Back in northern Alaska, the story of what changed is told through a family’s loss and through the seasonal patterns that used to guide where and when people could travel on frozen water. AP reported that Elmer Brown was following two friends on a four-wheeler in November while hunting caribou across a frozen channel when the ice gave way. One friend drowned, and Brown later died of hypothermia, leaving behind five children.
Jimmy Brown said the group had gone out under pressure to make use of shorter, less reliable hunting seasons. He said his brother “was always helping other people and sharing his catch with the elders,” and that it has been “tough, not seeing him.” He added that he keeps “expecting him to walk in and tell me about his day.” AP also reported that it was not the first time the family had lost someone to the ice: the brothers’ father drowned in 1999 while seal hunting.
Across the Northern Hemisphere, AP said people who fish, hunt, and recreate on frozen lakes, rivers, and coastal waters face higher risk as warming winters thin and destabilize ice. The article said March and April are particularly dangerous months as winter conditions recede, and that technology can help communities spot conditions but does not fully replace the predictability generations once relied on.
Researchers cited by AP described a sharp jump in drowning risk as temperatures hover near freezing. A 2020 study that examined more than 4,000 winter drownings across 10 countries found drowning rates surged fivefold when winter temperatures rose to just below freezing, and it found deaths peaked in March and April. Sapna Sharma, a biology professor at York University and the study’s author, said “It’s only a matter of three to five days where you can go from safe ice conditions to totally unsafe,” attributing the shift to the way reduced snow cover can let sunlight penetrate and melt ice from within in ways people may not see.
AP also cited a 2013 study published in the Journal of Public Health that looked at Alaska and found that between 1990 and 2010, some 450 people fell through the ice, with at least 112 deaths. It said most accidents occurred in November and March—transition months when ice is forming or melting—and that snowmobiles were involved in half the cases. The researchers, AP reported, encouraged more awareness, safety training, and better equipment.
Within Alaska, AP said the dangers intersect with Indigenous lifeways and food security, because many communities rely on frozen waterways when roads are absent. The article described Kotzebue, a predominantly Inupiaq community of about 3,000 people on a narrow spit of land surrounded by water, where frozen waterways are described as the only way in and out during winter besides planes. AP reported that average fall temperatures there have warmed by 10 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) over the last 50 years, and it said sea-ice seasons farther south in the Bering Sea are now more than 40 days shorter on average than they were in the 1970s.
As sea-ice and lake-ice patterns grow more erratic, AP said the seasonal knowledge that once helped people judge safety is being eroded. In Kotzebue, AP reported that earlier sea-ice breakup shortened the spring seal-hunting season by 26 days compared with a decade ago, and it quoted Roswell Schaeffer, 78, as saying, “Each winter, it gets more and more dangerous to be out on the ice,” as he described hunting seals near the ice edge. AP added that three years ago his son fell through the ice while traveling by snowmobile in spring, sustaining a serious brain injury before later dying by suicide.
Food security is also tied to the timing of when animals arrive and when ice forms enough for travel. AP reported that families once reliably hunted caribou by boat during an August-to-September migration and stocked freezers before winter. It said that now herds often arrive in October or November, just as ice begins its stuttering formation, and it quoted Alex Whiting, environmental program director for the Native Village of Kotzebue, as saying, “Every day that people can’t go hunting or fishing is one more day of the year where the community is more food insecure, because a whole day of opportunity is lost.” Whiting also described what happens when freezers are empty: families become more willing to risk traveling on thin ice, in part because “The caribou are here, they might be gone tomorrow. This might be my only shot for the entire year.”
AP also described ecological knock-on effects, saying sea ice supports spring algal blooms that sustain plankton and the broader food web. Andy Mahoney, a professor of sea ice geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told AP that “The ice is part of the annual pulse of the ecosystem.” The article said inland, ice seasons on Alaska lakes and rivers have also shrunk by several weeks, based on a decades-long analysis, and it cited research that globally lakes are losing about 17 days of ice cover per century, with the rate accelerating sixfold over the past 25 years.
Looking ahead, AP reported that researchers say the risk of drowning may eventually decline largely because ice will disappear. Sharma, the York University biologist, told AP that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, “by the end of the century, thousands of lakes will no longer freeze and people won’t fall through the ice.” Back in Kotzebue, AP said Jimmy Brown is still adjusting to life without Elmer, describing how he has tried to carry on by attending Elmer’s daughter’s high school basketball games while working through the loss.