Quantum calculations expose hidden chemistry of ice

The new theoretical research by UChicago PME and ICTP researchers has implications for melting permafrost and climate change

University of Chicago

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New research paves the way for scientists to better understand what happens at a sub-atomic scale when ice melts, which has implications including improving predictions of the release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost. (Image courtesy of Galli Group)

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Credit: Galli Group

When ultraviolet light hits ice—whether in Earth's polar regions or on distant planets—it triggers a cascade of chemical reactions that have puzzled scientists for decades.

Now, researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and collaborators at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) have used quantum mechanical simulations to reveal how tiny imperfections in ice's crystal structure dramatically alter how ice absorbs and emits light. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pave the way for scientists to better understand what happens at a sub-atomic scale when ice melts, which has implications including improving predictions of the release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost.

“No one has been able to model what happens when UV light hits ice with this level of accuracy before,” said Giulia Galli, Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering and one of the senior authors of the new work. “Our paper provides an important starting point to understand the interaction of light with ice.”

“The Trieste-Chicago collaboration brought together our expertise in water and ice physics with advanced computational methods for studying light-matter interactions. Together, we could start to unravel a problem that has been very challenging to tackle,” added Ali Hassanali, a senior scientist at ICTP), Trieste, who collaborated with Galli on the new research.

A decades-old puzzle

The mystery about ice and light goes back to experiments in the 1980s, when researchers discovered something puzzling: ice samples exposed to UV light for just a few minutes absorbed certain wavelengths of light, but samples exposed to UV for hours absorbed different wavelengths, suggesting that the ice chemistry had changed over time. Scientists proposed various chemical products that might form in the ice to explain these observations, but lacked the tools to test their theories.

“Ice is deceptively difficult to study. When light interacts with ice, chemical bonds break,  forming new molecules and charged ions that, in turn, fundamentally alter its properties,” said Marta Monti, from ICTP, the first author of the study.  

In the new work, the team turned to advanced modeling approaches that the Galli lab developed in recent years to study materials for quantum technologies. The methods let them study ice at a level which was not possible before. 

"Ice is extremely hard to study experimentally, but computationally we can study a sample and isolate the effect of specific chemistry in ways that can't be done in experiments, thanks to the sophisticated computational methods we have developed to study the properties of defects in complex materials," said second author Yu Jin, a former UChicago graduate student, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the Flatiron Institute.

The fingerprints of imperfections

The research team simulated four types of ice: defect-free ice arranged in a perfect crystal lattice and ice with three different imperfections in its structure. In one case, water molecules were missing from the water crystal, leaving a gap called a vacancy. In other instances, charged hydroxide ions were introduced into the structure. For the third set of computational experiments, ice’s strict hydrogen bonding rules were violated in a Bjerrum defect—either two hydrogen atoms end up between the same pair of oxygen atoms, or none, disrupting the normally orderly structure.  

The researchers could add these defects one at a time and observe how each type changed the way ice absorbed and emitted light. This type of precise control is impossible in physical ice samples, but can be attained computationally.

The team showed that the onset of absorption of UV light occurs at different energies in defect-free ice and when hydroxide ions are inserted in the sample, explaining, at least qualitatively, decades-old experiments. Bjerrum defects produced even more extreme changes in light absorption, potentially explaining the unexplained absorption features that appear in ice exposed to UV light for extended periods.

Each type of defect created a unique optical signature—like a fingerprint that experimentalists can now look for in real ice samples. The simulations also revealed what happens at the molecular level: when UV light hits ice, water molecules can break apart to form hydronium ions, hydroxyl radicals, and free electrons. Depending on the defects present, these electrons can either spread through the ice, or become trapped in tiny cavities.

“This is the foundation for understanding much more complex scenarios. Now that we know how individual defects behave, we can start modeling ice with multiple defects, surfaces, and eventually the messiness of real natural samples,” Monti said.

