 2004 and 2005, thanks in part to cool weather in 2006. Most trees had some sign of budworm, but the insect damage was less than the year before.
Juday crawled under the bows of one of his bushier trees. He wrapped a special tape measure around its trunk — converting from circumference to diameter — and called out numbers to his lab tech.
The trees’ fate wouldn’t be clear for years or decades, and Juday had work to do now.
He climbed over thick logs of white spruce felled by the fire 30 years ago and measured another tree. There were still well more than 1,000 to go, and winter was coming.
Tomorrow: Permafrost changes and impacts on infrastructure and the natural environment.
Community Discussion
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Wow Steph I'm surprised you found the time to write this story with all your nice greenie things you've been doing. That's just great and I'm overjoyed with you 30 years experience wait not that's how old you are to know the the past about Alaska and what's happening. That's mighty Green thing to do in you spare time and get paid for looking these stories up on greenpeace and sharing with us. There a person you should really get your facts from ADN he's the man from the mountain he might have a few better stories that are based of fact not science fiction.
Human Induced climate change is a SHAM. Why is it that Anchorage has the coolest summer ever and it's "natural" (La Nina), but warming is "human induced"? The climate change myth is all hype created to take away freedom from you and I. Vote for Obama, and you'll see what I am talking about. . . .
Just the thought of Obama winning and making the changes will be more then a small draft coming from a window the changes he's proposing under of course Gore's lead make almost impossible.
Right on! coldmkay! Anyone say - Ecotheism ?- preserving nature through state control of resources and liberties.
Hey, Stefan - I was a "greenie" too till I figured out the truth.
Thanx again for a wonderful "story". When can we get some REAL info.
Names of scientists maybe, who have "proved" it? None?
Here is a quote from Dr. Richard S. Lindzen (a Prof. of Atmospheric Sciences,MIT and former lead author of the famous IPCC)-
"Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally-averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined with implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."
Again - he helped out the IPCC for those that missed that. Former lead author. Very prominent.
Stefan - Idea # 2- how about a story about the consequences to our society if "Man-Made" Global Warming is correct? Since future predictions are so dire, what must we do now to stop it? What measures?
What costs?
These is stuff people want to know, or maybe don't. REAL info that might help them, I dunno, PLAN for the future. Or is that too much to ask? What happened to real journalism? Asking real questions about real issues.
Boy,
I hope you guys are just as mad about losing so many of your civil liberties as this GW stuff?
Man, you guys are really worked up over the "greens", you really must be mad about the national debt too?
Mr. Milkowski, thanks for the article. I have read it 3 times now and I just cant find where you said this is absolute facts, dogma or the word of God for that matter so thanks for the information. It was, well, informative.
YMBC will have nothing to talk about once GW is out of office....I feel sorry for he/she already
Global warming hits Mars too.
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause...
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
Solar Cycles
Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.
Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.
By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.
All planets experience a few wobbles as they make their journey around the sun. Earth's wobbles are known as Milankovitch cycles and occur on time scales of between 20,000 and 100,000 years.
These fluctuations change the tilt of Earth's axis and its distance from the sun and are thought to be responsible for the waxing and waning of ice ages on Earth.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...
These should be editorials as they are purely opinion based. Poor journalism but that is what we expect from the News Miner. We never have had a choice in Fairbanks and thankfully we have internet now so we can get a different prespective.
I would like to see Stefan Milkowski go someplace else .. perhaps Barrow and start the Arctic Times or something. I will stop looking at the articles now that I know who the author is.
Interesting, most of our forest fire crew has been out of state this year because there are no fires this year. Not to mention that it is one of the coolest summers in recent history.
Let me make sure that I got this right. If it is warmer than average it is proof of global warming, and if it is cooler it is part of the natural cycle.
If I was a scientist and wanted grant money I too would jump on the global warming bandwagon to fund my research. I'm sure that I could manipulate my findings to reflect climate change in some way or another.
