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Alaska: Severity of North Pacific storms at highest point in over 1,200 years; Warmer tropical waters impact weather from Alaska to Florida - The intensification of winter storm activity in Alaska and Northwestern Canada started close to 300 years ago and is unprecedented in magnitude and duration over the past millennium, according to a new study from Dartmouth College.

The research, an analysis of sea salt sodium levels in mountain ice cores, finds that warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean have intensified the Aleutian Low pressure system that drives storm activity in the North Pacific.

The current period of storm intensification is found to have begun in 1741. According to researchers, additional future warming of tropical Pacific waters - due in part to human activity - should continue the long-term storminess trend.

"The North Pacific is very sensitive to what happens in the tropics," said Erich Osterberg, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College. "It is more stormy in Alaska now than at any time in the last 1200 years, and that is driven by tropical ocean warming."

While the Aleutian Low pressure system sits over Southcentral Alaska in the winter, it can impact weather across the North American continent. 

"Storminess in the North Pacific not only impacts Alaska and Northwestern Canada, it creates colder, wetter and stormier weather as far away as Florida," said Osterberg.

The analysis focuses on two ice cores drilled in 2013 from Mount Hunter in Alaska's Denali National Park, and an older ice core from Canada's Mount Logan. The ice cores, each measuring over 600-feet long, offer glimpses into over a thousand years of climate history in the North Pacific through sea salt blown into the atmosphere by winter ocean storms.

The two ice cores from Denali benefited from high levels of snowfall, providing what Osterberg says is "amazing reproducibility" of the climate record and giving the researchers exceptional confidence in the study results. 

"That's the other remarkable thing about this research," said Osterberg, "not only are we seeing strong agreement between the two Denali cores, we are finding the same story of intensified storminess recorded in ice cores collected 13 years and 400 miles apart."

While 1741 is noted as the year the current intensification began, the paper also references an increase in storminess in the year 1825. According to the paper, warmer tropical waters since the mid-18th century can be the result of both natural variability and human-driven climate changes.

"There is no doubt that warming tropical ocean temperatures over the last 50 years is mostly caused by human activity," said Osterberg, "a really interesting question is when you go back over hundreds of years, how much of that is anthropogenic?" - More...
Wednesday PM - August 23, 2017

Sunset: South Pt. Higgins Beach
Front Page Feature Photo KENNON CALIWANAGAN ©2017

Ketchikan: Karl Richey, MD Joins Creekside Family Health Clinic - As an avid jazz musician, performer and local cabaret owner, changing up the tempo is not something new for Dr. Karl Richey. This time, his change in rhythm includes shifting from a long career in emergency medicine and joining Creekside Family Health Clinic in Ketchikan as an outpatient physician. At his new venue, he'll complement the existing team of four family nurse practitioners to provide acute and basic primary care to children, adolescents and adults. 

Dr. Richey is well known in Ketchikan having worked as an Emergency Room Physician at PeaceHealth Medical Center from 1990 to 2016. Most recently he worked as a Physician at the Ketchikan Indian Community Tribal Health Clinic and is still employed by the State of Alaska Department of Corrections providing health care services at the local jail. His new position at Creekside in many ways is a change in careers from his more than 30 years in emergency room medicine. "I've been an ER doc nearly my entire professional life managing people's health care in a very episodic, short term way. I think it's a great thing at this point in my career to pull back a little and get to be someone's regular doctor, getting to know my patients more personally," he said. 

Although emergency medicine has been his calling over the years, there are a few things that he looks forward to. "Being more my own boss is certainly a great thing and the flexibility that goes along with it. And I got to tell you, I'm not going to miss the 24 hour shifts much," he said with a smile. "The best thing though will be the opportunity to spend more time with my patients" he added. "I really like Creekside's pace and the extra time they allow me to do my job, it really attracted me to the practice for sure", he said.  - More...
Wednesday PM - August 23, 2017

TOM PURCELL: Money and the Pursuit of Happiness - Money does make us happy, so long as we spend it right.

According to the U.K. newspaper The Independent, "New research from the University of British Columbia has found that spending money to buy free time, such as paying others to cook or clean for you, does improve happiness, leave you feeling less stressed and generally more satisfied with life."

Beyond that, however, money does NOT necessarily make us happier.

According to Time magazine, Dan Gilbert, a Harvard University psychology professor and the author of "Stumbling on Happiness," says that money has its limitations.

"Once you get basic human needs met, a lot more money doesn't make a lot more happiness," says Gilbert.

Research shows, reports Time, that "going from earning less than $20,000 a year to making more than $50,000 makes you twice as likely to be happy, yet the payoff for then surpassing $90,000 is slight."

In other words, once you have enough money to pay your bills and enjoy going out to dinner now and then, additional increases in wealth do not necessarily correspond with greater happiness.

Where happiness is concerned, Americans are conflicted people. On one hand, we want wealth and fame. We want people to bow down to us when we walk into a public place. We want adulation and expensive cars and big houses staffed by a dozen servants. We believe in our bones that more money will make us happy and we work like crazy to acquire it. - More...
Wednesday PM - August 23, 2017