CLIMATE CHANGE: Alaska's ice is melting in front of our eyes, staggering satellite shots show

 Climate change and global warming have been changing the Earth more quickly since the Industrial Revolution. It's a fact. Pollutants are speeding up a changing world climate, and warming it, which is creating extremes (from polar vortex outbreaks to more droughts and floods). Visual proof is seen in these satellite images of Alaska, taken from NASA satellites.  Here's the story.

Caption: NASA satellite image showing melt in Alaska. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Wanmei Liang)

Alaska's ice is melting in front of our eyes, staggering satellite shots show 

 By Ben Turner, LIVE SCIENCE  February 7, 2025

Unusual weather patterns and climate change have been driving stark changes in the northwestern state. Now, new satellite images show the extent of this transformation.

 New satellite images reveal the stark pace of global warming in Alaska, with last year's snow vanishing and leaving behind miles of bare ground.

The images, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, show Bristol Bay Borough in southern Alaska. Anchorage, which is located to the northeast, had an average January snow depth of 13 inches (33 centimeters) between 1998 and 2025.

But this year, the station, alongside other parts of the state, reported next to no snow on the ground. What is left behind are large patches of ground visible from space.

"Since December 2024, temperatures across the state have been 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 6 degrees Celsius) above normal, according to NOAA, and isolated areas have experienced even greater anomalies," NASA Earth Observatory wrote in a blog post accompanying the new images. "The warm temperatures caused existing snow and ice to melt and new precipitation to fall as rain."

As climate change heats up the planet, Arctic regions such as Alaska are experiencing dramatic rates of warming, with temperatures increasing up to four times faster than the rest of the world. Anchorage's average temperature was 29.3 F (minus 1.5 C) in January — 13 F (7.2 C) above average and warmer than readings taken in three dozen other states.

The reasons for this are twofold. First, unusual weather conditions across the North Pacific fueled a marine heatwave across North America this winter. This warming was worsened in Alaska thanks to a warm, high-pressure ridge of air hanging over the state.

Effects of a Warmer World : Record-early Alaska river thaw follows high winter temperatures

Decline of Pedersen glacier in Kenai Fjords Park, Alaska

Climate change (warming of global temperatures) has been occurring since the Industrial Revolution and scientists around the world have been cataloging the effects.   Take it from me, I'm a meteorologist.  Global warming has caused increased CO2 (Carbon dioxide) levels in the atmosphere, melting glaciers and vanishing sea ice, more Arctic Outbreaks of frigid air over the U.S. and Europe, warmer sea surface temperatures, more intense hurricanes and storms, tropical plants and fish being found further toward the poles, and much more. Weather (short term event) is NOT climate (that's weather over a long term). 
   In this article from April 15th from Reuters, here's another example of climate change in Alaska:


Record-early Alaska river thaw follows high winter temperatures

Key Alaska rivers that are usually frozen at this time of year are now free-flowing, with record-early thaws following record-high winter and spring temperatures.

Aug thru Oct 2016- Alaska warmer than normal. Cr: NOAA

In the interior Alaska city of Nenana, ice on the Tanana River gave way just after midnight on Sunday. It was by far the earliest breakup in the 102-year history of the Nenana Ice Classic, an iconic Alaska betting pool in which participants predict when thaw will sink a wooden tripod placed on the ice.

The previous earliest breakup of the Tanana, a tributary of the Yukon River, was April 20, a mark reached in 1998 and 1940.

Another record-early thaw happened on Friday on the Kuskokwim River at the southwestern city of Bethel. The previous earliest ice-breakup date for the Kuskokwim Ice Classic was also April 20, in 2016. The Friday ice breakup was the earliest for that part of the Kuskokwim in 92 years of records kept by the National Weather Service.

At both rivers, records show that breakup has been happening, on average, about a week earlier since the 1960s, not counting this year’s record thaws.

This year’s breakups followed an extraordinarily warm Alaska winter with near-record-low ice in the Bering Sea and a record-hot March statewide.

The increasingly early melt reflects Alaska’s long-term climate change, said Brian Brettschneider, a climate researcher with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center.

“It’s just another indicator of how Alaska is warming up,” he said.

More precisely, this year’s early melt reflects the warm conditions that persisted over wide areas of Alaska, from mountain peaks to the open ocean, Brettschneider said.

“The condition of the ice is a proxy for what the climate has been like for the past five months or so,” he said.

For rural Alaskans in communities that lack outside road access, changes in river ice can have dire consequences.

The rural and mostly indigenous residents use frozen rivers for travel, driving snowmobiles or other vehicles over them.

“If we’re not able to travel on the river, we’re all 100 percent dependent on air travel, which is hugely expensive,” said Mark Leary, an official with a local Yupik tribal council.

In March, when Kuskoskwim River ice conditions resembled those that used to be common in May, four people died in separate incidents when their snowmobiles or all-terrain vehicles plunged into the water.

Lack of river ice can also hinder villagers’ ability to harvest wild food, Leary said. That is important in a region where the mostly Yupik residents count on wild fish, game and plants for most of their diet.

“Normally, we would be right in the height of ice-fishing season,” he said. And normally, residents would be traveling by snowmobile to hunt migratory birds, he said.

Instead, villagers are getting out their boats early and using them to hunt and fish, he said.