Module 2 • Geology: Case Study: Fact Finder I. FACT FINDER: Climate Refugees
Background: Imagine for a moment that your source of food is disappearing—requiring thousands of miles of travel every year. Imagine that your school, your home, your hospital are no longer safe to remain in. Imagine that the very ground that you stand on is literally vanishing from beneath your feet.
It sounds like some kind of bad dream. But for the people of Shishmaref, this has been their daily reality as climate change threatens to destroy a way of life that is centuries old, turning them into “climate refugees.”
Shishmaref is situated on a tiny barrier island on the Alaskan side of Beringia. For nearly 4,000 years, it has served as a traditional hunting ground for the Inupiaq of this region, and for the past 100 years, it has been home to a small community.
Like many traditionally minded Inupiaq, the town of Shishmaref is rooted in thousand-year-old lifeways that center on the hunt. Virtually all traditional foods of the Inupiaq are hunted and harvested from the sea ice, which, until recently, for most of the year provided the migratory path for the Arctic’s abundant animal life. More than mere survival, the sea ice and its game provide the foundation of Inupiaq cultural traditions, religious tenets, and ethical principles. Today, all of this is disappearing along with the melting sea ice.
The primary threat to Shishmaref is soil erosion. The waves of the Chukchi Sea are scooping out the sand and soil along the island’s northern coast—200 feet has disappeared in the past 40 years. This increase in erosion is caused by several factors: decreasing sea ice, melting permafrost, increased storm intensity, and rising sea levels. Each of these factors, in turn, can be traced to our changing global climate.
Climate change is a result of human use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Burning these substances releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it helps trap heat near the earth’s surface. Since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has steadily increased, and so has the average global temperature.
The climate of any given region is an extremely complicated system, and the day-to-day weather patterns are even more complex. In the Arctic, the climate is regulated by a number of interrelated factors, including the permanent snow cover (which over time forms ice sheets); the annual appearance of sea ice; the earth’s tilt as it rotates and revolves around the sun. Such factors have remained stable for thousands of years, and while the Arctic climate is harsh, its relative predictability has allowed people like the Inupiaq to thrive in its abundance.
Climate change has thrown a chaotic wrench in these works. A variety of feedback loops intensify the change. As snow cover melts, for instance, the soil collects more heat from the sun, which further accelerates the loss of snow.
The threat to Shishmaref is a result of these interrelated changes in the climate. Sea ice normally tends to buffer the fierce waves during ocean storms, much the way that a blanket muffles sound waves. But with warmer autumns and springs, Shishmaref’s sea ice comes later in the year and disappears sooner, leaving the island open to the full force of stormy seas. And the seas are stormier than they used to be—another result of our changing global climate.
Background
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GoNorth! Beringia 2011 Curriculum
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