Projected environmental change relevant to whaling activities in Utqiaġvik, Alaska

Abstract

The Arctic has experienced rapid change which is projected to continue through the 21st century. These environmental changes may impact traditional subsistence hunting activities including bowhead whale hunting. Here, we present the long term sea ice and wind changes over the 20th and 21st century for Utqiaġvik, Alaska that could impact spring and autumn whaling activities. We use four Community Earth System Model (CESM) datasets of varying model structure, forcing scenarios, and resolution to assess these environmental changes in the context of internal climate variability and model related uncertainty. By 2050 decreasing sea ice thickness may lead to ~ 50% of spring days with potentially unsafe ice conditions to conduct ice-based whaling; autumn wind speed and direction changes are less clear and impacts on whaling are uncertain. These relationships are consistent across datasets of the same resolution, suggesting robust and fairly predictable change, though the rate of change is impacted by model resolution.