Climate change, shmimate change... What a crock!
The temperature for Fairbanks seems to be essentially trendless since 1976, as has precipitation: http://tinyurl.com/5gsbbj
I'm having a hard time understanding how "climate change" is causing anything out of the ordinary to happen here in the interior.
ummm akdude, yo! GW was for GLOBAL WARMING not GWB our president?
Stefan, I shake my head, reading some of these rude comments. Please do your best to try to ignore them. After reading what feels like hundreds of comments over the months on this website, I still don't really understand people's deep belligerence about climate change. But everyone's entitled to their own opinion, I guess.
Myself, I see the climate changing. Global warming, global cooling, caused by humans or not, our climate is changing and seems more erratic in recent years.
Flora and fauna are responding to these changes.
Thank you for your informative article, Stefan. I enjoyed reading it.
LadyNYC,
I think that the "deep beligerance about climate change" is more about the political agenda that supposed man-made climate change is being used to advance. If certain interest groups weren't attempting to impose draconian controls on our economy and lifestyles using global warming as a justification, this argument would be right up there with "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin".
Will any one bet me ½ their 2007 income that by 2030 there will be no summer sea ice in the arctic as the computer models predict?
I assume there will be no takers. It is a serious offer, but I can only take one. ½ my 2007 income vs. ½ yours. I of course am taking the position against the computer climate model being correct.
The reason I assume there will be no takers is because people bet based on probability and risk assessment.
That said as a country should we be changing our infrastructure on a probability scenario that folks are not willing to show confidence in, with their wallet?
Al Gore? I’m waiting. evenkeelguy@yahoo.com
-jokers with no income can get their own show-
This article was a well written piece but lacked any real substance. Over and over Stefan stated that the tree species was or will be changing. I won't argue that, what I would like to know is, what is the impact of tree species changing?
Are we expecting moose to go extinct in this area because they hate black spruce as much as I hate tomatoes?
I might be going out on a Globally Warmed limb right now but I am not sure that Mr. Milkowski's piece is ever going to live up to those kinds of standards?
Now that would be a piece of real substance...the correlation between moose and thegrudge's hate for black spruce and tomatoes! Heavy, hard hitting journalism! Come on stephan, the people want to know!
31,000 scientist, including 9,000 phd's now agree that climate change is NOT man made. About half the scientists names placed on the fake UN climate report were put on there against the wishes of the scientists. NASA agrees that climate change is driven, mostly, by solar activity and NASA evidence shows we have been cooling since 1998.
This is all about making humans their own enemy to coerce them into handing all of there rights over to a centralized world government.
If environmental groups are sincere, why don't they spend their time on genetically modified foods put out by Monsanto, or studying the bee colony collapse. But instead, they want to keep oil fields locked up in the US, keeping us dependent on foreign oil; just what BP and other corps want, to keep oil prices high and to keep the foreign conquests going. As far as I'm concerned, Greenpeace works for BP and Halliburton, which run our criminal government, along with private banking corps.
They use fake terrorism from the "right" and fake global warming from the "left" in a pincer attack to control us.
We're on to the frauds you pack of criminals. We won't take your "carbon credit" crap, which I got a marketing email for last week.
Let's see: Man's city's & industrial areas occupy about 5% of the total surface of dry land of the planet, which is one fifth
of the entire surface of the planet. So,about 5% of one fifth of the planet has
altered the weather of the entire planet. Very interesting.
Greenies are cherry-picking their "intelligence" to justify an illegal climate war. After all, we wouldn't want the smoking gun to be an SUV tail pipe, now would we?
Anybody see any media coverage of John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, and his movement to sue Al Gore for fraud? Thought not. I'm not sure why so many are so eager to believe this climate mess. When it's hot they call it "global warming", stormy, and it's "global climate change", cool, and it's "la niña"...they WANT this stuff to be true, and all objectivity is lost. Nevermind they're still driving, still buying plastic, still using heat and light (well, they switched to compact fluorescents, so they're doing their part).
