Module 6

Explain: I love the videos of the bush pilots, particulate studies over the arctic, surfing the air, boiling water in a vacuum chamber, and the YouTube video of the atmospheric circulation showing the Coriolis Effect so well!

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Over the past decade or so, we have had increasingly smoggy days in Southeast due to forest fires from Canada and the interior. These make for some of the most beautiful red sunsets, and one can actually smell a little bit of smoke while hiking.

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I have thought about the pollution from Prudhoe Bay, especially when seeing the gas flares on the satellite images of the earth.  Click on the image for a much higher resolution view:

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I did not realize quite the effect that the northerly atmospheric processes have on moving pollution to the poles. I like to think our air is a little cleaner at 57 degrees latitude in Sitka, but it pains me to think of the millions of acres of untouched land soaking up pollution from the industrialized lands thousands of miles away.

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Has anyone read about the levels of radionuclides in Caribou meat? I read a book awhile back called Firecracker Boys, about the Departments of Energy’s attempts in the late 1950s and early 1960s to detonate five thermonuclear bombs at Point Hope to create a harbor. The director of the DOE, Edward Teller famously offered to make the harbor in the shape of a polar bear! Alarmingly, DOE documents cited the book suggest that the presence of indigenous peoples in the area could offer excellent case studies for radiation exposures in people! That part really makes one sick, especially as one gets to know so much about the amazing people who live in the region! I have students from Point Hope and dozens of nearby villages. Enough said about that...

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If you haven’t read about Project Chariot, Wikipedia has a great synopsis.  The book I mentioned is repetitive and not especially well written, however, it does have a lot of primary sources and interviews with scientists and others instrumental in blocking “progress.” Actually, AFN, the Tundra Times, and other Native groups were initially created to fight Project Chariot.

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Incidentally, three nuclear bombs were detonated in Alaska on Amchitka Island in the 1960s and 1970s. This video of Cannikin, the largest underground blast ever, shows the S-waves moving along the ground after the blast.  The P-wave which because concussion in the water killed thousands of sea otters up to 200 miles away!  It ended up being much larger that anticipated.  (The Don't Make a Wave Committee environmental movement to stop the tests on Amchitka later evolved into GreenPeace!)

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Back to the Caribou, The National Institutes of Health has published a very in-depth study of radionuclides in Caribou in Saskatchewan Canada. These animals are near the uranium mines and, unsurprisingly, have some uranium in them. The part that affects Alaska is the presence of Cesium 137, an isotope of Cesium which does not occur naturally, but is widespread in the arctic regions as product of fallout from the roughly 1000 nuclear bombs that the US has exploded and a few hundred more from other countries. ¹³⁷Cs has a half-life of 30 years, making it very dangerous. Thankfully, nations stopped atmospheric tests a few decades ago, so in a few hundred more years it may have no effect on people anymore.

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Caribou ingest the pollutants and 137Cs because they eat lichens, which in turn soak up the nutrient (and poisons) in the air around them. People who eat caribou, especially the kidneys and liver, have been tested for ¹³⁷Cs. The radiation doses from ¹³⁷Cs alone can actually reach that of the natural radiation absorbed from the sun!  This presents a slightly higher cancer risk similar to getting a few medical X-rays annually.

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Another interesting concept that I looked into as a result of this module is the “triple point” of a fluid. This is the combination of pressure and temperature that causes a fluid to freeze and boil at the same time. The Kelvin temperature scale is actually set to this, since boiling can happen at any temperature given the right pressure. Here is a fantastic video of the triple point of a liquid that I found on YouTube. If the vapor pressure and latent heat of vaporization stuff didn’t impress you, then this may!

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Extend:
I will definitely be showing some of the atmospheric videos to my students in my ground school class. We have been discussing weather and frontal systems, and some of these resources will be especially helpful. As a pilot myself, I have become aware of the weather and have learned to respect it. As they say, if you don’t like the weather now, wait a few minutes…

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Evaluate:
The fact that I have read about all of these topics before proves that they are quite relevant to life in Alaska. I appreciated the additional information on pollution in the arctic.

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Three Colleagues:

Dan writes about the arctic haze problem and offers a nice lab for studying the heating of the land and sea.

Cheryl shared her discovery of the history feature on Google Earth to view older images.  I wish we could send a satellite back in time...

Kevin writes about the history of contamination that scientists can get out of ice cores.  Scientists can even see the drop in pollution during the great depression and since the passage of the Clean Air Act.