The 5.5-mile stretch of permafrost coastline at Drew Point is losing 30 football fields of land per year.
Every year, as the snows thaw and the sea ice recedes, a desolate Alaska coastline awakens — and for a short but dramatic period of time, renews its relentless collapse into the sea. Except now, the stretch of Alaskan shoreline is eroding more than twice as fast as it used to, fueled by Earth’s warming temperatures. A new satellite-based study of the retreating permafrost coastline at Drew Point, in Alaska’s North Slope region, shows that from 1955 to 1979, the rate of loss was only about 23 feet per year. From 2007 through 2016, it was about 56 feet per year. Read More.