VAWS: Developing High-Resolution Records of Storminess from the Southern Bering Sea

Speakers: Reyce Bogardus & Vladimir Alexeev (University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

In the Bering Sea, rapid climate change may be causing more intense storms, flooding and erosion. As a modern example, Typhoon Merbok made landfall in Western Alaska in September 2022, necessitating disaster declarations at the state and federal level to facilitate repairs in 40 western Alaskan communities. Little is known about how the frequency of intense storms may vary in the region on multidecadal to centennial timescales, given that storminess composites in the Bering Sea region only extend back approximately 40 years. To better understand how storm scenarios will play out in the future, a collaborative team of researchers is reconstructing the prehistoric record of extreme events from ancient sediment samples to improve our understanding of how storm intensity and frequency has changed through time. During this webinar, we will discuss preliminary findings from samples collected along the Aleutian Islands chain on the R/V Sikuliaq during the summer of 2022.