From fundamental physics to melting permafrost

For now, the work addresses the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fundamental questions about ice photochemistry. But eventually, deeper studies of the interactions of UV light and ice could extend our understanding of environmental challenges and astrochemistry. Permafrost—permanently frozen ground in polar regions—traps greenhouse gases. As global temperatures rise and sunlight hits this ice, understanding how it releases those gases becomes critical for predicting climate change.

"There is ice in certain parts of the Earth that contains gases, and when it's hit by light or when you raise the temperature just a little bit, these gases are released," Galli said. "Better knowledge about how ice melts and what it releases under illumination could have incredible impacts on understanding these gases."

The findings also may have implications for understanding chemistry on icy moons like Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, where UV radiation constantly bombards ice-covered surfaces and may drive the formation of complex molecules. 

The team is now working with experimentalists to design measurements that can validate their computational predictions. They're also extending the work to study more complex collections of defects in ice and probe the impact of melted water as it accumulates on the surface of ice. 

Citation: “Defects at Play: Shaping the Photophysics and Photochemistry of Ice,” Monti et al, PNAS, November 20, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2516805122

 

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2516805122 

Article Title

Defects at play: Shaping the photophysics and photochemistry of ice

Article Publication Date

20-Nov-2025

 

A significant amount of dissolved organic carbon in the Arctic Ocean comes from land

New study shows that 16 percent of the Arctic Ocean’s organic carbon comes from terrestrial sources, such as thawing permafrost and eroding coastlines – and presents a new approach to assess its capacity as a carbon sink

Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research

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New study shows that 16 percent of the Arctic Ocean’s organic carbon comes from terrestrial sources, such as thawing permafrost and eroding coastlines.

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Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Jaroslav Obu

Climate change and the associated rising temperatures are melting more and more frozen ground in the Arctic. This dissolved matter contains large amounts of organic carbon which is flowing into the central Arctic ocean. In a new study, scientists led by Alfred-Wegener-Institute quantified how much terrestrial organic matter accumulates in the central Arctic Ocean. Using chemical fingerprints, they were able to assess how fast it degrades, thus releasing additional CO2 to the ocean. These findings are an important basis to project how inputs from land affect Arctic marine ecosystems and the ability of the ocean to store CO2 in a warming climate. The results are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

When permafrost thaws in the Arctic, it releases very old organic matter from plants, microorganisms or animals, containing carbon that was frozen in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years. Rivers transport this material into the Arctic Ocean, where it dissolves and turns into “dissolved organic matter (DOM)”. “This matter constitutes a large reservoir of organic carbon in the ocean, rivalling the amount of atmospheric CO2 in scale”, says Dr. Xianyu Kong, scientist at Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and first author of the study. “Compared to most other oceans, the Arctic Ocean receives more freshwater and a disproportionally large amount of terrestrial organic matter from extensive inputs from permafrost thaw, river discharge, and coastal erosion.” 

Together with German, Norwegian and Danish colleagues, the AWI scientist has now quantified, how much organic carbon is accumulated in the central Arctic Ocean. „Our study reveals that about 16 percent of all dissolved organic carbon here originates from land, much of it persisting even in deep waters, where we surprisingly found a consistently high terrestrial contribution,” says Xianyu Kong. “This suggests that some of land-derived organic matter is chemically stable enough to survive long transport and move from the central Arctic ocean to the North Atlantic Deep Water. This connects Arctic processes with the global carbon cycle.” 

Terrestrial dissolved organic carbon is also transported in surface waters: The so-called Transpolar Drift is a surface current that transports freshwater, sea ice as well as nutrients across the Arctic Ocean towards the North Atlantic. The amount of organic carbon in regions that are affected by the Transpolar Drift was about twice as high in neighboring regions. From this, the research team estimated that around 39 million tons of terrestrial carbon are transported from the Arctic to the Atlantic every year.  

