Tracking changes in the thaw lakes of northern Alaska, which is experiencing rapid warming, will improve our understanding of climate change and its effects, say School of Natural Resources researchers who returned from Barrow, Alaska, this summer.

John Lenters, climatologist, and Sandra Jones, graduate student, spent much of June launching floating weather stations and drilling holes in ice to suspend under-water thermometers. They are working with a team of researchers from other universities under a three-year National Science Foundation grant to observe how the lakes form, evaporate, and flow.

Alaska is warming more rapidly than other parts of the planet, Lenters said, because as snow and ice melts it exposes darker ground, which absorbs more of the sun’s heat. Relatively little research exists on the climate and hydrology of thaw lakes, which form as permafrost melts. The underlying permafrost keeps the lakes from draining, but some of the water evaporates.

Lenters’ goal is “to measure the entire energy balance of the lakes. How much energy is going in, and how much is coming out.” This will enable researchers to compute the rate of evaporation. Ultimately, researchers can use this information to model climate change and its effects on lake levels.

Others on the research team are Yongwei Sheng, a Remote Sensing and GIS researcher from the University of California at Los Angeles, and Ken Hinkel, from the University of Cincinnati, a geographer who studies periglacial geomorphology and climatology.  In addition, Wendy Eisner from the University of Cincinnati and Chris Cuomo from the University of Georgia are creating an “integrated Geographic Information System” for indigenous people to share their observations and history of the area.