There is excitement in the air on the first practice-run day for the Borealis Bistro, as tablecloths are arranged, silverware is wrapped in bundles and students don their serving aprons. In the back, food is being plated to perfection and drinking glasses are stacked in an orderly manner.

“Everyone must try these, unless they have an allergy,” said Chef Luis Martinez, as students gather around a table in the large commercial kitchen. An array of artistic desserts is on display, among them mango chutney ice cream and raspberry liquor mousse. Martinez, the class instructor, emphasizes the value of tasting food in order to provide informed descriptions and recommendations to customers.

This is a normal class day for students enrolled in two culinary courses, A la Carte Cookery and Food and Beverage Service, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Community and Technical College. Lessons for these students include seating guests, taking orders, preparing menus and cooking a variety of dishes — all the duties required to run UAF’s full-service student-run bistro.

As part of the culinary arts and hospitality curriculum, the bistro is designed to give students a well-rounded, real-world restaurant experience by allowing them to practice menu planning, plate presentation, food preparation, hosting, table service, time budgeting and management.

Borealis Bistro runs every Thursday at the Hutchison Institute of Technology throughout most of the spring semester, with a unique theme to each week. This year’s first bistro on Feb. 9 will be Asian-inspired cuisine, shortly followed by a Valentine’s Day menu on Feb. 16.

Reservations are required because of demand, as well as the planning necessary for the learning environment. The $13 price includes an entrée, soup or salad, and a beverage. Appetizers, dessert and espresso are available for an additional cost.

In the past, the bistro has served intricate foods such as beef bourguignon, tangerine marinated duck, shrimp and oyster etouffee, and lamb tagine.

Recent culinary graduate Fabio Kerr participated in last year’s bistro and now works at two restaurants in Hawaii. He is working to open his own food truck this year.

“Participating in the Borealis Bistro was a great experience. I got to move around to all positions in the ‘restaurant,’” he said. “Some areas that I wasn’t comfortable being in were thrown at me and that made me a much better chef.”

In addition to the bistro, the UAF CTC culinary arts program will host its annual multicourse scholarship dinner on April 22. The dinner, which features Alaska food, will celebrate UAF’s centennial. All proceeds of the dinner go to a scholarship fund for the program. Tickets will be available closer to the date of the dinner.

The facts
What: Borealis Bistro, run by UAF CTC culinary students
When: 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays, Feb. 9 to May 5, except March 16
Where: Hutchison Institute of Technology, 3750 Geist Road, Fairbanks
Price: $13 includes entrée, soup or salad, and a beverage. Add-ons, such as appetizers, dessert and espresso, are available.
Contact: Reservations only. Call 455-2902 or email kgaikows@alaska.edu.
Menu: Full menus will be posted shortly before the upcoming meal on the website, http://www.ctc.uaf.edu/menu/, and on the UAF CTC Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/uafctc/.

Spring semester schedule
Feb. 9 — Asian-Inspired Cuisine
Feb.16 — Valentine’s Day Menu
Feb. 23 — Indian-Inspired Cuisine
March 2 — Northwest-Inspired Cuisine
March 9 — Tex-Mex-Inspired Cuisine
March 16 — Closed (spring break)
March 23 — Italian Regional-Inspired Cuisine
March 30 — Cajun-Inspired Cuisine
April 6 — French-Inspired Cuisine
April 13 — All-American-Inspired Cuisine
April 22 — Scholarship Dinner
April 27 — Student’s Choice Menu
May 5 — Buffet

The University of Alaska Museum of the North and the University of Alaska Fairbanks 4-H program are looking for volunteers to work with school students in community after-school programs. UAF credit is available.

After-school interns will volunteer one afternoon a week to teach local school kids using museum kits and 4-H curriculum. All training is provided.

For more information or to register for the training, which takes place Wednesday, Feb. 22, and Saturday, Feb. 25, email ua-museumlearn@alaska.edu.

ON THE WEB: www.uaf.edu/museum/education/staff-volunteers/volunteers/

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute is planning its first research campaign at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program facility in Gakona.

At the end of February, scientists will use the HAARP research instrument to conduct multiple experiments, including a study of atmospheric effects on satellite-to-ground communications, optical measurements of artificial airglow and over-the-horizon radar experiments.

Members of the public can follow one of the experiments in real time. Chris Fallen, assistant research professor in space physics, will be conducting National Science Foundation-funded research to create an “artificial aurora” that can be photographed with a sensitive camera. Observers throughout Alaska will have an opportunity to photograph the phenomenon, which is sometimes created over HAARP during certain types of transmissions.

Under the right conditions, people can also listen to HAARP radio transmissions from virtually anywhere in the world using an inexpensive shortwave radio. Exact frequencies of the transmission will not be known until shortly before the experiment begins, so follow @UAFGI on Twitter for an announcement.

For more details on the dates and times of Fallen’s experiments, as well as information on how to observe, visit https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/gakonahaarpoon/. Information is also available at the HAARP website, the UAF http://gi.alaska.edu/haarp-0 and the official UAF HAARP Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/UAFHAARP/.