Map Shows Terrestrial Dissolved Organic Carbon in the Arctic Ocean

DOM from terrestrial sources impacts the organic carbon cycle in the Arctic Ocean by changing light attenuation, nutrient availability, or microbial processes. “Previous studies show that the concentration of dissolved organic carbon increases in freshwater environments as a response to climate change”, says Prof. Boris Koch, co-author of the study and chemical oceanographer at AWI. “For the Arctic Ocean, however, there is no data available that shows similar trends, partly due to the lack of appropriate methods.” With their results, the AWI researchers are filling a knowledge gap in the understanding of how much carbon enters the Arctic Ocean from land, how it is distributed, and how it changes in the ocean. “As Arctic warming accelerates, inputs of terrestrial organic matter are expected to increase, potentially altering carbon cycling and broader biogeochemical processes in the Arctic Ocean”, says Xianyu Kong. Previous climate models do not yet reflect these findings. “These findings are an important basis for predicting how inputs from land affects Arctic marine ecosystems and the Arctic carbon inventory in a warming climate.”

For the analysis, the researchers, in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), developed a new analytical approach over several years to analyze seawater samples from across the central Arctic Ocean that they have collected during the MOSAiC expedition in 2019 /2020. To measure the organic compounds in the samples, they used ultrahigh-resolution Fourier-transform mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS). “This method allowed us to identify and quantify thousands of individual organic molecular formulas in seawater and distinguish whether they originated from the ocean and sea ice or terrestrial sources”, says Xianyu Kong. “We were not only able to quantify the concentration of terrestrial carbon, but also to estimate how far the degradation of the organic material has already progressed.” Using this method, the researchers were able to produce the first depth-resolved map of dissolved terrestrial organic carbon in the Arctic Ocean.

Original publication 

Kong, X., Lechtenfeld, O.J., Kaesler, J.M. et al. Major terrestrial contribution to the dissolved organic carbon budget in the Arctic Ocean. Nat. Geosci. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01847-5

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Journal

Nature Geoscience

DOI

10.1038/s41561-025-01847-5 

Article Title

Major terrestrial contribution to the dissolved organic carbon budget in the Arctic Ocean

Article Publication Date

7-Nov-2025

 

Polar climate change could amplify global health risks, study warns

University of Exeter

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Climate change in Earth’s polar regions is emerging as an under-recognised driver of global health risks, with consequences reaching far beyond the Arctic and Antarctic, researchers argue.

A study by an international team of scientists led by Professor Gail Whiteman from the University of Exeter Business School presents a comprehensive framework mapping the complex connections between physical changes in the Arctic and Antarctic which could amplify climate impacts to human health worldwide.

The researchers reviewed a wide range of scientific literature across climate science, public health and other fields. They found that current models underestimate the direct and indirect impacts of changing polar regions on global health issues – from chronic disease to mental health challenges, and pregnancy complications.

They call for these amplified health risks to be integrated into health planning and policy.

“Polar change is not a distant crisis,” said Netra Naik, Research Fellow at Arctic Basecamp and lead author of the paper. “Our review of the research shows that melting ice sheets, rising sea levels and shifting weather patterns have complex consequences that extend far beyond the Arctic and Antarctic – affecting food security, disease burden and health infrastructure. This is not just an environmental issue, but a global health emergency.”

The study outlines how the polar regions, which are warming faster than the global average, are likely to trigger feedback loops and tipping cascades, reshaping global health risks in complicated and interlinked ways.

As rising temperatures weaken the jet stream and disrupt ocean currents, extreme weather is expected to drive up rates of severe injury, fatalities, and mental health disorders.

A seasonally ice-free Arctic is likely to contribute to a rise in the frequency and severity of El Niño episodes, worsening heatwaves, especially in tropical areas. Rising temperatures are expected to increase diseases including kidney and cardiovascular disease.

Sea level rise, driven by ice-sheet melt, could increase the salinity of ground water, and contaminate drinking water – potentially leading to increases in pre-eclampsia in pregnancy, infant mortality, and various types of cancer.

Polar warming could affect agricultural productivity indirectly– via disrupted precipitation and temperature patterns – increasing malnutrition-related disease.

Meanwhile, the warming climate is pushing insect and animal-borne diseases such as vibriosis, dengue fever, and Lyme disease into northern regions previously unaffected.

