IARC Annual Report
This is the web version of the International Arctic Research Center 2024 annual report.
Message from the Director
For 25 years, IARC has furthered our understanding of the Arctic as a system to make a difference. This report is a great reminder of the abundance of talent, expertise and action that IARC researchers, students and staff combine under one roof. It specifically highlights the importance of including diverse thoughts and ideas to gain a holistic view of the Arctic.
Igor Polyakov, Andrey Pnyushkov and Laura Whitmore’s research in the Arctic Ocean reveals a trend of accelerated melting sea ice and ocean warming with global connections. The U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have supported this long-term multidisciplinary project, allowing IARC to collaborate with an international team to understand and
respond to Arctic change.
Robert Schaeffer, Roberta Tuurraq Glenn and Donna Hauser are a shining example of what collaboration between researchers and Indigenous communities can accomplish. Indigenous Alaskans have seen and responded to extreme effects of climate change on their homes for years. A team of community members are reporting their observations and working with researchers to adapt to the changing environment.
Teslin Brannan participated in a Girls* On Ice expedition as a highschool student and used the experience to collect water samples from the remote C’ulc’ena’ Łuu’ (Gulkana Glacier). With mentorship from Megan Pittas and Christi Buffington, the young scientist earned global recognition for her work.
IARC thrives on these contributions and those of other members of our team. It is great to see the connectivity, impact and sustained engagement of the multi-faceted work underway at the International Arctic Research Center.
Please stay engaged with our work and keep in touch,
Hajo Eicken, IARC director
- About us
- Useful & actionable — Climate data tools
- Deeper understanding — Atlantification
- Grounded in place — Elevating Indigenous voices
- Inclusion & diversity — Young scientists glacier quest
- Innovative expertise — King salmon getting smaller
- Collaboration — Alaska wildfire walk
- 25 years for IARC
- Natchiq Grows Up
- Support research
About us
We are the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Troth Yeddha’ Campus. Our purpose is to understand the Arctic to make a difference. These six core values guide our research and frame how we interact with our partners:
Useful, actionable science
Our research responds to society’s needs in a changing Arctic and world.
Deeper understanding
Our emphasis on fundamental research sets the groundwork for understanding and responding to Arctic change.
Grounded in place
Living and working in Alaska gives us a holistic knowledge and understanding of the Arctic. We value what the North and its people teach us.
Inclusion and diversity
We actively cultivate an environment where all individuals and groups feel welcomed and heard. Our different experiences, expertise and ways of knowing are our strength, creating diverse thoughts and ideas.
Innovation and expertise
Drawing on our expertise, we value a culture of creativity that fosters innovation.
Collaboration
We solve problems through local to international collaboration with different disciplines, knowledge systems and by engaging with government agencies.
Climate Data Web Tools for Alaskans
“Hypercubes” might sound like objects from a science fiction novel, but, with the launch of new web tools, scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center are employing them to show climate futures in ways that all Alaskans can use.
For any location in Alaska, there are dozens of data sets that provide information about temperature, precipitation, wildfire risk, permafrost and more. They’re all variables that together can describe a location’s climate and environment. But using these variables to understand the possible futures for local climate isn’t simple.
To wrap their heads around it, UAF computer programmers think of each variable as a dimension. This multidimensional block of data gets the very sci-fi name of “hypercube.” Hypercubes help power the new Northern Climate Reports website, which can now supply climate projections for the user’s area at the click of a button. The tool is the result of an almost decade-long effort at the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, a partnership between the University of Alaska and the U.S. Geological Survey.
“The lessons learned from years of doing this helped us design this tool so anybody can get this information,” USGS researcher Jeremy Littell said. The website allows users to ask questions themselves. Then a computer go- between fetches the data and brings it back as a report.
“We call that go-between an application program interface or API,” said Bruce Crevensten, who leads the programming team at the Scenarios Network for Alaska + Arctic Planning (SNAP), another UAF group working with the center. “We built it ourselves to take questions from the site, and then dive into the data to bring back answers.” That data diving is where the hypercubes make their appearance. The API does the hard work of translating the data into easy-to-understand reports.
“It sounds complex, but basically we build websites to ask questions, and we built this API to bring back the answers. Anybody could build their own website or program to ask the API questions – it’s an open service,” Crevensten said. “Open and accessible climate data to serve our neighbors — that’s the goal” – Bruce Crevensten The team is already using the API to answer questions for other audiences.