Operation of the HAARP research facility, including the world’s most capable high-power, high-frequency transmitter for study of the ionosphere, was transferred from the U.S. Air Force to UAF in August 2015.

Research funding agencies  include the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Lab and the Naval Research Laboratory.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Contact HAARP personnel with any questions at UAF-GI-HAARP@alaska.edu.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has hired Susanna Pearlstein as the new director for the Matanuska Experiment Farm and Extension center near Palmer.

Pearlstein, a postdoctoral researcher based at the Environmental Protection Agency in Corvallis, Oregon, will start her new job April 3. She will provide leadership and administrative oversight for the academic, research and Cooperative Extension Service outreach programs based at the farm, which is owned by UAF.

Pearlstein is excited about the new job. As an ecohydrologist for the EPA, she said she enjoyed working with community members. She served as the outreach coordinator and researcher looking at the effects of fertilizer management practices on groundwater quality. Pearlstein also wrote grants that funded agricultural research and she looks forward to finding new revenue and options for the farm.

“I’m inspired by the multiple opportunities at the Matanuska Experiment Farm,” she said.

Pearlstein has visited Alaska many times, including as a member of interagency hotshot crew that fought wildfires on the Kenai Peninsula in 2007. She enjoys cross-country skiing, beekeeping and hiking and is enthusiastic about coming to Alaska.

Milan Shipka, the director of the UAF Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, said Pearlstein impressed the hiring committee with her knowledge of the farm, her background and her enthusiasm.

“She’s got some really good ideas and brings new energy to the position,” he said.

Pearlstein grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended college in British Columbia and in Arizona. She earned her doctorate in soil, water and environmental science from the University of Arizona in 2015.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has announced the students named to the deans’ and chancellor’s lists for the fall 2016 semester. The lists recognize students’ outstanding academic achievements.

Students receiving a 3.9 grade point average or higher are placed on the chancellor’s list, while those receiving a grade point average of between 3.5 and 3.89 are named to the deans’ list.

UAF is a Land, Sea and Space Grant institution. Located 160 miles south of the Arctic Circle, UAF is the leading doctoral-degree-granting institution in the state. Since it was founded in 1917, UAF has been internationally recognized for research relating to the Arctic and subarctic, in areas such as biology, geophysics, engineering, natural resources and global climate change.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Students who have earned academic honors but have requested that their directory information remain confidential may not appear on the public honors list.

• Chancellor’s list
• Deans’ list

The University of Alaska Museum of the North has planned a new series of presentations for the spring semester. The Museum Discovery Series features a different curator each month unveiling new discoveries based on research in the museum’s collections.

The presentations will be held in the museum auditorium on Thursdays at noon and are free and open to the public.

This year’s series includes the following presentations:

• Feb. 23, “Alaskan Dinosaur Update: New Digs; New Discoveries,” by Patrick Druckenmiller.
• March 23, “The Ongoing Return of Life to Kasatochi Volcano,” by Derek Sikes.
• April 20, “Worth a Thousand Words: Preserving Alaska’s Visual History” by Leonard Kamerling.

The series is coordinated and sponsored by the University of Alaska Museum of the North. For more information, call 474-7505 or visit the museum’s website at www.uaf.edu/museum.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Derek Sikes, UAMN Chief Curator, at 907-474-6278 or via email at dssikes@alaska.edu

ON THE WEB:  www.uaf.edu/museum/plan-your-visit/happenings/museum-discovery-series

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Society of Physics Students has made a habit of exceeding expectations.

So when club leaders asked famed physicist Lawrence Krauss to make a low-budget trip to speak in Fairbanks, perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he quickly snatched up the offer. Krauss, who normally commands a five-figure speaking fee, accepted the invitation to visit UAF in return for an Arctic polar-bear viewing trip next September.

“We set our sights high,” said club President Georgeanna Heaverley with a laugh.

Krauss, a cosmologist, astrophysicist and expert on dark matter and dark energy, will speak at 7 p.m. March 2 at the West Valley High School Performing Arts Center. Admission is free.

Bringing a well-known lecturer to Fairbanks isn’t a stretch for the group, which has figured out how to draw a crowd.

Last spring, after discovering that the Physics Department had seven telescopes in its inventory, the SPS club decided to host a stargazing party near UAF’s West Ridge. They pointed the telescopes at interesting points in the sky and stationed a club member near each one to offer a quick astronomical explanation.

At least 200 people showed up, forming long lines to peek through a telescope at stars and planets. When an encore stargazing party was held last November, about 400 people arrived to look at the heavens.

“It’s definitely really cool when somebody looks through a telescope and they’ve never looked at the moon or Jupiter before,” said SPS Vice President Riley Troyer. “It’s fun to look at their awe and wonder.”

The UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics has roughly 60 students enrolled in the physics program, but SPS has only about 15 members, including some students from other disciplines. Despite those small numbers, Heaverley and Troyer said, public outreach has become one of the club’s primary goals.

The club has held its share of standard-issue fundraisers — karaoke nights, auctions and bake sales — but has also judged science fairs and hosted popular-science speakers. When a math and science career expo was held at UAF earlier this month, members of the club unexpectedly showed up to volunteer.