Flooding, intensified by polar ice melt, is increasing the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid, while also exacerbating respiratory conditions.

In the Arctic itself, melting permafrost and sea ice threaten vital infrastructure and risk releasing long-trapped pollutants, and even ancient pathogens, such as the 1918 influenza virus.

Ocean ecosystem shifts are also undermining traditional food sources, heightening rates of malnutrition, miscarriages, kidney failure, and cardiovascular disease among Arctic communities with fragile healthcare systems.

The study also highlights the risks to traditional food sources due to ocean ecosystem changes, contributing to rising rates of malnutrition, miscarriages, kidney failure, and cardiovascular disease among Arctic communities already facing fragile healthcare systems.

The new framework sets out the link between polar physical changes, and direct and indirect, regional and global health risks, and calls for greater integration of the health risks amplified by physical polar changes into human health impact assessments.

“Ignoring these potential drivers of disease and death is not an option,” said Professor Whiteman, Hoffmann Impact Professor for Accelerating Action on Nature and Climate. “We need stronger international collaboration between climate scientists, health professionals, and data experts to prevent harm and prepare our systems for the challenges ahead.”

The study, published in Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society, forms part of a research project conducted jointly by the University of Exeter, Arctic Basecamp and the World Economic Forum that looks at the effects of polar climate change on global health and healthcare by building new impact assessment tools. The “Effects of Polar Climate Change on Global Health and Healthcare” project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, aims to highlight the under-reported risks posed by polar tipping points to global health and the healthcare sector.

It will enrich existing climate health analyses to support the creation of resilience strategies for the most vulnerable regions by taking into account the impact of polar tipping points.

“A framework for assessing global health impacts of polar change: An urgent call for interdisciplinary research” is published in Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society.

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Journal

AMBIO

DOI

10.1007/s13280-025-02255-0 

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

A framework for assessing global health impacts of polar change: An urgent call for interdisciplinary research

Article Publication Date

7-Nov-2025

Typhoon Disaster In Western Alaska Raises Questions Around The Region’s Future


The village of Kipnuk, largely submerged by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, is seen from the air on Oct. 12, 2025. Alaska Air National Guard rescue personnel conducted search and rescue operations there, and the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has worked with the Alaska Organized Militia and the U.S. Coast Guard in the response. The storm displaced at least 1,500 people and resulted in at least one death. (Photo provided by the Alaska National Guard)

October 19, 2025 
By Alaska Beacon
By Yereth Rosen

(Alaska Beacon) — After the latest catastrophic storm hit Western Alaska, displacing more than 1,500 people, killing at least one and leaving villages in ruins, residents face an existential crisis.

Will the wide delta that fans out between the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and has supported one of the circumpolar north’s largest Indigenous populations for millennia continue to be a place where Alaska’s Yupik people can live?

One elder has his doubts.

“We’re not going to be well. Storms are going to get worse, and it’s not going to be livable,” said Mike Williams Sr., a tribal leader from the Kuskokwim River village of Akiak. “We’re past the tipping point, maybe.”

Fairbanks-based scientist Torre Jorgenson, who has studied the region for decades, has doubts as well.

Intertwined climate change forces make long-term prospects grim in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, according to a wide-ranging scientific study he led. The study was published in mid-August, just two months before the remnants of Typhoon Halong hit on Oct. 12.

Coastal erosion, permafrost thaw, sea-level rise, intrusion of saltwater into freshwater systems – are combining with storm surges to dramatically transform the coastal area, damaging communities and the food resources that have sustained Yup’ik people for centuries, the study said.

Of the 18 villages on the outer coastal area of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, at least 10 will likely have to be relocated, said Jorgenson, who is affiliated with the University of Alaska Fairbanks while operating an independent science consulting company.

The at-risk villages sit atop permafrost that, when intact, is a platform a meter or two above the region’s salt marshes, Jorgenson said. That permafrost is no longer intact, and it will likely disappear in the next two to three decades, he said.