SNAP presented at the 2024 Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial North America conference. They showed how the tool works for high dimensional climate datasets and highlighted the integration of Rasdaman, a raster data manager, into their geospatial data infrastructure. SNAP Network Coordinator and Research Assistant Professor Nancy Fresco says the team is currently using the technology that handles these large datacubes.
“We’re making data like the Landfast Sea Ice model that Andy Mahoney has produced more visible and accessible,” she said. Their project provides data to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Department of Energy.
“The project data is being made accessible by the SNAP team with this technology, all on the new Arctic Data Collaborative website,” she said. The Arctic Environmental and Engineering Data + Design Support System, or Arctic EDS, is a separate website that was funded by the Department of Defense to put climate data into engineering terms. That funding supported both the Arctic EDS tool and the API development.
“There’s this cool book, the Environmental Atlas of Alaska, that engineers use. But it’s based on environmental data from the ’80s. In our changing climate, that just won’t cut it for our partners at the DoD,” said UAF professor Scott Rupp, the SNAP programming group’s director. “They knew we had better data than that, so they came to us to get it.
”The Defense Department provided about $2 million for the science, equipment and programming behind the API and Arctic EDS, which can answer technical questions about heating, cooling and building design. Those questions work through the same data go-between that the Northern Climate Reports website uses but return the answers in the language engineers require. Crevensten said building the tool was a lot of work, but the result is better data and better answers for more people. “Open and accessible climate data to serve our neighbors — that’s the goal,” he said.
Atlantification of the Arctic Seas
New research by an international team of scientists explains what’s behind a stalled trend in Arctic Ocean sea ice loss since 2007. The findings indicate that stronger declines in sea ice will occur when an atmospheric feature known as the Arctic dipole reverses itself in its recurring cycle.
The many environmental responses to the Arctic dipole are described in a paper published online in the journal Science. This analysis helps explain how North Atlantic water influences Arctic Ocean climate. Scientists call it Atlantification.
The research is led by professor Igor Polyakov with the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Our analysis covered the atmosphere, ocean, ice, changing continents and changing biology in response to climate change,” said Polyakov.
A wealth of data, including direct instrumental observations, reanalysis products and satellite information going back several decades, shows that the Arctic dipole alternates in an approximately 15-year cycle and that the system is probably at the end of the present regime. In the Arctic dipole’s present “positive” regime, which scientists say has been in place since 2007, high pressure is centered over the Canadian sector of the Arctic and produces clockwise winds. Low pressure is centered over the Siberian Arctic and features counterclockwise winds.
This wind pattern drives upper ocean currents, with year-round effects on regional air temperatures, atmosphere- ice-ocean heat exchanges, sea-ice drift and exports, and ecological consequences. The authors write that, “Water exchanges between the Nordic seas and the Arctic Ocean are critically important for the state of the Arctic climate system” and that sea ice decline is “a true indicator of climate change.”
IARC’s Andrey Pnyushkov is a research assistant professor and a co-author of the recent paper. His team at IARC collects observations on physical parameters of the water column and sea ice using oceanographic moorings and ship-based surveys conducted as part of the Nansen and Amundsen Basins Observational System (NABOS) program.
“Observations from the Eurasian and Makarov Basins provide the oceanographic community with critical estimates of Atlantic water heat and salt transports.” said Pnyushkov. In analyzing oceanic responses to the wind pattern since 2007, the researchers found decreased flow from the Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean through the Fram Strait east of Greenland, along with increased Atlantic flow into the Barents Sea, located north of Norway and western Russia.
The new research refers to these alternating changes in the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea as a “switchgear mechanism” caused by the Arctic dipole regimes. Laura Whitmore, research assistant professor at IARC, helps run the NABOS field program and hydrochemistry efforts.
“The Arctic is a cool place in terms of chemistry, it doesn’t “obey” the expectations set forward by other ocean basins because It is almost estuarine, meaning that there is more freshwater input relative to other oceans.” The researchers found that counterclockwise winds from the low-pressure region under the current positive Arctic dipole regime drive freshwater from Siberian rivers into the Canadian sector of the Arctic Ocean.
This westward movement of freshwater from 2007 to 2021 helped slow the overall loss of sea ice in the Arctic compared to 1992 through 2006. The freshwater layer’s depth increased, making it too thick and stable to mix with the heavier saltwater below. The thick layer of freshwater prevents the warmer saltwater from melting sea ice from the bottom.
The authors write that the switchgear mechanism regulating inflows of sub- Arctic waters has “profound” impacts on marine life. It can lead to potentially more suitable living conditions for sub-Arctic boreal species near the eastern part of the Eurasian Basin, relative to its western part.
