Alaska storm bears down on village that spearheaded climate change battle.

As a superstorm of historic proportions slams Alaska’s West Coast, one of the low-lying villages at grave risk is Kivalina, the tiny community already so battered by climate change, it three years ago launched a lawsuit against two dozen oil and other fossil fuel companies seeking relocation costs. That case was dismissed but a ruling on an effort to revive the suit was slated for later this month. For now, Kivalina’s focus is on weathering the storm. As wind and high water bears down on the coast, Christine Shearer, author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011), blogged for National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge on the town’s plight.

What is being described as an “epic storm” is currently slamming into western Alaska. The storm is reported to have hurricane-like winds and massive waves, creating the potential for coastal flooding, extensive beach erosion, and serious damage. The National Weather Service is calling it “one of the most severe Bering Sea storms on record.”

One look at a picture of Kivalina and it is not hard to see why those who have come to care about this community are watching and hoping. The village sits on the tip of a tiny barrier reef island of about 27 acres that is barely above sea level and completely surrounded by water: one side the Chukchi Sea, the other the Kivalina Lagoon.

Residents trace their ancestry to the area back thousands of years. The people originally used Kivalina as a seasonal hunting ground but were instructed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1905 to settle there and enroll their kids in school, in exchange for small-scale infrastructure and some other modern amenities.

Part of this new settlement depended on the formation of sea ice in early fall, hardening the island and buffering it against storms. Due to warming Arctic temperatures, sea ice has decreased in the spring and taken longer to re-form in the fall, meaning sea ice now forms as late as November or even December. This is leaving the shoreline exposed and vulnerable for longer periods of time.

<snip>

If there is any community that has proved itself resilient in the face of massive temperature extremes and weather conditions, it is the people of Kivalina and other Alaska Natives. Yet climate change is posing all new challenges, with the latest storm another stark reminder that the community still needs to be relocated.

For now, we wait and hope that this is another storm the people are able to brave.