You have no credibility greenies. Tens of thousands of scientists disagree with you. You haven't given up using energy and products that contribute to the preponderance of "greenhouse gasses". You're puttering down the road in an old Subaru, wearing your Che Guevara t-shirt, yammering on your cell phone, flying your "Free Tibet" sticker, or whatever the cause-du-jour happens to be...you are an impetuous child. Next time you hear grown folks talkin, you just keep quiet.
Thanks for noticing James I thought before everyone got of my comment should look at the authors background concerning anything related to global warming I've noticed he has a whole spot to manipulates he's byist thoughts against Alaskans way of life. No I know that I can disregard anything that written by him. He's profile makes it easy to come to that decision.
Here we go again..Another global warming threat...Passing gas hurts the planet...All you people who belive in Global warming, please put a cork in it and fly away.....
Hey guys, whether you believe or not that humans are causing global warming, all of the things that people are trying to do to slow down or reduce global warming are good for other reasons, too. For example, one way to supposedly reduce "human-caused global warming" is to cut down on consumption and waste, and recycle more. Well, that's also good for saving money and reducing the amount of trash. Another thing that supposedly reduces "human-caused global warming" is driving less by combining errands into one trip instead of several. Well, that's good for saving money and helping to have cleaner air, too! So what's the harm?
Yea, we humans are the cause of everything to some people. What I would like to see is all the greenies head back south and out of Alaska. Global Warming is a crock of S**t and they know it. Now on the other hand if Obama is elected, and with Pelosi in office, we can expect many things to happen, and none of them good, or affordable. Also, if they are cutting down all those trees just to burn them, why don't they let the people up here go gather them for firewood this winter, since most of us will not be able to afford heat!
Thank you, News-Miner and Mr. Milkowski, for this series of articles. I'm grateful to have our local paper exploring how climate change is already affecting the Interior.
Reading these comments, I am amazed at how many people have been "brainwashed" by the global warming naysayers and conspiracy theorists.
Fairness in reporting or articles: THE FAIRBANKS NEWS MINER NEEDS TO INTERVIEW OR PUBLISH ARTICLES THAT DISAGREE WITH GLOBAL WARMING...THE COIN HAS TWO SIDES.
Umm...wasn't this summer like the third mildest fire season on record or something? Weren't hundreds of our firefighters shipped out of state to help where there were actually fires burning? So 'global warming' doesn't affect us every year, but only sometimes?
Wasn't most of North America covered in glaciers only a few thousand years ago? How did they melt? How is it that oil, being comprised of ancient plant and animal matter, has formed in vast quantities under arctic ice?
This is all a scam. This is Y2K times 10. Much more damaging to our economy, and there's no magic hour to arrive that will show you all how foolish you are. It will go on, and on. NO EVIDENCE EXISTS TO PROVE THAT MAN HAS CONTRIBUTED TO ANY WARMING OF THE PLANET. Who the hell is Al Gore? He's no scientist. He doesn't know any more about climate than say, Al Sharpton...oh, wait...
Let's see, we live in a glacial state that is still evolving, so we are going through the different stages of growth. True or not? When I was a small child, oh so long ago, living in a state in the lower 48, I remember winters with snow about three feet deep. In subsequent years, the snow was less, until, alas, no snow, just rain. You could see the change coming 50 years ago - why the big deal about it today. Did you not understand your science studies from early childhood? OOOps, you all were scientists before you became something else and all you wanna be's want to blame something other than nature. Hmmmm. Gotta blame something I suppose to justify the postings. Bet you couldn't or wouldn't write an article on the subject for fear of showing your ignorance. Gotta admire a person who's willing to write and take all the gwaff that's thrown out after the fact. Cheer up guys, you're only here for a season and it's not all that long!
Some people will read this series of articles and take them as gospel truth. They will never consider that perhaps there is one sided conclusion jumping going on, the debate is not over, and there is a legitimate other side arguing against mmgw.
