Toward a Predictive Model of Arctic Coastal Retreat in a Warming Climate, Beaufort Sea, Alaska

The long-term goal of this project is to quantify the environmental drivers of extremely rapid coastal erosion in the Arctic, and to begin developing predictive models of future rates of coastal erosion resulting from climate change. Our study is focused on the Beaufort Sea coast within the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A), approximately halfway between Barrow and Prudhoe Bay. We are focusing our efforts on collecting empirical data that will help us to develop process-based models of coastal change. Toward this end, we are monitoring erosion processes using time-lapse photography, collecting meteorological and oceanographic data from sites along the coast, and archiving climatic and geographic data from the past few decades to identify trends in coastline position through time. We anticipate that our project will help us to predict future patterns of coastal change as a function of projected changes in sea surface temperature, sea ice conditions, and changes in land surface temperatures.