“We are beyond the peak of the currently positive Arctic dipole regime, and at any moment it could switch back again,” Polyakov said. “This could have significant climatological repercussions, including a potentially faster pace of sea-ice loss across the entire Arctic and sub-Arctic climate systems.”
Elevating Arctic Indigenous Voices to Understand Climate Change
Indigenous Alaskans have shared over 10,000 observations about the rapidly changing Arctic during the past decade in a partnership with university scientists presented in a recent paper. The paper, published in the journal Arctic Science, outlines results and lessons from the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub, the largest and longest network of its kind. AAOKH is a network of Iñupiaq community observers from five northern Alaska communities collaborating with University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers at the International Arctic Research Center.
“We are working directly with the Indigenous people who have been monitoring and stewarding the Arctic environment since time immemorial,” said UAF research associate professor Donna Hauser, the project’s lead scientist and the primary author of the paper. “We are trying to elevate and center Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in a way that most scientists have not historically.”
AAOKH began in 2016 to provide coastal Alaska’s Arctic communities with resources and scientific support to share local expertise on changing environmental conditions and their impacts. Guided by a steering group of Indigenous leaders and academic researchers, the research is designed with significant Indigenous input and focuses on questions relevant to their needs. The backbone of the project is a collection of more than 10,000 unique environmental observations from community members. Critically, the reports include Indigenous Knowledge and local perspectives.
“Our language was not written, so remembrance is important to what happened years before with the environment and how it affected our subsistence way of life,” said Robert Schaeffer, one of the observers. “I remember my father observing changes in our climate and environment and how they affected the animals and fish. As I grew older, I started noticing changes as well because he embedded into me being observant of the environment.”
Schaeffer, an Iñupiaq elder in Kotzebue, has been working with AAOKH for about three years. He worries about what kind of world his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will wake up to. He wants the world to know that his people are concerned.
“We’re living in ground zero,” said Schaeffer, who has also lobbied for climate action. “I try to encourage those that are doing studies worldwide, especially when it comes to global warming, that local voices be involved because we live it, we’re experiencing it, and we all notice the changes.”
Observers like Schaeffer create reports that include their own perspectives with environmental data. An extreme lack of sea ice and record-breaking early thaw marked 2019 as an unusual year for Kotzebue. Observers collected data on water salinity, temperature and algal life for scientific research. Locals also explained the connection to natural resources, particularly bearded seals, their most important marine resource.
An elder said 2019 was the earliest time he could remember going hunting, and Schaeffer said increased June water temperatures forced crabs to move to deeper waters in mid-July for the first time. Hauser said such Indigenous Knowledge has been under- represented and even devalued in some cases.
“It’s really a long-term perspective, a holistic perspective that we can’t get in science otherwise,” she added. With eyes ahead, the project also provides opportunities for the next generation of Indigenous scholars.
Three UAF graduate students from Indigenous Alaska communities were part of the project, including Roberta Tuurraq Glenn, a co-author on the recent paper who is now AAOKH’s project coordinator and community liaison. Glenn, who is Iñupiaq from Utqiaġvik, created a multimedia story map to visualize environmental changes, how they affect communities and their cultural context. She said the research was built on the experience of people in her region, the North Slope.
“These aren’t just reports, they are stories embedded with Indigenous knowledge,” Glenn said. “I wanted to put something together that reflects the changes they’re seeing from their words, perspectives, and photos. From there, I gathered other scientific data to be able to complete that story.”
Glenn said the most important part was working with observers to confirm the information accurately reflected their perspective, which reflects AAOKH’s approach. Both Glenn and Hauser said strong relationships, built on communication, respect and trust, are a critical part of the project. Without them, the world can’t understand how the people who are living through these changes are affected.
“They want people to know that climate change is happening, but it’s maybe not quite how everyone is portraying it in the news,” Glenn said. “One of the big lessons I learned was from an observer, Billy Adams. He said ‘You need to include something positive. You need to tell people that we’re still able to go out and harvest animals successfully. We’re still here. We’re still thriving. We are resilient people.’”
Girls* On Ice and the Gulkana Glacier
One by one, curious mountaineers emerged from yellow tents and turned their ears to the midnight soundscape — of fast crackles and rippling trickles, of many notes of water — atop the south Gabriel Icefall of C’ulc’ena’ Łuu’ (Gulkana Glacier). The nine Girls* On Ice Alaska participants watched and listened as the moraines changed before them.