“They were fantastic,” said UAF physics Professor David Newman, who serves as the SPS faculty advisor. “Watching them made my heart swell with pride.”

Both Heaverley and Troyer have been able to use their SPS experience to pursue other opportunities. Heaverley has attended a women’s leadership conference in the past two years through the American Physical Society; Troyer is heading to Washington, D.C., this summer for an internship with the national SPS organization.

They said their efforts also have a goal of raising the profile of the UAF Physics Department, which is sometimes overshadowed by bigger science and engineering programs on campus.

“It’s pretty small, but for its size it’s one of the best in the country,” Heaverley said.

For more information, visit the UAF SPS Facebook page at www.facebook.com/uafsps.

Narwhals stay active and close to shore to avoid killer whales that have begun to enter areas with declining sea ice cover in Canada’s eastern Arctic, according to a study led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist.

Assistant Professor Greg Breed of the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology, along with Cory Matthews of the University of Manitoba and Steven Ferguson of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, discovered the narwhal behavior. For several weeks in summer 2009, they tracked a family group of killer whales simultaneously with seven narwhals in Baffin Island’s Admiralty Inlet.

When killer whales were anywhere within approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers), narwhals avoided them by staying close to shore in shallower water. The narwhals also tended to make longer, faster movements. As soon as killer whales left the area, the narwhals moved offshore to deeper water and decreased their movement.

“The mere presence of killer whales in a system can cause relatively large and persistent changes in behavior and space use in prey species,” Breed wrote. These changes persisted for the entire time killer whales were present in the inlet, not just when they were close to or attacking the narwhals.

Narwhals live deep in the Arctic pack ice. Until recently, this kept them safe from killer whales for most of the year. Killer whales prey on narwhals and many other marine mammals. They have become increasingly common in the Arctic where they were previously largely blocked by sea ice.

Degraded sea ice now allows killer whales earlier access to the Arctic in areas where they historically ranged and new access to many areas where they had never been present before, such as Canada’s Hudson Bay.

The study was the first time scientists had simultaneously tracked both predator and prey marine mammals to understand their interaction.

Most of the world’s narwhals live in northern Canada and western Greenland, so a negative impact from killer whales might have a significant impact on the total population.

If narwhals change their behavior in response to killer whales, they could feed less, experience more stress, expend more energy or raise fewer young. Other effects could cascade through Arctic ecosystems.

There are implications for wildlife management as well.

“Researchers and managers using tracking data to infer preferred habitat need to carefully consider how predators affect space use,” said Breed. “Preferred habitat might instead represent a refuge from predators” and not necessarily the best places for foraging, resting, or caring for young.

The results were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In addition to UAF, the authors were from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, the Assiniboine Park Zoo and Higdon Wildlife Consulting. Funding was provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Ocean Tracking Network, International Governance Strategy, Oceans North, Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, WWF Canada, ArcticNet, the Carlsberg Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Polar Continental Shelf Program and the University of Manitoba.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Greg Breed, 907-474-1835, gabreed@alaska.edu, Cory Matthews, 431-999-2679, cory.matthews@dfo-mpo.gc.ca, or Steve Ferguson, 204-983-5057, steve.ferguson@dfo-mpo.gc.ca

The public is invited to an informal meet-and-greet Feb. 23 with national FFA leaders at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The meet-and-greet will be held from 5-6:30 p.m. in the Murie Building atrium and auditorium. National FFA President David Townsend; Josh Bledsoe, the chief operation officer; and Ben Meyer, the regional specialist for national FFA, will be in Fairbanks to discuss the role of agriculture and natural resources management education and opportunities in Alaska. They will give a short presentation at the campus event.

Townsend, 21, is an agricultural and natural resources, plant science major at the University of Delaware. He will also participate, with other FFA officials and Alaska FFA, in a check presentation Feb. 22 at the Fairbanks Community Food Bank.

Alaska FFA won $15,000 from Tyson Foods for having the best chapter participation in a national FFA Hungry Heroes Challenge to grow, harvest and collect foods for food banks and other organizations. All 12 Alaska chapters participated. The check will be donated to the Fairbanks food bank and shared with a Mat-Su food bank.

While in Fairbanks, Townsend will also speak at the Alaska Sustainable Agriculture Conference, which is hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service, and at Effie Kokrine Early College Charter School.

“Agricultural education is more important than ever, especially in Alaska where we are dependent on out-of-state food sources,” said Sue McCullough, the president of the Alaska Association of Agricultural and Natural Resource Educators.

FFA is a national youth education organization affiliated with the Cooperative Extension Service. For more information about the FFA visit, contact Kevin Fochs, Alaska state FFA advisor, at kfochs@alaska.edu or 907-707-9710, or McCullough at scmccullough@alaska.edu or 907-474-0958 ext. 33183.

Alaska Climate Science Center graduate fellow Joanna Young and 75 other women traveled in December to a place visited by few others — Antarctica.

Young reached the southernmost continent with an expedition sponsored by Homeward Bound, a leadership initiative for women in science.

“The trip itself was just stunning,” Young said. “It’s an incredibly remote, isolated and beautiful landscape.”

