Alaskan Village Threatened by Warming

March 21, 2007— -- In the westernmost reaches of Alaska, a mere 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the tiny village of Shishmaref sits on a spit of land along the Chukchi Sea. Home to more than 500 people -- Inupiaq Eskimos who have used the area for the past 4,000 years -- the village has become a living example of the impact climate change could one day have on other coastal communities. Temperatures in Alaska over the past 50 years have risen four times faster than the global average. And that's had dramatic consequences on a natural resource for the people of Shishmaref: ice.

The ice that forms along the coast in winter, creating a protective barrier against the storms that can rage across the sea, now forms later in the fall, breaks up earlier in the spring, and is thinner. "The ocean ice has been getting a lot thinner. It isn't as thick as it used to be. And it goes away much faster now than it did in the past when we were kids," said John Sinnock, a teacher of carving and traditional crafts at the Shishmaref School.

Without that protection, the land of Shishmaref, the very soil under the homes and other buildings, is eroding away, disappearing into the sea. "In front of my mother's house we used to look out at the gentle slope," said Sinnock. "In my life time we've probably lost about 400 feet." Almost 20 houses have had to be moved, and one was not moved in time, tumbling down the short slope to the water's edge.

The changes in the ice have also led to changes in the migration patterns of the animals and fish that the people of Shishmaref rely on for food. "We are a subsistance-based community and we have no economic development, no industry, no mining, no oil development," said Tony Weyiouanna Sr. "It makes it harder for us to go out and hunt and we've had to make adjustments to our spring and fall hunt, especially the spring when we do most of our seal hunting."

Faced with a desperate situation, the community voted in 2002 to relocate to another location, about 12 miles south and further inland. The cost of building a runway, a sewage system, a clinic --