Puddles, ponds and glacial streams deepened in the blue-gray valley, the snowy basecamp for 2023’s 12-day science and art focused alpine expedition designed and supported by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center, as part of Inspiring Girls* Expeditions. At more than 4,000 feet above sea level in the eastern Alaska Range, the young explorers were quick to consider their science daily lessons.
“The participants at Girls* On Ice are always so interested in the transdisciplinary aspects of ecosystems, often even more so than adults,” said Megan Pittas, a coordinator with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center at UAF and 2023’s on-site Girls* On Ice Alaska coordinator. “Our students are really excited to make those connections.”
Perhaps no one was more interested in these meltwaters than then-17-year- old Teslin Brannan, who grew up in nearby Salcha, Alaska. Now 18, she recently graduated from North Star College, a new program on the UAF Troth Yeddha’ Campus that lets high school juniors and seniors take college classes. Since she was in kindergarten, Brannan has monitored the water quality in the Tanana River watershed, seeing firsthand how riparian health is so crucial to her community. Atop the contours of C’ulc’ena’ Łuu’, which means “cutting stream glacier” in the Ahtna language, Brannan helped lead a group in collecting water temperature and pH readings in five locations.
Though she wasn’t initially sure how these measurements might be analyzed, she knew from experience that proactive data collection — especially at C’ulc’ena’ Łuu’, a reference glacier for the World Glacier Monitoring Service — was good scientific practice. Several months later, as the first high school student to ever study in UAF’s 300-level Introduction to Watershed Management class, Brannan’s instincts and careful data collection proved fruitful.
Her analysis found that water samples at higher elevations recorded the lowest temperatures. The sample with the highest temperature — taken in standing water — also recorded the lowest pH. Crucially, she concluded that the downstream flow of these waters were within the optimal pH range for salmon, between seven and eight. Brannan submitted her findings and her research efforts drew the attention of the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program. She earned a trip to attend and present at the 2024 GLOBE Annual Meeting for Climate Resilience this July in Fredonia, New York.
“I think that Teslin saw herself as a member of an international community of scientists,” said IARC science education specialist Christi Buffington, who taught Brannan’s watershed course. “She has the competence to really be a leader in science, but she also has the humility to listen to other people. And at GLOBE, she learned from people and cultures from all over the world.”
This fall, Brannan attended Linfield University on an academic scholarship and plans to major in environmental science. She’s excited to explore the ecosystems Oregon has to offer, while always cherishing the lands and waters where she grew up.
“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that I personally can affect the things around me,” Brannan said. “A big thought process nowadays is, ‘I’m just one person, I can’t do much to change things.’ But the more you learn, you realize all the things that you can do, even something as simple as picking up trash from the side of the road. Anyone can be a scientist.”
King salmon declines linked to climate, smaller size
King salmon have sustained people in Alaska for at least 12,000 years, but over the past three decades their populations have begun to dwindle. Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks linked these declines to reduced body size and extreme climate conditions in the ocean and in rivers.
Their study, published in October by Global Change Biology, focuses on the Yukon and Kuskokwim river watersheds in Alaska and Canada. These are the two largest rivers in Alaska, and until recently they supported the largest subsistence fisheries for king salmon in the world.
King salmon declines in the region have led to fishery closures and had profound impacts on rural and Indigenous communities. Previous research has investigated how climate affects a few well-studied populations in the region and separately how climate affects body size. This is the first study to compare the effects of both climate and body size on a large number of populations throughout the two river basins.
“This project was designed to understand how individual populations differ in their response to environmental conditions and identify shared characteristics,” said Megan Feddern, who led the project as post-doctoral researcher with the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. “It helps interpret the environment king salmon experience and how it relates to abundance.”
Researchers used data collected by agencies and tribes to estimate how many salmon spawned each year and the numbers of their offspring that returned to the fishery and spawning grounds. They cross-referenced more than 30 years of climate data from the U.S. and Canada with 26 different king salmon populations in the region.
All of these salmon were impacted by extreme conditions, like unusually cold winters and warm summers, during their first year in the Bering Sea. Other effects were more localized. When Yukon River temperatures were above average during the spawning migration, fewer salmon returned in the next generation. But river temperature had little effect on the Kuskokwim populations. Overall, the study found body size had a larger impact than water conditions on Yukon River salmon.
“The size of king salmon in the Yukon River is an important factor in determining the number of offspring that are produced and survive to adulthood to spawn the next generation,” said Feddern. Erik Schoen, co-author of the study and a research assistant professor at the UAF International Arctic Research Center, said understanding salmon responses could help to improve forecasts and support future populations.