She was surprised to witness so much life.  At one point, humpback whales encircled the ship. She walked through a colony of 200,000 penguins.

Young studies glaciers as a doctoral student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, host institution for the multipartner Alaska Climate Science Center. Her trip was made possible by the center and the UAF Resilience and Adaptation Program.

Homeward Bound selected Young and her fellow voyagers “based on their potential to use scientific knowledge and methods to have an impact on decision making as it relates to the state of the planet.”

Antarctica’s magnificent landscape is changing, Young said.

“Even though there aren’t many visitors to Antarctica and it’s so well protected and regulated by the International Antarctic Treaty, it’s still being impacted so heavily by the actions of humans on the rest of the planet,” she explained.

The three weeks provided time for inner reflection, learning, and developing leadership and science communication skills.

Each day, participants would do several leadership activities, which included navigating through difficult conversations and carving out personal and professional mission and strategy maps.

“You can’t be a good leader if the work you’re doing doesn’t align with your core values,” Young said.

Participants also gave three-minute presentations on their current work.

“Learning to package everything in a three-minute nugget is really useful and important,” Young said. “I think of how many times in day to day life where I’m given only a few minutes to discuss my work.”

Young also learned more about Antarctica’s ecosystem. “Climate change is definitely impacting that landscape and its species,” she said.

Participants heard from researchers stationed in Antarctica who have observed retreating glaciers, changing season lengths and shifting wildlife locations.

Each day, participants explored the changing landscape firsthand. Zodiac inflatable boats transported them from the ship, scooting around icebergs and near old volcanic calderas. They hiked in designated zones with ragged rocks, snow-covered beaches, cascading glaciers and landfast sea ice.

Young found it an honor to meet and learn from fellow participants and faculty.

“These women have incredible career trajectories, stories, life adventures and accomplishments,” she said.

Young especially found camaraderie among the expedition participants.

“They all work in global change, are sustainability minded, wanting to be leaders in their field, and have a passion for adventure,” she said.

At the end of each day, the participants viewed messages from leading women around the world, including primatologist and United Nations Messenger of Peace Jane Goodall and former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.

Young was particularly inspired by Figueres’ interview, and two words have resonated with her ever since: relentless optimism.

“That captures what I feel working in climate science,” Young said. “That’s what we need and that’s been my approach. With relentless optimism we can make progressive changes to help start mitigating and adapting to climate change.”

Young wants to apply all she has learned from the expedition to her career as a glaciologist and an instructor for the Alaska Climate Science Center-sponsored Girls on Ice Alaska, a program that lets high school girls explore the mountains and science. She will host a two-day leadership workshop for fellow early-career scientists at UAF this spring. For Young, “it’s only just the beginning.”

CONTACT: Joanna Young, jcyoung6@alaska.edu

A University of Alaska Fairbanks assistant professor will study tiny animals and particles across the world’s oceans after receiving an award from the National Science Foundation.

Andrew McDonnell, with the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, received a five-year, $750,000 Faculty Early Career Development Award. The NSF program is designed to support teacher-scholars who effectively integrate research and education. McDonnell’s project will also aim to educate Alaskans about ocean sciences and what it means to be an oceanographer.

McDonnell will use underwater cameras to measure the sizes, concentrations and types of particles and zooplankton in ocean water. This research has implications for how carbon is transported to and stored in different parts of the ocean.

McDonnell has used underwater cameras since graduate school but has focused on particular regions. This project will allow him to apply what he has learned to oceans around the world and compare different regions.

“Looking at what is happening from a global perspective will help us better investigate the role of these particles and plankton in the global carbon cycle,” McDonnell said.

McDonnell will create a museum exhibit for the Alaska Sea Life Center focused on the important microscopic world of particles and plankton that are not always seen by aquaria curators and visitors alike. The exhibit will also include information about what ocean scientists do and how they collect samples and data at sea. It will display different sampling technology, as well as videos and photos that illustrate how oceanographers work, especially in the oceans around Alaska.

“The exhibit will be a great opportunity to showcase the research project, but also teach Alaskans what it means to be an oceanographer. We are hoping to inspire those who otherwise may not have access to this sort of information,” he said.

McDonnell’s project also seeks to bring the knowledge displayed in this exhibit to Alaska Native communities with the hope that he can inspire children growing up on Alaska’s coastline to consider oceanography as a career choice.

“A lot of communities around the state are highly dependent on our oceans, but not many oceanographers come from those communities,” he said. “We are going to work towards building up a workforce of Alaska Native scientists capable of studying parts of the natural marine environment that really matter to their communities, economies and cultures.”

The NSF CAREER award honors junior faculty members who have excelled in both research and education in their fields. McDonnell’s project is scheduled to start in July, 2017.

When they launch, the four rockets now pointed northward from Poker Flat Research Range will add to the 345 that have arced over northern Alaska during the past 48 years. Recently, Chuck Deehr remembered number one.

Deehr is a retired space physicist at the Geophysical Institute. He had just earned his doctorate in 1968 when he was among those enlisted to help with the first mission from a rocket-launching pad in Chatanika, a complex that mushroomed from the muskeg in a few months.

