Researchers gather in Nome for climate assessment conference

Last week, researchers and community members gathered at the UAF Northwest Campus for a three-day conference on climate, technology and narrative.
The conference was the first step in the new Climate Assessment and Proactive Resilience Initiative, or CAPRI for short. Funded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, and run by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, the project will be piloted in Nome.
It will combine scientific research and Indigenous knowledge to create data visualization tools.
“Data needs a voice,” said Ukallaysaaq Okleasik, the community liaison for the project. “Sometimes the data doesn’t speak for itself.”
The project has two pieces: First, it will adapt an online mapping tool (the Environmental Response Management Application or ERMA) which has been developed by NOAA to be of use to the public in the Arctic. Second, the initiative will develop digital images which can be used by locals as posters, in grant applications, and more to detail the ways disasters could affect all parts of the ecosystem.
That means incorporating more precise climate data, and potentially data which could be useful to local economic, cultural, and subsistence data. During the conference, community members educated the Lower 48 researchers about the region, while voicing their hopes and concerns for ERMA. Participants brought a mixture of hope for the way ERMA could be used to protect communities from the worst of climate change and concerns for the sovereignty of their data.
“Climate change is impacting the environment in numerous ways including environmental, social, and cultural disruptions,” said a handout about CAPRI. It listed melting permafrost, more frequent storms, and increased maritime traffic which could lead to oil spills. “All of this disrupts traditional Indigenous ways of life established over thousands of years.”
The handout stated that the tools could help the local community, Alaska Natives, government agencies, the shipping industry, and more “collaboratively plan and prepare for future conditions in the Arctic in the face of complex changes.”
Each of the three days began with a prayer in Inupiaq with a lit seal oil lamp. Then the conversations began, probing through the climate future, the local economy, and the importance of keeping Indigenous knowledge close. Over a dozen people presented 20 minute to 1 hour talking points.
Climate change was a central focus, told through several different angles.
Okleasik pointed to the record-breaking storms which swept through Nome in recent weekends. “Climate change is real. We saw it this week,” he said. “It’s not something we’re trying to remember from last year. It’s something we went through just last week.”
Brandon Ahmasuk talked about the changes he’d seen in his own lifetime. “When I was younger, the sea ice was about six feet thick. Very stable,” he said. He called it a “travel platform” people could use to get from one community to another. “It’s no longer safe. It’s not stable.”
Ahmasuk, Kawerak’s former subsistence director and current Vice President of Natural Resources at Kawerak. He pointed out that as early as in the 1970s, elders had known that something was changing. Storms were stronger and less predictable.
“Our region has been crying bloody murder for the past 30, 40 years: Climate change is here,” said Ahmasuk.
Climate scientist Rick Thoman acknowledged this, too. “Our elders have been telling us for a very long time,” said Thoman. Then he turned to imagine the future.
Thoman called on the audience to “imagine a Merbok-style storm” around the time of the winter solstice. Recovery would have to be done in the dark and the cold.
“That is surely in our future. We don’t know when, but it’s coming,” said Thoman.
The researchers showed the conference how to use ERMA. The program is a map which you can scroll in and out of and add layers to. Some layers are based on static data, while others update in real time. Different people have access to different layers. For example, one layer uses AIS data to show all the boats in the region. Another layer shows predicted erosion in the next 50 years in specific regions where that has been studied.
Anyone can use ERMA, but they have to make an account. Depending on their account, they might have access to different layers.
The conference attendees asked what data were currently in ERMA for the region.
“We don’t have much,” said Zach Winters-Staszak, a spatial data scientist at NOAA.
A breakout group spent close to an hour looking at satellite maps of villages and predicted erosion in the region, trying to see where the cemeteries would erode. There is a layer which indicates cemetery locations, but it did not seem to include most cemeteries in the region.
Part of the goal of CAPRI is to add more information to ERMA. The researchers are trying to gain perspective on what locals would want to see added.
“The last thing we want is to be people from New Hampshire that come in and tell you what you need. That’s not our job,” said Nancy Kinner, who is leading the project from that state.
Iñuraaq Evans is originally from Nome and is now working with CAPRI on the “visual narrative” part of the project. She and Katherine Sweeney, a scientific illustrator, will work together to build images of local ecosystems, much like something you might see in a biology textbook. Evans will work with the community to ensure that people and relationships to land are included in all their complexity.
On top of these basic ecosystem images, Sweeney will draw before and after pictures of climate change-driven disasters. She might draw an oil spill, and then work with Evans to note all the ways that could impact the subsistence food system.
These images will be free and available to all, and in high enough resolution to print as posters, attach to grants, and more.
Evans said that traditional place names would be a good addition to ERMA.
“Traditional place names are very descriptive of what that place looked like to our ancestors,” said Evans. Holding on to the place names would be valuable for subsistence harvesting long into the future and would also tell a lot about the climate history of the region over thousands of years.
Recorded western climate science in Nome goes back about 100 years, as Thoman pointed out. Evans noted the earliest Western records in the Bering Strait might be from the time of Captain Cook in the late 1700s, but Indigenous records go back tens of thousands of years to time immemorial. Place names are part of that.
Evans also sees other potential uses for the data collected.
“ERMA could be this repository for living memory, as we are losing our elders,” said Evans. “We call it warm data, like the living stuff, the stuff that feeds your soul, that feeds your family, that has that connection.”
Bringing in national researchers and agencies is not without its drawbacks.
Okleasik emphasized that standard Western measurements did not always fit in rural Alaska. For example, Western science tends to think in terms of four seasons, but subsistence living requires six seasons during which very different things are harvested, he said.
Carol Piscoya, Vice President of Community Health Services at Kawerak, emphasized that federal agencies were sometimes unprepared to work with local communities.  
Ex-typhoon Merbok had destroyed subsistence camps across the region, and the recent storm had destroyed meat-drying racks in Shishmaref. While people fought to deal with government bureaucracy for aid, which required receipts and photos they did not have, they were unable to hunt and fish.
Evans wants to make sure that the data which is collected is accessible to the community, but not necessarily to everyone. “If we are members of this tribe we should by nature have access to this data that was extracted from our communities, often with the help of our elders,” said Evans.
At the end of the conference, as gifts were distributed – maple syrup from the New Hampshire-ites, sheefish from the Alaskans – conference attendees were asked to reflect on what had been significant from the workshop and what was missing in the discussions.
Attendees wrote that they were glad to hear from so many voices and that they were excited to learn that ERMA existed and had such versatile mapping capabilities. They identified protocols from data sovereignty, representation from more tribes from the north and south, and field experiences for the researchers as missing.
Next, there will be a workshop in Anchorage this winter, and a working group to guide the project. If there is interest from the community, the researchers will apply for a second year of funding.
Okleasik noted that climate resilience was already a deep piece of Inupiaq culture.
“Our first stories are about when there was no winter,” said Okleasik. “Over centuries, over thousands of years, we have adapted.”