"I read it in the paper, so it must be true."
"My government says so, so it must be true."
"Gee, they have neat tv commercials. What's not to believe?"
U.S. Department of Agriculture | Forest Service
Intermountain Region | Dixie National Forest
Like fires, spruce bark beetles are agents of renewal in an old forest. These insects are tiny no larger than a grain of rice but powerful in numbers. In areas where the spruce bark beetle epidemic is present, most of the mature spruce trees have died Some of these trees have been harvested or have blown down in strong winds. Others are losing their needles but remain standing.
Spruce bark beetles are native to the Markagunt Plateau, and to many spruce forests throughout the world. Most of the time, beetle populations are very low (endemic). They prefer down trees, infesting pockets of windfall or areas where trees are being cut for activities such as road construction and home building.
When forest conditions are right-lots of big, old spruce trees growing closely together-these endemic populations can expand to epidemic levels.
A healthy trees best defense against bark beetles is its sap. As a beetle bores into the tree, it drowns in the sap that oozes from the wound. During an epidemic, thousands of beetles may infest a tree-too many for a tree to resist with its sap. The beetles' galleries cut off the flow of nutrients and water, killing the tree.
In the 1920's there was a similar spruce bark beetle epidemic on Boulder Mountain near Teasdale, Utah. Today we can see a young, vigorous forest.
Today on the Cedar City Ranger District we can witness the effects of the spruce bark beetle as an agent of change.
Last Sunday various temperature records were illustrated in the News-Miner. It was mentioned that a jump in these records exists that occurred in the seventies. Obviously, this jump can be related to the so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation as shown in the paper of Hartmann & Wendler, published in the Journal of Climate of the American Meteorological Society in 2005 (http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ResearchPro... ). Gerd Wendler, a professor of geophysics emeritus at UAF, is the Director of the Alaska Climate Research Center.
According to Hartmann and Wendler, there is only a slight increase in the near surface temperature of the North Slope area since 1976. All other areas show no trend or a slight decrease. However, climatists (to distinguish them from professional climatologists) like UAF professors Glenn Juday and Terry Chapin are still chatting that warming temperatures are degrading permafrost, altering the hydrology over wide areas, and causing some places to get wetter and others to dry out. Instead to present scientific evidence they are engaged in poor speculation using climate model predictions (climate modelers do not use the notion prediction) to generate a climate of fear. Under the umbrella of science they try to manipulate the public with statements that can be classified, at least, as scientific misconduct.
I think that Marc Lee has to learn that a fire season is still a season. Such a season covers a few months. According to the World Meteorological Organization, a climate period comprises 30 years. This means that, at least, 60 years are necessary to analyze whether climate change took place or not. Remember that the fire season 2004 became worth because of a fire fighting mismanagement that resulting in canceling the contract with the company that was running the fleet of huge aircraft. Thus, when wildfires were running out of control, no heavy equipment was available.
I read that it is caused by second hand smoke and we also know that 73.7% of all recent temperature increases, from 1934, are alcohol related. We need stronger laws to address this issue and that should fix it!
You notice that UAF is deeply involved with this "research" and it has certainly assisted this person in figuring out the problem! I believe this discovery is a miracle and fortunately we can carry this knowledge and bias back to the classroom to spoil yet another generation of un-free thinkers. The gene pool is running low and we may have an impending crisis.
YEAH YEAH!
GRAB YOUR TORCHES AND YOUR PITCHFORKS
CLOSE DOWN UAF!
DOWN WITH SCIENCE! DOWN WITH SCIENCE! DOWN WITH SCIENCE!