Deehr’s job in spring 1969 was to live at the Air Force base in Fort Yukon for three weeks. From a small equipment trailer there on the Arctic Circle, he operated cameras and other equipment to record a sort of man-made aurora. The red cloud and streaks in the sky visible almost everywhere in Alaska were caused by a release of a chemical called barium from a 50-foot rocket.

Nuclear weapons had a big part in that first Alaska launch and were the reason Poker Flat was built in less than one year by Alaska scientists, students and just-get-it-done guys rather than contractors.

To back up a bit, long before Cold War drama intervened, the late Neil Davis wanted a northern rocket-launching facility. The Geophysical Institute researcher and his colleagues were the best in the world at developing low-light television cameras to observe the aurora; they wanted to send instruments up into it without having to travel thousands of miles to existing rocket ranges.

Knowing what he wanted, Davis had chosen unoccupied land out by the Chatanika River for a facility. Fairbanks North Star Borough officials, happy for the tax revenue, leased the land to UAF for $700 per year.

Poker Flat remained a dream. Davis and the university had no money for a rocket range. But things changed when an American B-52 bomber crashed into an ice-covered bay near Thule, Greenland, in January 1968. The plane was carrying four hydrogen bombs. Bomb contents scattered on the ice, costing millions in cleanup as the radioactive waste was shipped back for disposal in the U.S.

The Danish, who were in control of Greenland, evicted the U.S. military. That included the use of a Greenland rocket range.

But military strategists had a problem only rockets could help solve. When a nuclear explosion went off in the atmosphere, disturbance to electrical fields prevented radios and radars from working. Strong auroras can do the same thing.

Military scientists had designed an experiment in which a rocket would release barium about 100 miles above Earth. The chemical would cause an artificial red aurora. They wanted to see if over-the-horizon radar could detect and track this aurora cloud. The researchers wanted to find out more about the properties that scrambled radio and radar signals, and they needed answers within a year.

There, the door opened for the Alaska scientists. A rocket range in Churchill, Manitoba, had a full schedule of launches that year. Officials knew of Davis’s plan — he had even written a Poker Flat feasibility study for NASA — so they set federal money aside for a rocket range in Alaska.

That money was not enough, and it was slow in coming. But Davis and others like Larry Sweet and Eldon Johnson started scrounging materials, including old mining cars that had been dumped in a river, steel beams from an old bridge over the Chatanika River, and a winch Sweet had seen in a Fairbanks backyard.

They started construction of the rocket range in mid-summer 1968. By March 1969, using no blueprints and labor from university staff members and students, they had enough of a facility for the launches of six rockets with barium charges.

Though the military was funding the launches, Davis and his colleagues rationalized a university group’s involvement because he and others executed their own basic research during the launches.

As those first rockets blasted off one by one on cold nights from March 5 to 20, 1969, Chuck Deehr tracked the red auroras with television cameras from Fort Yukon. Others did the same from the Ester Dome observatory in Fairbanks. They spoke over the phone to one another and sent their information on the aurora cloud’s whereabouts to an IBM computer on the UAF campus. From there, the location of the barium ion cloud was sent to military observers farther south in Alaska, who pointed their over-the-horizon radar at it.

Though he didn’t know the military’s results, which were classified, Deehr said the Geophysical Institute scientists delivered the red auroras, tracked their locations, and got fantastic science information.

“Everything worked,” Deehr said. “That was the amazing part.”

 In the flurry of the first rockets, the ever-busy Neil Davis launched his own NASA rocket while Deehr was still at Fort Yukon. Davis, the enterprising scientist who died in December 2016, was the lead researcher of five NASA rocket missions from Poker Flat over the years. As five more blast off this winter, his legacy of a rocket range in the quiet country north of Fairbanks lives on, nearly one-half century after it started.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

By the end of this century, Alaskans may be enjoying tropical evening breezes for about a week each year. That’s an increase from the almost zero such nights we currently savor.

But it could happen, according to a graduate student who has tightened the grids of computer models to perhaps offer a more detailed glimpse of Alaska’s future.

A tropical night is one with a low temperature of 68 degrees F or warmer. Right now, even the warmest places in Alaska hardly ever experience this. By the year 2100, the average number of tropical nights at some location in Alaska goes to 6.8. That’s according to a computer climate model run by Rick Lader. He is a graduate student at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks.

Most global climate models predict the future of ground temperatures and other variables in 60-mile squares. Because of Alaska’s mountains and deep valleys that so affect weather and temperatures, Lader customized model results for 12-mile squares. His tweaks resulted in the ability to predict these changes for Alaska by the year 2100:

• Hotter summers: The number of days with temperatures higher than 77 degrees will triple in many places across the state.
• Warmer winters: Winters like 2015-2016, when the temperature did not fall below minus 30 in Fairbanks, will become the norm within the next 25 years.
• Higher low temperatures: The low temperature recorded in Fairbanks — minus 58 for the period of 1981 to 2010 — will be closer to minus 17 from 2071 to 2100.
• More hard rains: Because warmer air can hold more moisture, Lader found intense precipitation would rise statewide by 53 percent, likely leading to increased flash flooding and landslides across Alaska.
• Longer periods of rain, shorter dry spells: Consecutive days with precipitation greater than or equal to 1 millimeter will increase by 23 percent. Consecutive days of dryness will decrease 21 percent.
• A longer growing season: By 2100, the annual number of days with killing frosts will decrease by two months.

