Alaska is going rogue on climate change.Defiant as ever, the state that gave rise to Sarah Palin is bucking the mainstream yet again: While global temperatures surge hotter and the ice-cap crumbles, the nation's icebox is getting even icier.
How can they tell? It's like a freeze most of the time.
That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth.
Then again, it might. The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet.
We're having a Heat Wave a Tropical Heat Wave.
But that's so 20th Century. In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's a "large value for a decade," the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks said in "The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska."
Alaska Paul, you might want to think about moving further South.
The cooling is widespread -- holding true for 19 of the 20 National Weather Service stations sprinkled from one corner of Alaska to the other, the paper notes. It's most significant in Western Alaska, where King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula saw temperatures drop most sharply, a significant 4.5 degrees for the decade, the report says.