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Warm ocean water delays sea ice for Alaska towns, wildlife

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. research vessel Sikuliaq can break through ice as thick as 2.5 feet. In the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska this month, which should be brimming with floes, its limits likely won’t be tested.

University of Washington researchers left Nome on Nov. 7 on the 261-foot ship, crossed through the Bering Strait and will record observations at multiple sites including Utqiaġvik, formerly Barrow, America’s northernmost community. Sea ice is creeping toward the city from the east in the Beaufort Sea, but to find sea ice in the Chukchi, the Sikuliaq would have to head northwest for about 200 miles.

In the new reality of the U.S. Arctic, open water is the November norm for the Chukchi. Instead of thick, years-old ice, researchers are studying waves and how they may pummel the northern Alaska coastline.

“We’re trying to understand what the new autumn looks like in the Arctic,” said Jim Thomson, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory.

Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea every day since mid-October has been the lowest on record, said Rick Thoman, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center and a former National Weather Service forecaster.

For example, the National Snow and Ice Data Center on Nov. 7 recorded sea ice at 39,382 square miles, about one-sixth of the typical ice extent for that date from 1981 to 2010, Thoman said.

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