Based on a comparison of aerial photos, the Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the island is losing between 2.7 and 8.9 feet a year, on average. But measurements in years with big storms have documented land loss of up to 22.6 feet.
“The waves would come and take a whole lot of the land.”
When its residents voted to relocate, Shishmaref became a poster child for the impact of climate change. A webpage for the Environmental Protection Agency describing climate change’s effects in Alaska includes a photo of one of the Shishmaref houses falling off a cliff. “Severe erosion has forced some Alaska Native Villages’ populations to relocate in order to protect lives and property,” the website notes. But while Shishmaref and several other villages have tried to move, they’ve found that the reality of doing so is much more complicated.
There’s a still too-prevalent idea in the United States that climate change is just a concept, an idea removed from us in time, distance or economic circumstance. It’s something that might affect future generations or other nations. Discussions about the current reality of climate change tend to focus on small island nations like Tuvalu, the Maldives or Kiribati, which are so threatened by rising seas that they’ve considered acquiring land on other continents so they can move their entire countries.
But you don’t have to look elsewhere. Native communities along Alaska’s coast have been trying to tell us for more than a decade that climate change’s effects are already here.
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