Record Warm June Through Much Of Alaska - ADN

[hatrack]

"Lake dipping in Anaktuvik Pass. Pier diving into Gastineau Channel off Juneau. Hay fever in the rain forest. Beaming through the clear skies of stalled high pressure, the summer sun baked Alaska all June long, warming the state 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the latest 30-year average, according to the National Climate Data Center.

That record warmth was the biggest overall increase from normal June temperatures in more than 80 years, and it was highlighted by the national center on its Web page.

Juneau saw seven days in the record-breaking 80s during its warmest and third-driest June ever. Fairbanks sweated through its second-warmest June since 1913. Anchorage's 58-degree average tied for fourth-warmest June. Nome set a daily record for the month with 83 degrees on June 7. Twelve days later, it got hotter than ever before at the southern tip of the Alaska Panhandle: 93 degrees in Metlakatla.

EDIT

Coming after three decades that saw a gradual 2.69-degree Fahrenheit rise in the state's annual temperature -- plus melting permafrost, shrinking sea ice, summer bug outbreaks, bigger storms, earlier snowmelt, village erosion -- the recent blast might seem to prove global warming has overtaken Alaska once and for all. But several forecasters say the heat wave should be attributed to weather. "In a nutshell, a strong high-pressure system pretty much parked itself over Western Canada for eight weeks," said meteorologist Aaron Tyburski, with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. "The flow around that high is clockwise, with sinking air. If you have sinking air, what that does is it actually squashes cloud development."

EDIT

http://www.adn.com/front/story/5332478p-5270475c.html

[Boomer]

1. Arghhh! There's no hope when...

...even meteorologist's make ignorant, asinine statements like:

the recent blast might seem to prove global warming has overtaken Alaska once and for all. But several forecasters say the heat wave should be attributed to weather..."Whenever that happens in one part of the world, there's often another part of the world where you get the opposite," Hopkins added. "Like in Europe, where it's been colder this summer."

One of the predicted effects of Global Warming is an increase in extremes of temperature and climate conditions -- exactly what this man is describing -- rather than some widespread warm weather. So reports of record-breaking (fill-in-the-blank) are the warning symptoms, not reports of record-breaking heat.

[hatrack]

2. Yes, the biggest temp rise has been during the winter months

Hence the massive beetle kills on the Kenai and in other regions.

It's very difficult to ascribe a single season's events, or record highs and lows in isolation to a general climatic trend, making a cautionary note appropriate.

But the warming trend by now is so well established in Alaska, and the effects so pronounced that it seems pretty ridiculous to hedge so vehemently as this.