ARREST GLENN JUDAY! CLOSE DOWN IARC! ROUND UP THE GREENIES! THEY"RE BEING INFILTRATED BY AL'QAEDA! SEND'EM TO GUANTANAMO BAY! ONE DAY, PREZUDENT RUSH AND VICE PREZ SAVAGE WILL CLEAN UP THE FILTH!
patcaribou,
are you crazy? Fraudulence in science already takes place when scientific facts are ignored. Obviously, you are not able to assess simple statistical results. Take a class in statistics on a 101 level.
skewt
obviously you are in the weather business w/ a handle like "skewt"...maybe i should change mine to logp.
i'm not ignoring the influence of the PDO. obviously, a pattern which increases the frequency of warm air advection is going to dramatically change the climate much more than a few extra CO2 molecules....but Alaska is just one small part of the globe. one question i have is, how is the small increase in radiation from an increase in CO2 affect phenomena like the PDO and El Nino. Such a small increase in radiation likely produces a small increase in temp, likely causing an increase in evaporation and humidity, perhaps causing a much stronger and more energetic PDO. This is a very difficult question to answer empirically..
but the fact remains, when you consider the globe as a whole and when you consider all of the changes that are occuring and that all of those changes are pointing in one direction (e.g. warming) its hard to discount that greenhouse gases aren't having some effect on the system...
temperature trends in AK for various MET stations by season between 1949 - 2005
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/...
temperature trends by station and season after teh so called PDO shift (1976 - 2005)
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/...
sorry, skewt....if you add the numbers and divide by the total number of stations (Statistics 101), you still get a trend that is positive...and you might want to look at Barrow...the warming there is especially dramatic.
patcaribou,
there is no scientific evidence that the PDO is triggered by the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Here is an example I got from a friend of mine:
Following the 4th IPCC report the anthropogenic radiative forcing due to the rise of the CO2 concentration from 280 ppmv to 380 ppmv amounts to 1.7 W/m^2 or so. The enthalpy flux related to a horizontal wind speed of 1 m/s and a temperature of 288 K (the globally averaged near-surface temperature) amounts to
1004 J/(kg K) * 1.2 kg/m^3 * 1 m/s * 288 K = 347,000 J/(m^2 s) = 347,000 W/m^2
A part of the temperature change at a certain location with respect to time is related to the so-called divergence of the enthalpy flux, i.e. the change of the enthalpy flux between to points divided by the distance between these points. Thus, it is necessary to form the difference between two very large enthalpy flux values. Such differences are strongly affected by uncertainties. If, for instance, the air temperature is the same at both points say 288 K and the error in the measured wind speed is 2 cm/s. Then, the error between the two enthalpy fluxes amounts to 6,940 W/m^2.
Do you still believe that this anthropogenic radiative forcing of 1.7 W/m^2 has any notable effect?
Just let me know when it safe to plant a Palm tree here
since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/sto...
Dr David Evans
It was a pleasure to have Stefan Milkowski work on this article and accompany me and some of the people who do this research with me. He did a very careful and through job on the story. He contacted me several times with follow-up questions, and asked for comment on points he wanted to be certain of. I have worked with reporters from the largest and most professional organizations, and I would put his work on this story in the highest group.
The facts described in the story can be verified by anybody who wishes to do the appropriate studies, obtain accurate observations, perform the analyses, and subject the results to careful review by competent reviewers. I invite all who are interested or have alternate explanations to do so.
Facts and analyses are not a political or policy position. It is possible to confront the facts and decide to advocate a left of center policy response, and it's possible to confront the facts and decide to advocate a conservative policy response. But it is not possible to alter the facts by attempting to deny them.
I've had the opportunity to brief top policy makers across the political spectrum, and I give them the same set of facts and conclusions. It's a tough job to design a public policy in response to the climate change issue, and I wish them well as they go about it. I have not hesitated to publicly refute claims based on misinterpretation or misuse of my results.
