Arctic system science
Arctic climate modeling & data
International coordination
Responding to change
Community engagement
Supporting Arctic operations
Our Work
The International Arctic Research Center (IARC) is a premier research institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It is home to more than 100 scientists, staff, and students working on a wide variety of issues related to Arctic system science, climate change, and climate adaptation.
We maintain strong partnerships with Arctic experts in Russia, Japan, Canada, Germany, Norway, Korea, and China. This combination of expertise and collaborations is aimed at helping people understand and adapt to a changing Arctic climate.
Projects
Projects are shorter-term research efforts involving IARC personnel and colleagues from a variety of organizations. See IARC projects
Collaborations and initiatives
Our larger, longer-term collaborative efforts work from multiple angles to help people understand and adapt to a changing Arctic climate. Other groups address pressing social and economic problems with applied research.
See the latest peer-reviewed work by IARC researchers
Data management, analysis, and visualization
Contacts
- Scott Rupp, SNAP Director
- SNAP website
Since 2007, SNAP has used climate data to create and share ideas of what a future Northern climate could look like. Our expertise includes:
- Data analysis and interpretation
- Scenario planning
- Communication
Why is this work important?
With climate change challenges on the forefront for many agencies, municipalities, businesses, and nonprofits across Alaska and the Arctic, stakeholders have immediate needs for the best science and knowledge available.
SNAP provides a network within which research efforts and strategies are identified and supported to meet the needs of our stakeholders.
- We help others envision a future Northern climate.
- We emphasize practical application.
- We collaborate across disciplines.
History and background
SNAP was established in 2007 by UA President Mark Hamilton to address stakeholder needs to address climate change challenges and opportunities. SNAP also plays an integral role in IARC’s mission to provide Arctic climate information, Arctic system modeling, analysis of human dimensions of Arctic system change, and Arctic science coordination.
Explore SNAP data tools.
IARC Postdoctoral Fellow Katie Spellman and SNAP's Nancy Fresco explain the importance and relevance of computer modeling in making sense of climate change in this 13-minute video.
Observed sea level pressure (top, March 2018) compared to EAPI forecasted conditions (bottom) both showing a strong high pressure center above Alaska that produced strong winds. This forecast was shared with the US Navy during the ICEX submarine exercise.
Contacts
- Nathan Kettle, EAPI Lead, Science Lead and Research Assistant Professor, International Arctic Research Center
- Uma Bhatt, Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, UAF Geophysical Institute
- Hajo Eicken, IARC Director
- John Walsh, IARC Chief Scientist
- EAPI website
We provide state of the art sub-seasonal to multi-year forecasts for Alaska and the Arctic.
We work with agencies, the private sector, and other stakeholders to ensure that forecasts are user friendly and meet pressing needs. Our focus areas include:
- Sea ice forecasts
- Transportation support
- Fire weather outlooks
Why is this work important? We need new prediction products.
In a rapidly changing Arctic, environmental prediction at seasonal to multiannual timescales is increasingly needed. However, it is challenging to forecast over seasonal and longer timescales, or processes that cut across different components of the environment (e.g., related to wildfires, Arctic operations, coastal hazards, threats to infrastructure).
Few institutions—IARC foremost among them—have the disciplinary breadth, ties to Arctic operators, communities and decision-makers, together with the scientific and technical know-how to address this pressing problem.
EAPI leverages these strengths and builds capacity to address key challenges and problem areas requiring predictive skill on seasonal to multiannual timescales.
Fire and resource management
Contacts
- Alison York, AFSC Coordinator (primary contact)
- Sarah Trainor, Principal Investigator
- AFSC website
The AFSC strengthens the link between fire science research and on-the-ground application in Alaska by promoting communication between managers and scientists, providing an organized fire science delivery platform, and facilitating collaborative scientist-manager research development.
The area burned each year in Alaska varies widely, ranging from a few hundred thousand to several million acres. The extent and severity of wildland fire in Alaska appear to be increasing with climate change. Models indicate that this increase will continue: fire will feedback to climate by releasing stored carbon as greenhouse gases and black carbon particulates, and by exposing permafrost and speeding its thawing.
A fire burns in the boreal forest near Fairbanks, Alaska.
Why is this work important?
Since 2004, wildfires have burned more than 38,000 square miles in Alaska — an area larger than the state of Indiana. Eighty percent of Alaskans live in the wildland-urban interface and are potentially vulnerable to wildfire. Smoke impacts public health, infrastructure, and transportation.
Alaska’s large proportion of public lands means that many fires are allowed to burn freely and play their natural ecological role. Wildland fire in Alaska is managed on an interagency basis by both federal and state agencies. These agencies are under continual budget pressures, and improved information to guide their decisions is one of the few ways they might increase efficiency.