“So the ground is going down, and the water is coming up, and they’ll be unlivable,” he said

If those villages move, they will follow the lead of Newtok. The village of about 350 escaped erosion and flooding by moving farther inland to a site called Mertarvik, but the effort took decades and is still challenged by infrastructure problems.

Williams, of Akiak, said it is not easy for coastal villages to find suitable relocation spots. “Even though they head toward higher ground, there’s a lot of wind in the higher ground,” he said.

But some residents of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok are determined to stay and rebuild, and others who evacuated to return.

“We will go back, because it’s our home,” said Missy Chuckwuk of Kipnuk, waiting in line to board an evacuation flight in Bethel on Wednesday, with her husband and their three children. Once freeze-up hits, the community will begin to move homes back that floated away, she said.

An estimated 50 to 100 people stayed and did not evacuate from Kipnuk, according to a representative with the Alaska National Guard, and 200 to 300 people in Kwigillingok.

Jorgenson said necessary action in the most at-risk villages will be expensive.

“They can do kind of short-term adaptation, but over the period of decades, they are going to be looking at having to relocate, and there’s going to be a huge, enormous cost to that,” he said. Newtok’s relocation cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he noted. “And if you’re looking at 10 or more villages that have to move, who’s going to come up with the money for that?”

Combined climate change forces amplify each other

For the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the connected climate change forces include sea ice retreat. It erases the frozen barrier that prevented waves from reaching shore during late-fall and winter storms. By the end of the century, Jorgenson said, the ice-free season in the Bering Sea will last approximately 8.5 months, with ice forming two months later in the fall and melting a month earlier in the spring, he said.

Bering Sea residents already got a taste of the future in 2018, he said, when winter ice was scarcer than at any time in the past 150 years of records.

Storm surges and floods enhance permafrost thaw, Jorgenson said. Saltwater pushed ashore kills tundra plants that make up an insulating mat, thus allowing more heat to penetrate the surface and thaw yet more permafrost.

Beyond damaging homes and villages, the changes hurt people’s ability to gather wild food in their traditional ways, Jorgensen said.

Earlier sea ice melt exposes coastal regions to more flooding in the critical spring nesting season time for migratory birds that are residents’ sources of eggs and meat, Jorgenson said. Saltwater intrusion is changing habitat for migrating birds that use the region, which is a major nesting and breeding site for several species. Saltwater intrusion also contaminates drinking water supplies. Permafrost thaw undermines the once-stable areas that have been long used for traditional hunting camps and that have produced wild food, he said.

“These permafrost plateaus are really very rich areas,” he said. “Those have been really important berry picking areas, and those are going to disappear pretty soon.”

The origins of this fall’s storm, like Merbok three years ago, lie far to the west, in the North Pacific Ocean. There, water has become hotter; a new marine heatwave is currently underway. The ocean heat amplifies seasonal storms that reach Alaska, like Typhoon Halong and the Typhoon Merbok, which sent destructive floods and high winds across the region in 2022.

While Merbok formed in a part of the ocean that is normally too cool to produce typhoons and Halong formed in a more standard ocean spot, both storms picked up intensity from unusual North Pacific heat, said Rick Thoman, a scientist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Passing over near or at-record warm sea surface temperatures outside of the tropics, that’s something that both of those storms have in common,” Thoman said.

Such ocean heat will not always be present, but it is likely to be more frequent, he said. “The trend is going only one way,” he said.

People of the Yukon-Kuskokwim recognize the trend.

Alaska Federation of Natives co-chair Ana Hoffman, in her opening address at the organization’s annual convention on Thursday, spoke directly to her fellow Yup’ik people about it, hundreds of whom had been evacuated by then to Anchorage.

“You were at the forefront of this recent storm and endured what is now becoming a new reality here: typhoons in the Arctic,” she said.

Climate change threats in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and other parts of rural Alaska have long been recognized by state and federal government agencies and by state and regional organizations like the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Subsistence Regional Advisory Council.

Wiliams said there have been warnings for several decades. Speaking during a break Tuesday in this week’s Elders and Youth Conference in Anchorage, he said he remembers listening to elders talk 50 years ago about the big changes to come.