At the same conference where Lader presented his results, a scientist from the University of North Carolina said that aufeis in northern Alaska is disappearing sooner each summer, and fields of it are becoming smaller and less persistent.

Aufeis is like a glacier in miniature that forms on streams in winter. A German term pronounced “off-icem” and meaning “ice on top,” aufeis builds all winter as groundwater forced to the surface comes in contact with frigid air and freezes in layers.

Fields of aufeis can cover acres of the North Slope. Sometimes they endure the whole summer. 

Following through on the observations of Kirk Sweetsir, pilot for Yukon Air Service and frequent observer of northern Alaska, Tamlin Pavelsky of the University of North Carolina took a look at Alaska’s aufeis fields.

He found that north of Toolik Lake, 118 of 122 large ephemeral bodies of aufeis are disappearing earlier in summer than they did in 2000. Twenty-four out of 25 aufeis fields that survive all summer long now have a smaller minimum extent than they did in 2000. 

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

Last month, villagers in Savoonga landed a bowhead whale. Before 2017, in every January people can remember, sea ice surrounded St. Lawrence Island, locking it in for the winter. Boat-launching and whale-taking were not possible.

Now, the disc of ice chunks floating on the northern oceans is smaller than any recent year except 2010. The Bering Sea west of the Alaska mainland is wide open; satellites show a patch of dark seawater there that was usually ice-covered from 1981 to 2010. A few states could disappear in that swath of blue.

Unless you are now eating muktuk in Savoonga, it’s hard to pinpoint the effects of less sea ice floating on the northern oceans. But some researchers say the northern ocean — now absorbing so much more heat and reflecting so much less — is affecting weather far from the Arctic.

“It’s setting up bizarre weather patterns that are happening more often,” said Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. At the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, she gave a presentation in which she related a warming Arctic to extreme weather events at mid-latitudes.

The story begins with “Arctic amplification,” or the accelerated warming of the far North compared to other areas. Arctic amplification was especially large in the first half 2016, with the far North warming more than four times as much as the middle U.S.

The added heat up here has resulted in a lot less sea ice, as is now evident in the splashy Bering Sea around St. Lawrence Island.

The retreat of the ice has led to less of a temperature contrast between the North Pole and places like middle America. That diminished difference has slowed the ribbons of fast-flowing air miles above the planet known as jet streams.

The polar jet stream exists at 30,000 feet and above and flows in a wave-like fashion over North America. The paths of jet streams steer storm systems. In what Francis called the “good old days,” a jet stream ridge might reach up to a winter Alaska locked in sea ice and very cold air. Now, on the trip north, the jet stream is gulping big rushes of relatively warm, moist air in areas where sea ice is missing.

“If the ridge happens to appear over Alaska, it may be able to access more heat, making it more intense and persistent,” Francis said.

An example is the “ridiculously resistant ridge” that blocked winter storms from hitting the coast of California from the winter of 2012-2013 until recently, causing a drought in the state.

A lack of sea ice and the warmer air that interacts with the jet stream is not the only part of the story, but it’s an intriguing one, Francis said. There are lots of natural processes going on, and the slam-dunk effects of less sea ice are hard to tease out. But we may find crazy weather in the Lower 48 combined with an increasingly warming Arctic is the new normal, she said.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

The University of Alaska Museum of the North will hold a Family Day exploring film and photography on Saturday, March 4, from noon to 4 p.m. There will be examples of historical films on display, as well as a portrait gallery, scavenger hunt and other activities. There is no admission fee for children 14 and under at Family Days, thanks to support from TOTE Maritime.

The museum is also exploring film and photography at hands-on programs all month. Families are invited to drop in with children 5 and under at Early Explorers each Friday from 10 a.m.-noon. Junior Curators, for kids 6 and up, meets Saturday, March 11, from 2-4 p.m. A newer program, Teen Studio, on Saturday, March 25, offers an opportunity for young adults ages 13-18 to try light painting.

For more information, call 907-474-7505 or visit the museum online at www.uaf.edu/museum.

Download text and photo captions here.

One of Patricia Rivera’s most vivid childhood memories is from a family trip to a beautiful white sand beach in Panama, near their home at Fort Gulick Army base. Rivera, who was about four years old at the time, remembers playing in the clear, bright ocean water that was no more than knee deep. Behind her, a long line of young stingrays sunbathed, offset in what seemed to be a purposeful pattern.

Growing up in Panama, at the bottom tip of Central America, Rivera was regularly exposed to nature and different environments.

“Even when I was this young, I remember saying to some adult that when I grow up I want to protect the animals,” Rivera said. “That must have come from the great exposure I had to a large variety of animals that were part of everyday life in Panama.”

Rivera, who has worked on and off at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences since the late 1980s in various research and technical roles, attributes much of her adventurous and animal-loving personality to the positive experiences she had in her outdoorsy, close-knit community as a kid.