I sincerely recommend those same principles to all who comment on this News-Miner climate change series.
skewt
unfortunately, the atmospheric scienc dept. cancelled thermodynamics before i had a chance to take it, so the concept of "enthalpy" is not particularly fresh in my mind...but i see you'r trying to make the point that the error in the so-called "enthalpy-flux" is 4 orders of magnitude larger than the 1.7 W*M^-2 due to a 100 ppm increase in CO2.
your point might be valid, but its seems to me you're comparing apples and oranges (sensible and radiant heat)...keep in mind, practically all of the surface and atmospheric heating originates from energy from the sun and the average solar irradiance at earth's surface is 340 W*M-2, still significanly larger than 1.7, but who can say, integrated over all space and time, that wouln't have an effect? by the end of the century, low-ball estimates will put the increase at 4 W*M^-2, equivalent to adding a grid of 100 Watt lightbulbs 5m apart over the entire globe. How much more evaporation will occur the oceans and how will the added water vapor, a much more powerful greenhouse gas, affect the radiation balance? how will the added water vapor affect clouds and storm development?
skewt
also
i wasn't claiming that the PDO is triggered by CO2 concentrations, rather i was throwing out the possibility that, again with the water vapor feedback, higher CO2 = small warming = greater evaporation from the ocean = greater water vapor in the atmosphere = more latent heat added to the atmosphere via water vapor transport and condenstion = more rigourous atmospheric circulation patterns = stronger PDO.
www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/publications/meehl_...
patcaribou,
according to a friend of mine, this stuff is a part of atmospheric dynamics.
Why did you not go to the dean?
patcaribou,
this is pure speculation. But speculation is not science.
The ignorance and gullibility of most of the posters in this thread is stunning!
Thank you, Mr. Juday, for your post, and thank you for your diligent research over many years in the interior!
You won't get any responses from the naysayers, I am sorry to say, because they cannot come up with a logical response to a scientist such as yourself.
patcaribou,
you wrote:
"unfortunately, the atmospheric scienc dept. cancelled thermodynamics before i had a chance to take it, so the concept of "enthalpy" is not particularly fresh in my mind."
After reading the course descriptions of the mandatory classes of the Atmospheric Science Department at UAF, I have to recognize that your statement is not correct. Atmospheric thermodynamics is taught in the Introduction to Atmospheric Sciences, in Cloud Physics, and in Atmospheric Dynamics covering one-thirds of each of these courses.
An excerpts of the Introduction class reads:
Introduction to atmospheric science includes the thermodynamics and dynamics of properties of constituent gases, energy and mass conservation in the atmosphere, internal energy and entropy in dry and moist processes (cloud physics and cloud microphysics), water vapor in the atmosphere, static and conditional stability, non-internal equations of motion, hydrostatics, geostropy, and general circulation.
An excerpts of the Dynamics class reads:
This course covers the basics of atmospheric dynamics including conservation laws, development of the equations of motion, thermal wind, circulation and vorticity, geostrophy, quasi-geostrophic motions, waves, and instabilities.
An excerpts of the Cloud Physics class reads:
The multidisciplinary field of cloud physics attempts to understand the basic properties of condensed water vapor in the atmosphere, and is governed by principles ranging from thermodynamics to radiative transfer.
Note that internal energy and enthalpy can related to each other.
The old Thermodynamics class was only dealing with equilibrium thermodynamics. Since this is only a special case and not representative for the atmosphere, it seems that this class was canceled for an improvement in the education in Atmospheric Thermodynamics.
Obviously, you earned a master's degree or a doctoral degree from UAF, but your knowledge in the fundamentals of atmospheric science is poor. Are you already engaged in global warming studies?
Glenn Juday,
what your called the facts are only your facts. Please stop to make politics and start to publish peer-reviewed papers. Then, you may talk about facts.