“They said, ‘The weather is going to be changing, and we’re going to have more frequent storms, and it’s going to get warmer,’” he said,

Those predictions come true, Williams said.

“We used to have seven feet of ice on the river; now it’s three feet. And the permafrost is going away pretty fast. Tundra communities are sinking,” he said.

State Sen. Lyman Hoffman, who has represented Western Alaska for four decades, attested to similar observations.

“There has been more and more warming that is disrupting lives in the Y-K Delta,” the Bethel Democrat said at a Monday news conference held by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, said the latest storm should be seen as a call to action.

“We know this is not going to be, unfortunately, the last typhoon,” Edgmon said in his address Friday at the Alaska Federation of Natives Conference. “We need to be very conscious about living in a state with a changing climate.” That is necessary for “a future that doesn’t involve waking up in the middle of the night and having water come up from your floor and 100-mile-an-hour winds and your house floating off somewhere,” he said.

Trump administration cuts

The Trump administration, however, does not share that perspective.

The administration canceled previously awarded grants intended to prevent damages in rural Alaska from disasters that have been exacerbated by climate change – including a $20 million grant for coastal erosion control in Kipnuk, a village of about 700 that was one of the communities hardest hit by ex-typhoon Halong.

The Kipnuk grant was among several awarded during the Biden administration to rural Alaska communities under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Change Grant Program. The grants were for work like permafrost and shoreline protection, renewable energy development and permafrost protection.

Trump administration officials characterized those projects as unnecessary projects. In a post on the social media site X, EPA Administrator Lee Zelden called them “wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants.”

EPA officials defended the cut.

“The ‘environmental justice’ funding cancelled by EPA would not have prevented or safeguarded the community from the mass destruction and tragedy caused by such a large and devastating typhoon,” Brigit Hirsch, the agency’s press secretary, said by email on Friday.

Administration cuts to the National Weather Service, part of broader cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, likely had an effect on the weather forecast and interfered with preparations for ex-Typhoon Halong’s impacts in Alaska.

Thoman said predictions for Halong’s path into Alaska, made after Trump administration cuts forced reductions in rural Alaska weather staff and monitoring, were not as accurate as those for Merbok in 2022. Atmospheric observations from weather balloons have been cut in Kotzebue, Bethel, St. Paul and Cold Bay, and technical problems prevented the normal launches in Nome, he noted. “It’s almost inconceivable that that lack of upper-air observations had no effect,” he said.

The Government Accounting Office has already identified National Weather Service cuts as a problem. The shortage of meteorologists has created a need for “urgent action” to protect aviation safety, said a GAO report issued on Aug. 28.

Also axed by the Trump administration was a Federal Emergency Management Agency program aimed at preventing disaster damage; a statement from the agency called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program “wasteful and ineffective,” even though earlier analysis found it saved $6 in response cost for every $1 in preparation spending.

Overall, Trump administration cuts to FEMA have undermined the agency’s ability to respond to disasters that are increasing in frequency, according to a Sept. 2 GAO report. FEMA has lost about a tenth of its staff, compromising its capabilities, and there are similar concerns about disaster responses at the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the GAO said.

In the short term, Alaska Native organizations were waiting this week for FEMA assistance. Resolutions passed by the Association of Village Council Presidents, a group of Yup’ik tribal governments, and the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corp., the largest tribal health provider for the region, and other groups have requested a presidential disaster declaration and the aid that comes with it.

Gov. Dunleavy on Thursday sent a formal request for a presidential declaration, not just for the Yukon-Kuskokwim area but also for northwestern Alaska, which was lashed days earlier by remnants of the typhoon.

As of Friday, the disaster response was being led by the state, according to a FEMA statement. But opportunities for immediate action beyond evacuations and temporary shelter were limited.

“There is very little time to do anything, like even dry stuff out at this point,” Thoman said. “Winter is nigh.”Corinne Smith contributed to this story.


Alaska Beacon

Alaska Beacon is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government. Alaska, like many states, has seen a decline in the coverage of state news. We aim to reverse that.