She said living on an army base as a child made her feel as though the world was small. Her multicultural community was filled with all sorts of interesting people from different parts of the world. Everyone and everything felt accessible to her, and she appreciated learning from people with different stories and burdens.

“Growing up like this, nobody was surprising to me,” Rivera said.

In addition, Rivera explained, Panama is filled with animals that can seriously hurt you if you aren’t careful.  “We grew up with this very real awareness and respect for our surroundings, which helped foster my desire to protect them.”

Rivera moved from Panama after the first grade, but she maintained her interest in learning about animals, protecting the environment and surrounding herself with complex people.

Rivera’s adventurous nature has led her to a variety of jobs all over the United States. During her time as an undergraduate at the Agnes Scott College, she worked as a blackjack dealer. While finishing up her bachelor’s degree at the Florida Institute of Technology, she surveyed loggerhead sea turtles. During graduate school at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Rivera helped pay her tuition by catering. After graduate school, she worked for Fairbanks Animal Control.

Since moving to Fairbanks in 1988, Rivera has worked in various research positions with CFOS, preparing and analyzing soil, water and species samples. Her favorite position with CFOS was as a lab manager for a group that studied the health of Steller sea lions in Alaska from 2004-2010.

Rivera is currently the facilities coordinator for CFOS, where she manages maintenance logistics, tracks equipment and maintains safety standards for the college. This includes everything from coordinating use of freezers and storage to serving on safety-related committees. One committee is a campuswide group that helps UAF workers dealing with Title IX issues while conducting field work.

When she first moved to Fairbanks, Rivera was quickly drawn to the ambitious lifestyle, as well as the willingness to help others in need.

In many ways, the connection Rivera feels to the people and culture in Fairbanks resembles the connection she had felt to Panama when she was younger. Here she knows friends from all over the world, who came to Fairbanks with different unusual experiences, many whom are excited and inspired by the natural world.

“I was immediately comfortable in Fairbanks,” she said. “People here feel like they can do anything. And whenever I have car trouble, or need help fixing something, there is no shortage of friendly neighbors who are willing to provide assistance. I’ve become very spoiled by the high-quality people I have met here.”

A team of University of Alaska Fairbanks mining engineering students has captured first place in an international mine design competition.

The finals of the competition, which was held from Feb. 17-19 in Denver, combined disciplines that included economics, engineering, communication and mining techniques. The winning UAF team earned a trip to the finals after advancing past the initial round last fall.

The winning squad include six senior mining engineering students — team leader Alan Lipka, Ethan Trickey, Jordan Hildreth, Noriyasu Niibu, Cole Snodgress and Blaze Brooks. It’s the first team from UAF to win the competition, which attracts roughly 20 teams from around the world.

Rajive Ganguli, a UAF mining engineering professor and the team’s advisor, said topping a field of prestigious international programs is a huge accomplishment.

“It’s a very comprehensive competition,” he said. “It requires many skill sets, so it’s a very good test for the students.”

The annual competition is hosted by the Society of Mining Metallurgy and Exploration and the National Stone Sand and Gravel Association. Teams are given two days to design mines based on a scenario that weighs economic conditions, environmental regulations and mineral demand, among other factors.

Lipka said the team spent months preparing by reviewing the mine scenario that was offered at the 2016 design competition. Four members of the winning UAF team participated in that competition, which he said provided invaluable experience.

“Trying to come up with realistic solutions in a time crunch is hard, but everyone broke off and knew exactly what they needed to do,” Lipka said.

Team sponsors included Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, which funded the team’s travel to Denver, and software vendor Maptek, which offered a laptop and mine design software.

A 20-year effort by University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers to monitor the northern Gulf of Alaska’s animals and environmental markers will soon expand.

The National Science Foundation has designated the northern gulf as a Long-Term Ecological Research site and will provide grant money for future science in the area. It is one of two new LTER sites. Each will receive $5.6 million in funding over five years.

Since 1997, UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences researchers have striven to understand the processes that support the region’s thriving fish, crab, seabird and marine mammal populations. Every May and September, the researchers travel by boat along the Seward Line, a route from Resurrection Bay’s mouth across the continental shelf to a point 170 miles offshore. They map the species encountered and measure ocean nutrients, temperature and salinity.

“We have monitored the shelf and Prince William Sound long enough to know where the interesting features are,” said Russ Hopcroft, a CFOS professor and the principal investigator for the new LTER project. “But, until now, we haven’t had the funds to actually dig deeper and learn more about some of the processes and mechanisms behind what we have been observing.”

The funding provided by the new LTER grant will allow the researchers to continue to monitor core ocean parameters across a greater geographic region, add new measurement types and include an additional expedition each July. This will help the researchers better understand what regulates this highly productive ecosystem that supports part of the nation’s largest fishery.

Hopcroft will work with CFOS professors Seth Danielson, Ana Aguilar-Islas and Andrew McDonnell, in collaboration with other scientists at UAF, Western Washington University, Oregon State University and the University of California Santa Cruz.

