From permafrost to permatan, Alaska basks in record heat

If Americans are clamouring to beat the heat this summer, they had better not do the obvious and travel to Alaska. For the second summer in a row, the glacier state has been baking under sweltering skies, stirring anxieties about global warming and its impact on the polar region.

August is meant to be a scorcher in Dallas but not in Fairbanks, where temperaturesyesterday were in the mid-80s Fahrenheit (high 20s Celsius). The weather has been clear and hot over almost all of Alaska for the past week, due to an intense high pressure dome that is reluctant to move on.

"This is for real; it is not a meteorological joke," said Ted Fathauer, who is the chief forecaster at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks. Over the past few days temperatures have topped 90F in some areas of the interior.

Temperatures might have gone even even higher levels if the skies had not been partially shrouded by smoke coming from the usual summer eruption of forest wild fires.

While the high temperatures may startle some tourists flying to Alaska to enjoy the wonders of its frozen geology, residents are getting used to the warming of their land. Last summer saw record-breaking heat across the state and the story was similar in 2002.

Scientists say this is more than just a string of freak summers. Between 1949 and 2003, the average annual air temperature in Alaska increased by 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit, with some areas in the state registering increases of almost twice that much, especially in the spring and the autumn.

The effects of the changes are on view everywhere. More than 4 per cent of Alaska is still covered by ice, but the glaciers that draw so many tourists, most of them on board cruise ships, are retreating fast.

Geologists are also raising the alarm about Alaska's fast deteriorating permafrost. The recent hot summers, combined with the insulating effect of heavy snow blankets in the winter, have accelerated the melting of the permafrost, experts say.

If it gets even a little warmer, large swaths of the frozen soil, which has been a constant of Alaskan geology since the end of the last ice age, will thaw.

There are serious ecological and engineering implications. The permafrost has until now provided stable ground on which trees can grow and roads, buildings and pipelines can be built. The first signs of it going mushy are large sinkholes, many of which are already visible this summer around Fairbanks.

"Our permafrost is still stable, even though it is very, very warm," Vladimir Romanovsky a geophysicist at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks told the Alaska Daily News. "But the moment it starts to thaw, we will be able to say we are the warmest we have been the past 100,000 years."

Global warming has brought other problems to Alaska, includes rising sea levels, triggered by the melting of the polar cap.

Meanwhile, the glaciers that visitors want to see are slowly pulling back from tourist car parks and from the cruise ship-crowded inlets. Muir Glacier, one of the most visited in the state and the jewel of Glacier Bay National Park, has receded by more than five miles (8km) in just 30 years, government scientists have reported.

* A slightly strengthened Hurricane Irene spun into the north Atlantic yesterday about 600 miles off Halifax, Nova Scotia, but posed no threat to land, forecasters said. It was assessed as a category 1 hurricane with winds of 85 mph.Only two or three named storms normally develop by this time in the Atlantic hurricane season, which began on 1 June and ends on 30 November. Irene is the ninth named storm of the season.