According to the Science Citation Index you published your last paper as a main authors in 1985:
Title: THE ROSIE CREEK FIRE
Author(s): JUDAY GP
Source: AGROBOREALIS Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Pages: 11-20 Published: 1985
Times Cited: 2
skewt
the amount of thermo covered in cloud physics and dynamics does does not make up for the information learned only in a rigourous coursed devoted to solely thermodyamics.
yes, i got a masters degree..my research involved validating cloud data from a satellite against a surface lidar..the research, itself, is rather straightforward.
as for your accusation that my knowledge in atmospheric science is poor, the same can be said of your critical thinking skills....that entropy flux example you gave earlier is like comparing apples and oranges. you can't compare the increase in irradiance from CO2 to horizontal temperature fluxes. you have to compare it to the value 340, the average irradiance derived from the sun, the source of all the energy in the atmosphere..
there are a lot of really smart brilliant phd's out there who are fluent in mathematics, but for some reason they are unable to grasp basic concepts and synthesize information in order to come to logical conclusions...they tend to write really boring long-winded papers that are heavy in theoretical mathmatical methods but in the end cannot articulate the ideas in a simple summary.
there is a well known professor in the atm-sci dept, who might fit this mold. perhaps this is the "friend" you speak of..despite the well published CO2 record over the last century, this person a) does not believe that CO2 is currently at 380 ppm, and b) cannot recognize the fact that the annual ups and downs of the CO2 concentrations are correlated with seasonal leaf senescence in the northern hemisphere...this beliefs are blatantly false and preposterous...this person's theory is that the CO2 increases are due to the sensor being near the Mana Lua volcano, which i find to be akin to believing that the earth is flat.
no, i am no longer engaged in pursuits that are in any way related to science, scientific research or academia....i'm sure your thrilled about that.
Apparently skewt experienced a malfunction in performing his search for my publication record.
For the record (available upon request), I have published 20 or so primary papers on the subject in the last 8 years or so (Nature, Oxford Press, Cambridge Press, CJFR, etc.)
As I said, I invite anybody to check out the work, collect equivalent data, perform the tests and see if the results can be better interpreted in a different way.
Glenn Juday,
the Science Citation Index provided following information:
1. Title: Modeling spatial variability of white spruce (Picea glauca) growth responses to climate change at and below treeline in Alaska - A case study from two national parks
Author(s): Wilmking M, Juday GP, Terwilliger M, et al.
Source: ERDKUNDE Volume: 60 Issue: 2 Pages: 113-126 Published: APR-JUN 2006
Times Cited: 0
2. Title: Longitudinal variation of radial growth at Alaska's northern treeline - recent changes and possible scenarios for the 21st century
Author(s): Wilmking M, Juday GP
Source: GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE Volume: 47 Issue: 2-4 Pages: 282-300 Published: JUL 2005
Times Cited: 5
3. Title: Increased temperature sensitivity and divergent growth trends in circumpolar boreal forests
Author(s): Wilmking M, D'Arrigo R, Jacoby GC, et al.
Source: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS Volume: 32 Issue: 15 Article Number: L15715 Published: AUG 13 2005
Times Cited: 14
4. Title: Recent climate warming forces contrasting growth responses of white spruce at treeline in Alaska through temperature thresholds
Author(s): Wilmking M, Juday GP, Barber VA, et al.
Source: GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY Volume: 10 Issue: 10 Pages: 1724-1736 Published: OCT 2004
Times Cited: 46
View full text from the publisher
5. Title: Resilience and vulnerability of northern regions to social and environmental change
Author(s): Chapin FS, Peterson G, Berkes F, et al.
Source: AMBIO Volume: 33 Issue: 6 Pages: 344-349 Published: AUG 2004
Times Cited: 21
6. Title: Global change and the boreal forest: Thresholds, shifting states or gradual change?
Author(s): Chapin FS, Callaghan TV, Bergeron Y, et al.
Source: AMBIO Volume: 33 Issue: 6 Pages: 361-365 Published: AUG 2004
Times Cited: 27
7. Title: Reconstruction of summer temperatures in interior Alaska from tree-ring proxies: Evidence for changing synoptic climate regimes
Author(s): Barber VA, Juday GP, Finney BP, et al.
Source: CLIMATIC CHANGE Volume: 63 Issue: 1-2 Pages: 91-120 Published: MAR 2004
Times Cited: 18