LTER sites are intended to be funded over the long term. The program is designed so researchers can study and compare distinct ecosystems in order to generate and test fundamental ecological theories. New sites are chosen in ecosystems that are not yet represented in the program and usually tend to be established in places where researchers have a proven track record of collecting meaningful data.

“We feel very lucky to have this opportunity,” Hopcroft said. “It’s a great culmination of our efforts to keep the Seward Line observation program going and demonstrate its importance.”

There are 25 previously established LTER sites, including two in Alaska at Bonanza Creek and Toolik Lake.

The Seward Line program began as part of the U.S. Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics program, jointly funded by the NSF and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Over the past two decades, it has received additional support from the North Pacific Research Board, the Alaska Ocean Observing System and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

In early March up on the frozen Arctic Coastal Plain, as the wind sculpts snow into drifts, it’s hard to tell northern lakes from surrounding tundra. But lurking deep beneath that flat white world are toothy predators as long as your arm.

In pools 60 feet down, lake trout are somehow passing the long winter. A graduate student has sharpened the focus on a familiar species that lives as far south as Colorado but seems so mysterious at the top of its range.

Eric Torvinen spent an entire summer and part of another pursuing lake trout on Alaska’s treeless North Slope. The lack of trees, in fact, was part of the reason he wanted to study the fish for his master’s degree.

He gathered ear bones from lake trout that show growth rings. His goal was to see if he could use otoliths from the long-lived fish to show past climate trends. Thick yearly rings might indicate warmer summers with more food.

In an inflatable kayak, Torvinen floated in 2015 down Fish Creek, a Rhode Island-size watershed pocked with 4,000 lakes. He and his field partner would stop at water-filled depressions between ancient sand dunes. There, they fished for trout with a rod and reel, sometimes nets. After the float, to reach a few nearby lakes deep enough for lake trout, they contracted a helicopter pilot.

The fishing was not great. But then it was.

 “We’d go 10 days without catching fish, then catch six fish in an hour,” he said.

 In that summer and part of another, they caught 53 lake trout. One was longer than a meter stick. Another had been alive longer than them. (The oldest fish was 55 years old. The average fish was 25.)

The University of Alaska Fairbanks student was looking at Fish Creek because researchers who are mentoring him want to know as much as they can about the area, which is beginning to host roads and oil-drilling platforms. They also like how the entire 1,800-square-mile drainage is in the flats just south of the Arctic Ocean.

The lake trout that hang out in deep holes don’t seem to be a favorite food of the barren-ground grizzly, wolves or other large creatures. The handsome, spotted fish with forked tails are the top of the food chain in the small lakes where they may spend their whole lives.

From analyzing their otolith bones, Torvinen saw that lake trout grew well in years with warmer August temperatures. August is the only dependable ice-free month on lakes that far north.

Researchers once found that lake trout in Toolik Lake ate a lot of snails, but Torvinen found the ones he caught were full of least cisco (a whitefish) and sticklebacks.

As for lake trout’s existence through a long Arctic winter, Torvinen said he does not know what state of dormancy, if any, the fish are in now. But he plans to take a look. He’s traveling north in about a month to see how lake trout endure days beneath a landscape that gives no hint of their existence.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.

A landmark antenna at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will be removed and replaced by a similar one during spring break week in March 2017.

After more than 25 years of service, the pale blue 10-meter dish on the roof of the Elvey Building will retire and will be replaced with a new 9-meter dish. The project also will replace an instrument that had not operated since hardware within the antenna broke in 2012. The more capable new antenna will retrieve scientific information from polar-orbiting satellites that pass overhead as often as 11 times per day.

The removal and replacement project will mean that several roads and parking lots in the area will be intermittently closed starting on Monday, March 6. In addition, the Elvey Building will be closed Thursday, March 16, through Sunday, March 19. Regular access is expected to resume on Monday, March 20.

The new antenna will have the same capabilities as the two 11-meter antennas in the forest to the west of the Akasofu Building. With those, staff members of the Alaska Satellite Facility ground station communicate with satellites every hour of every day. On a typical day, technicians will track 10 or more satellites with the dishes. By pointing an antenna in the right direction, they can turn a satellite’s transmit function on to receive its data.

The satellites, orbiting Earth about 400 miles overhead, transmit data to the Alaska Satellite Facility during the 15 minutes or so when they have a direct line of sight to the dishes. In a single day, technicians receive information on Earth’s winds, gravity fields, noctilucent clouds, the atmosphere, water and many other features. They send the data to other centers where people make it useful for scientists.

Workers from a company called ViaSat are making the new antenna and shipping it by truck to Fairbanks. Like the old antenna, the new one will sit on the strongest part of the eight-story Elvey Building, the roof buttressed by the elevator shaft that runs through its core.

The new antenna will allow NASA to get even more satellite data from the UAF West Ridge location. The Alaska Satellite Facility ground station is the only university-based member of the Near-Earth Network. UAF is one of more than a dozen ground stations associated with the network, managed by researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Virginia.

NASA officials will take the old antenna, installed on top of the Elvey Building in 1987 and in operation since 1991, and use it for spare parts.

ON THE WEB: Download an aerial diagram of road and building closures.