Contacts
- Scott Rupp, AK CASC University Director
- AK CASC website
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) provide scientific information, tools, and techniques that those interested in land, water, wildlife, and cultural resources can use to anticipate, monitor and adapt to climate change. The AK CASC is one of eight such centers located throughout the nation.
The AK CASC works to increase our understanding of how Alaska’s ecosystems and resources are responding to a changing climate. This is done by building partnerships between academic scientists, state and federal agency scientists, resource managers, tribal leaders, and decision makers.
We use these partnerships to anticipate, monitor, research, synthesize and communicate, and sustainably manage resources across Alaska’s diverse social-ecological systems.
Green Lake Dam at low water, Sitka, AK. (KCAW Public Radio)
Why is this work important?
Climate change is having—and will continue to have—a significant impact on Alaska’s resources and human populations. Furthermore, almost 90% of Alaska’s land is managed by state and federal agencies.
In order to provide realistic forecasts of potential changes and manage natural resources under future scenarios, collaboration and efficiency between state and federal agencies and the larger scientific community are essential. The AK CASC provides an umbrella under which appropriate research efforts and other strategies can be identified, and they support research in physical, biological, social, and integrated systems that can be applied to issues being faced by resource management agencies.
Contact
- Uma Bhatt — Associate CICOES director; Professor & Chair, Department of Atmospheric Sciences
- CICOES website
The Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies is led by the University of Washington but housed jointly with Oregon State University and the International Arctic Research Center. The institute allows NOAA to tap the brainpower at universities in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. This will help NOAA meet its research, education and public engagement goals.
CICOES is one of 17 cooperative institutes nationwide. NOAA funds cooperative institutes at universities with strong research programs to extend basic and applied research beyond NOAA’s own capacity.
CICOES focuses on nine research themes:
- Climate and ocean variability, change and impacts
- Earth systems and processes
- Environmental chemistry and ocean carbon
- Marine ecosystems: observation, analysis and forecasts
- Ocean and coastal observations
- Environmental data science
- Aquaculture science
- Human dimensions in marine systems
- Polar studies
Why is this work important?
This is a critical time for the Arctic, where rapid change coincides with shrinking research budgets, making the need for cooperation and coordination of Arctic observations vital in order to address anticipated environmental challenges.
CICOES helps partner key scientists with opportunities at NOAA, contribute to integrating environmental information across Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
Arctic system science
Barrow, Alaska.
Contact
- Hajo Eicken, IARC Director
Barrow is a major Arctic research region and platform. This region has seen some of the largest climate-related changes—especially in the cryosphere—and has an established research infrastructure to help with model development, exploring adaptation responses, and building resiliency.
This flagship site is meant to lead to integration and better coordination of a patchwork of observing initiatives. Work builds on a long history of collaboration between local experts and researchers.
Why is this work important?
There is substantial potential to enhance value and reduce costs of observations collected in the Barrow region for researchers in Alaska and the Lower 48, governments, local communities and the international research community through better coordination.
An entire year trapped in the Arctic ice
Contacts
- Rob Rember, Research Assistant Professor, IARC
- Field Reports page
- MOSAiC website
- MOSAiC on Twitter
- MOSAiC on Facebook
The largest Central Arctic expedition ever
In September 2019 the German research icebreaker Polarstern departed from Tromsø, Norway and spent most of the following year drifting through the Arctic Ocean, trapped in the ice.
Six hundred people from 17 countries, who supplied by other icebreakers and aircraft, participated in the expedition. Several times that number of researchers will subsequently use the data gathered to take climate and ecosystem research to the next level.
The mission was spearheaded by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
Contacts
- Igor Polyakov, NABOS Principal Investigator
- NABOS website
NABOS is part of the Arctic Observing Network and is funded by the National Science foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Since the early 2000s, NABOS has worked to compile a cohesive picture of climatic changes in the Eurasian and Makarov basins of the Arctic Ocean. Regular scientific cruises involving measurements of physical and chemical oceanography by means of moorings, buoys, and other instruments have helped NABOS researchers to understand:
- How boundary currents transport Atlantic Ocen water
- How Atlantic Ocean water interacts with shelf waters, the deep basin interior, and the upper ocean
- Changes in upper ocean circulation within these basins
IARC-led NABOS II 2015 expedition team installs an ice mass balance buoy and drills holes in the ice for an ice-tethered profiler and buoys in the East Siberian Sea. (E. Ershova)
Why is this work important?
The exceptional magnitude of recent high-latitude changes in the ocean, ice, and atmosphere strongly suggests a potentially irreversible shift in the Arctic Ocean to a new climate state.
These changes have important implications for the Arctic Ocean’s marine ecosystem—especially for those components that depend on sea ice or that have temperature- and stratification-dependent sensitivities or thresholds.
Addressing these and other questions requires careful observations. To these ends, expeditions provide key information about the historical transitions occurring in the Arctic Ocean.