“King salmon have been returning to the Yukon and Kuskokwim at smaller sizes over the past 40 years as the climate has changed,” Schoen said. This matters because now more salmon may need to return to the spawning grounds to lay enough eggs for populations to recover, he said. “This isn’t just about putting meat in the freezer,” Schoen said. “It’s also about families passing along cherished cultural traditions to their kids and grandkids at fish camps where their ancestors fished for generations.”
Take a Wildfire Walk With IARC
IARC’s Alaska Fire Science Consortium installed a new interpretive trail at the 2021 Yankovich Road Fire site, where 3.5 acres burned within 100 yards of a Neighborhood. The Wildfire Walk educates visitors about the fire site through nine interpretive signs describing the relationship between wildfire and the boreal forest, fire science and climate change and wildfire prevention. AFSC partnered with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service and others to create the walk.
AFSC and Alaska Fire Service designed the trail in collaboration with more than a dozen scientific and management organizations. Fairbanks artist Klara Maisch illustrated several of the signs, bringing to life the boreal forest landscape and the post-fire changes managers and scientists expect to see. Local residents also shared stories about what it was like to have a fire so close to home. The interpretive trail idea arose after numerous groups requested field trips to the fire site.
“It’s amazing to have a trail like this right in the neighborhood where we can think about climate, fire science and the impact of fires on the boreal forest so close by,” said Bonni Brooks, an instructor at The Folk School who joined a tour of the fire site led by AFSC. “Many of us in the community remember the Yankovich Road Fire vividly, but others do not. It’s important to our community to have a place where we can go to think about how closely this event affected us and our neighbors and how that might play out with future fires.”
Education plays a critical role in preparing minds, homes and communities for wildfire’s challenges. At the same time, it’s important to remember that wildfire is a natural process that is critical to the health of forests. For kids, hands-on experiences are the best way to learn and turn a scary concept into a fun science investigation.
Requests for field trips of the Yankovich Road Fire site with local elementary school students prompted new collaborations with educational groups that teach about wildfire and forest changes. AFSC, Project Learning Tree and IARC’s Alaska GLOBE are using the opportunity to encourage teachers to bring students to burn scars near their schools to see how plants regrow after a fire and learn ways to make their communities safer.
The collaboration outlined opportunities in the classroom too. Students can dive deep into wildfire data using the Alaska Wildfire Explorer developed by IARC’s Scenarios Network for Alaska + Arctic Planning. The web tool contains historical fire information and near real-time wildfire data, and also displays current and projected local air quality. Beyond the unique educational opportunity that the Yankovich Road Fire provided, its proximity to UAF allows for close study of how the boreal forest changes after a fire. Managers and scientists return regularly to the fire site to measure and track how the vegetation and permafrost are changing.
25 years for IARC
2024 is the International Arctic Research Center’s 25th anniversary! By 1999, climate change had become an important subject that urgently needed international study. IARC was founded at UAF through an agreement between Japan and the United States “to demonstrate our ability to solve, jointly, problems that are beyond what any one nation can address” as outlined in the agreement signed by President Clinton and Prime Minister Hashimoto. A quarter-century later, IARC is still providing crucial research that helps populations adapt to a changing climate in Alaska and beyond.
Natchiq Grows Up
A new children’s book, Natchiq Grows Up: The Story of a Ringed Seal Pup and Her Changing Home, was released in December 2023. Check out this cute little seal pup, Natchiq, and her story of growing up in her snow cave (or “lair”) on the sea ice in northern Alaska with her mom Siku. Indigenous Knowledge, Iñupiaq terms, and scientific findings are woven throughout. Royalties fund youth programs at the Native Village of Kotzebue.
Help us make a difference!
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing Alaska today. Arctic residents experience a near constant barrage of new threats, from severe weather extremes, to failing infrastructure and changing subsistence resources. Climate research can give communities, agencies and private enterprise an advantage to better understand and address climate change impacts. Sound climate modeling and localized data can help Alaskans be proactive about the future.
You can support our team of world renowned scientists, talented staff, and forward thinking students whose research makes a difference in the lives of Alaskans. Consider making a donation to our fund, Alaska Climate Research Makes a Difference Fund. With your support, IARC scientists can:
- Nimbly respond to needs of Alaskans adapting to climate change
- Build strong collaborative relationships with Indigenous communities, private sector, agency partners and policy makers
- Providing trusted climate information to the public
- Engage students in meaningful climate change research
