There was something beautifully alien about the Arctic landscape.
Professor Laurence Smith looked beneath his plane as it flew over the broken Alaskan tundra. There were no trees, but rather a vast white sheet broken into geometric patterns and shapes, resembling hexagonal tiles. In the distance was a gray ocean hugging the structures of white ice floating within it.
“I saw herds of caribou, thousands of them, moving across the plain. In the background, there was the most beautiful light quality you’ll ever see,” the UCLA geography and earth sciences professor said.
It is moments such as these that remind Smith why he has always loved the Arctic – and why he has dedicated his research and profession to the northern latitudes.
His interest in the Arctic has taken him to the area since July and will take him back in the next year.
With the help of a grant as the winner of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, Smith plans to use the research from his travels to write a book that analyzes the effects of climate change and global warming in the Arctic and on its people.
See a map of where Professor Smith has traveled to conduct his research.
Choosing to spend his time and research in the Arctic, he said, was almost instinctive because he has always had an interest in Arctic geography.
Smith has been to Siberia and Iceland three times and other places in the Arctic area around 20 times altogether.
But his travels have not stopped there.
Since July, he’s been to two Indian villages in Canada, the Yukon and Alaska, and in the following year he plans to tackle Finland, Greenland and Norway, along with other tundra landscapes.
Smith said because the Arctic Circle is more sensitive to climate change than the rest of the world, he decided to analyze the effects of global warming – combining his interests in the North with what he said is a pressing issue and a topic for his book.
“The purpose of the book is to observe the science of what global warming is doing to these northern places. I wanted to talk to the people, to the natives, to get their impression (on climate change),” Smith said.
Smith talked to the local natives about their observations on climate changes to complement his research. Though a portion of his time was spent at Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, a scientist colony funded by the National Science Foundation, he also spent time in the native villages and the wild tundra habitats.
Tamlin Pavelsky, a graduate student in geography, said the significance of studying climate changes in the Arctic is that, because of its location, the environment responds more quickly to increased temperatures.
“There’s so much water in frozen form up there so you can see the melting. The Arctic acts as a lab for us. If we can understand climate changes up there, maybe we can do a better job predicting and applying the knowledge into a more global perspective,” Pavelsky said.
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the atmosphere, oceans and landmasses of Earth – and while some maintain that the current fluctuation in temperature is not an indicate of any worldwide change, others argue that the increase in global temperature over the last 50 years is one of the greatest problems currently facing the planet.
“If you look at any part of the world, some areas are cooler or hotter than normal – this is an increase on average. Global warming is going to occur, and even a few degrees average increase can melt the polar ice caps. The ocean could rise several feet or several tens of feet,” UCLA meteorologist James Murakami said.
Because of the permafrost and low temperature climate in the Arctic, the signs have become more visible.
Smith said he has noticed other changes about global warming’s effects on the Arctic: the disappearance of lakes.
Flying over Siberia, as far as he could see, he observed a terrain covered with thousands of wetlands and lakes.
But looks can be deceiving. With the help of satellite imaging to track changes in lakes over the decades in Northern Siberia, his research concluded there was a large reduction in their number.
He said in the last 30 years, the climate change has caused the permafrost to thaw, which then causes the lakes to drain into the ground.
“So they’re disappearing,” Smith said.
The climate change has not only affected the lakes, but the seasons as well.
The Northwest Alaskan winters are now shorter, prolonging the fall period and shortening the spring.
The native Inupiat people have noticed the climate change’s effects on commerce, impacting the people’s way of life.
Temporary winter roads, which are built during the season’s hardened permafrost, are now disappearing faster.
The effects of climate change and global warming have made commercial imports into the city of Barrow, Alaska more expensive since products must be flown in outside of the winter season.
A gallon of milk costs $11. A gallon of ice cream costs $12.
For his research, Smith said he would ask the older natives what they noticed has changed within the past decades about the climate, about their homes, about their environment.
And though he said most of the older people he talked to have observed these changes in climate, it has not become a main burden to the people yet.
But when it comes to the roads and the architecture of their homes, the climate changes have been taken into consideration.
Houses are perched on stilts to keep them off the ground, in case the permafrost begins to melt. The dead seals and walruses that represent thousands of years of a hunting tradition lie in front of houses, waiting to be skinned and eaten.
“The Inupiat culture is still very evident. It still feels like an alien land, not the U.S. I’m very gratified to see the Inupiat people continuing the way of life that they’ve had in the past 100 years but still integrating American way of life,” Smith said.