Contact
- Bob Bolton, Institutional Lead
- NGEE website
The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) seeks to quantify the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.
Initial research will focus on the highly dynamic landscapes of the North Slope, where thaw lakes, drained thaw lake basins, and ice-rich polygonal ground offer distinct land units for investigation and modeling.
A focus on scaling based on investigations within these geomorphological units will allow us to deliver a process-rich ecosystem model, extending from bedrock to the top of the vegetative canopy, in which the evolution of Arctic ecosystems in a changing climate can be modeled at the scale of a high resolution Earth System Model grid cell (i.e., 30x30 km grid size).
Why is this work important?
Increasing our confidence in climate projections for high-latitude regions of the world will require a coordinated set of investigations that target improved process understanding and model representation of important ecosystem-climate feedbacks.
Policy
Contacts
- Sarah Trainor, ACCAP Director
- Tina Buxbaum, ACCAP Program Manager
- ACCAP website
ACCAP's work encompasses the entire state of Alaska. We focus on coastal and living marine resources, applied climate downscaling, water availability, sea ice, wildfire, tribal impacts, and community adaptation plans. ACCAP partners with stakeholders to inform realistic community plans and climate adaptation strategies using the most scientifically accurate, reliable, and up-to-date information.
Stakeholder interaction and outreach is integrated into every aspect of our work, including climate modeling and addressing regional vulnerabilities. These interactions include:
- Needs and vulnerability assessments
- User collaboration in downscaling models, designing research studies, and developing, testing, and evaluating research information products and tools.
ACCAP aims to establish partnerships among:
- Scientists and engineers
- State and local planners, policy-makers and governments
- Transportation, natural resource and land management agencies
- Native non-profit organizations and Alaska Native tribes
- Industry
- Non-governmental organizations
- Anyone whose decision-making is influenced by climate-related events
Why is this work important?
Climate change is already impacting the seasons, landscapes, and life in the North. These changes affect the health, lives, and livelihoods of Alaskans as well as the companies who do business in Alaska.
History and background
Established in 2006 with funding from NOAA’s Climate Program Office, ACCAP is one of several Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) programs nationwide. RISA supports research teams that conduct interdisciplinary and regionally relevant research to inform resource management, planning and public policy.
Attend an ACCAP webinar!
Contact
- Amy Lauren Lovecraft, CAPS Director
- CAPS website
Policy makers need reliable and timely information about the Arctic, a region of rapid environmental, economic, and societal change.
University of Alaska (UA) scholars possess a wealth of Arctic knowledge and expertise spread across multiple disciplines. CAPS is bringing together that knowledge and expertise to more readily serve policy makers in the Arctic. CAPS facilitates sharing of UA expertise in Arctic issues—ranging from natural resources to engineering to political science—with policy- and decision- makers.
Contact
- Brendan Kelly, SEARCH Executive Director
- SEARCH website
SEARCH is a collaborative program of Arctic researchers, funding agencies, and others that facilitates synthesis of Arctic science and communicates our current understanding to help society respond to a rapidly changing Arctic.
How SEARCH works to inform Arctic decisions
- We generate and synthesize Arctic research findings, and promote scientific discovery across disciplines and among agencies.
- We identify emerging issues in Arctic environmental change.
- We provide scientific information to Arctic stakeholders, policy-makers, and the public to help them understand and respond to Arctic environmental change.
- We facilitate research activities across local-to-global scales, with an emphasis on addressing needs of decision-makers.
- We collaborate with science programs integral to SEARCH goals.
Rural Indigenous
Contacts
- Donna Hauser, AAOKH Science Co-Lead
- Olivia Lee, AAOKH Science Co-Lead
- AAOKH website
AAOKH supports information exchange and environmental observations of cryosphere change by Inupiat experts in coastal communities. Community involvement throughout the development of AAOKH is ensuring that observations support key community concerns related to snow, ice and permafrost change. Concerns include impacts to food security, safety, and access to subsistence resources.
AAOKH provides relevant information and a user-friendly interface for coastal communities and stakeholders interested in the intersection of cryosphere change and coastal Inupiat community concerns.
Why is this work important?
AAOKH contributes to IARC efforts to synthesize observational data and helps build capacity in coastal communities by allowing them to help direct community observations related to their concerns on cryosphere change.
Integration of traditional knowledge with current science will help fill a need highlighted in the National Strategy for the Arctic Region, the Alaska Arctic Policy Commission, and recommendations of the Arctic Council Sustainable Development Working Group, thus making AAOKH activities relevant at state, national and international levels.
Contacts
- Krista Heeringa, Program Lead
- CPS website
CPS partners with rural communities as they work toward their vision for self-reliance. We support community driven responses to self-reliance and sustainability challenges by identifying and linking relevant information and research support.
CPS was formed through UAF in partnership with the Alaska Native Science Commission.