While some people in Nome held a recent Cajun-food fundraiser for New Orleans hurricane victims, “the tail end of a Bering Sea storm rattled the windows,” wrote Nancy McGuire in the Nome Nugget.
Hurricanes, tropical by definition, don’t strike in Alaska, but extreme weather hammers the state’s exposed West Coast and Aleutian Islands each fall and winter.
“Storms that affect Alaska are far, far bigger than hurricanes,” said Rick Thoman, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service's Fairbanks Forecast Office. “Hurricanes are tiny compared to great storms that take up a quarter of the Bering Sea.”
Nome and other towns of Alaska's West Coast have taken the brunt of fall storms that churn up the Bering Sea before the protective cap of sea ice forms. In October 2004 and September 2005, large storms brought high winds and storm surges—high water that causes flooding—into villages and towns.
“That’s back-to-back years when we were ranked in the top 10 storms in Nome’s history,” said Jerry Steiger, meteorologist in charge at the Nome office of the National Weather Service.
During a late September storm, low-lying Seward Peninsula villages took on water in ways similar to New Orleans. In Golovin, flooding made the lower part of the town into an island. “We had our own little hurricane Rita,” Librarian Jerri Nagaruk of neighboring Elim told Sandra Medearis of the Nome Nugget.
Nome has a seawall made of giant boulders to protect it against the wind-whipped ocean, but many Alaska West Coast villages are at, or near, sea level and are vulnerable to storm surges.
“Unfortunately, people established those towns right next to water,” Steiger said. “It’s not the best place to be in a storm.”
Steiger said the storms on Alaska’s West Coast are similar to hurricanes in that they cause storm surges and spin in a counterclockwise motion, but they “usually aren’t wound as tight” as a hurricane.
“A big low can affect most of western Alaska,” he said. “These systems are so large they’re drawing moisture from all over the Bering Sea.”
These huge storms, which happen on the West Coast and the Aleutians most often from September to January, can generate strong winds over a broad swath of Alaska.
“Yesterday, when (hurricane) Wilma was the lowest pressure ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin, hurricane force winds only extended 60 miles out from the center,” Thoman said in Fairbanks. During an extreme Alaska storm, “there can be strong winds at Bethel and Nome (300 miles apart) at the same time.”
The National Weather Service defines hurricane-force winds as 74 miles per hour and greater. During the September storm on the Seward Peninsula that sent woody debris over a good portion of Nome’s Front Street, an unofficial wind gauge at a boat repair shop recorded a gust of 83 miles per hour. Steiger reported official gusts of 56 miles per hour in Nome and 66 miles per hour in Golovin.
Weather in the Aleutian Islands can be among the most extreme in Alaska or anywhere else in the world. In December 1950, a wind gauge on Attu, a far-west island of the Aleutians, read a gust of 159 miles per hour. In 1959, an instrument at nearby Shemya recorded a 139 mile-per-hour gust.
Vast oceans surrounding the western Aleutians aren’t the only reasons the islands are prone to extreme weather.
“The Aleutians aren’t all that far from Siberia,” Thoman said. “They can tap into some extremely cold air, and the difference between warm and cold air is what fuels storms.”http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1774.html
Alaska
Water Quality Criteria
For each of the 14 freshwater and marine uses, the State water quality standards specify criteria for a variety of parameters or pollutants. The criteria are both narrative and numeric. The pollutant parameters specified are fecal coliform bacteria, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, temperature, dissolved inorganic substances, sediment, toxic substances, color, petroleum hydrocarbons, radioactivity, total residual chlorine, and residues (floating solids, foam, debris, deposits).
Wetlands are considered “waters of the state” in Alaska’s water quality standards (18 AAC 70) and consequently Alaska’s water quality standards apply to wetlands. Alaska does not have any wetland-specific water quality standards; furthermore, there are neither numeric nor narrative criteria that are specific to wetlands.
Alaska’s water quality standards apply to groundwater (with some specific exceptions such as turbidity). Under the current regulations, groundwater is protected for the aquaculture uses by applying aquatic life criteria, even though aquatic life does not exist in groundwater. Since aquatic life criteria are frequently more stringent than drinking water maximum containment levels, criteria meant to protect aquatic life become the effective groundwater standards. The standard is protective of surface water if groundwater is discharged as waste water or if surface water may be under the direct influence of groundwater (e.g., contaminated sites).
The water quality standards also contain provisions for antidegradation, and mixing zones, short-term variances, and “zones of deposit” where a water quality standard may be exceeded under certain conditions. The antidegradation regulation (discussed below) is identical to Federal law and requires protection of high quality waters such as waters of a National or State park, wildlife refuge, or a water of exceptional recreational or ecological significance.
Alaska does not have streamflow criteia to protect flows necessary to support existing uses. The state also does not have biological criteria or guidance.
According to the State, many water bodies have natural water quality that is better than the criteria set by the Water Quality Standards. In such cases, a discharge may meet these standards, but still cause degradation. In 1996, Alaska adopted the above antidegradation policy. However, the EPA also requires the State to develop an Antidegradation Policy Implementation Plan. The Plan will specify the procedures and criteria used to determine when waters are degraded by discharges or nonpoint sources of pollution, and what social and economic benefit to the state would be necessary to justify any degradation. The plan will also have procedures for nomination and designation of outstanding natural resource waters (ONRW). Alaska is in the process of developing this plan.
http://www.blm.gov/nstc/WaterLaws/alaska2.html
Alaska quaternary climate history
The study of past climates and ecological changes in Alaska will provide important insights to understanding the likely consequences of future climate changes in high latitude ecosystems. Future climate changes, whether triggered by human-induced changes in the atmosphere or by natural climate cycles, will result in changes in the species composition and distribution of vegetation types. On the basis of the fossil record and climate history of Alaska, we can expect that future periods of cooler, drier climate will result in shrinkage of forest boundaries, lowering of altitudinal tree line, and expansion of tundra vegetation into lower elevations. A future change to warmer, moister climates will result in expansion of Alaska's forests into areas now occupied by tundra. The past record also shows that the magnitude of future global-scale climate changes and ecological responses will be greater at high latitudes than at lower latitudes. USGS scientists are currently working on reconstructing the ecosystem history of part of the Kenai lowland. New knowledge of ecosystem history and ecosystem responses to climate change can be applied to problems of land-use management in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, as well as climate modeling, archeology, and vertebrate paleontology.
http://geology.usgs.gov/connections/fws/colls&opps/collandopps.htm#alaska
