Arctic coast suffers ‘triple whammy’
Cameron Wobus describes the erosion of Alaska’s Arctic coastline as “significant and accelerating.” He’s got the pictures to prove it.
Wobus, a geological-sciences instructor at the University of Colorado and research scientist for the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, used time-lapse photography this summer to record the erosion of silty coastlines between Barrow and the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The research team included Bob Anderson, professor of geological sciences.
“I get excited by centimeter-per-year erosion rates,” Anderson says. “This is 30-meters-per-year erosion.”
Anderson, who is also a fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, presented initial results from this summer’s research at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
There, he displayed the time-lapse photographs that chronicled several weeks of erosion on the Beaufort Sea. Large chunks of permafrost coastline can be seen falling into the sea and disappearing.
Anderson explains the phenomenon this way: First, as Arctic sea ice recedes farther from the coast, more ocean is exposed to the sun. Second, the seas transfer this energy to the shoreline, melting the permafrost. Third, he notes, longer periods of open ocean allow storms to batter the weakening coast.
The coast is being hit with a “triple whammy,” Anderson says.
As for erosion on the silty Arctic coastline, he adds, “I don’t see any end in sight.”
The research team included Irina Overeem, an INSTAAR research scientist; Nora Matell, a graduate student in geological sciences; and Adriana Bailey, a graduate student of geography.
Bailey finalized a video of the eroding coastline, which can be seen on The New York Times’ “Dot Earth” blog.
Dec. 19, 2008
Wobus, a geological-sciences instructor at the University of Colorado and research scientist for the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, used time-lapse photography this summer to record the erosion of silty coastlines between Barrow and the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The research team included Bob Anderson, professor of geological sciences.
“I get excited by centimeter-per-year erosion rates,” Anderson says. “This is 30-meters-per-year erosion.”
Anderson, who is also a fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, presented initial results from this summer’s research at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
There, he displayed the time-lapse photographs that chronicled several weeks of erosion on the Beaufort Sea. Large chunks of permafrost coastline can be seen falling into the sea and disappearing.
Anderson explains the phenomenon this way: First, as Arctic sea ice recedes farther from the coast, more ocean is exposed to the sun. Second, the seas transfer this energy to the shoreline, melting the permafrost. Third, he notes, longer periods of open ocean allow storms to batter the weakening coast.
The coast is being hit with a “triple whammy,” Anderson says.
As for erosion on the silty Arctic coastline, he adds, “I don’t see any end in sight.”
The research team included Irina Overeem, an INSTAAR research scientist; Nora Matell, a graduate student in geological sciences; and Adriana Bailey, a graduate student of geography.
Bailey finalized a video of the eroding coastline, which can be seen on The New York Times’ “Dot Earth” blog.
Dec. 19, 2008