Warmest Summer Ever Recorded In Alaska - 11 June Days 70F+ In Anchorage

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Alaska simmered through one of its warmest summers ever in 2005, according to new data issued last week. Above-average temperatures at 20 main weather stations may have furthered the case for global warming, while the state saw forest fires, seabird die-offs, strange monstrous fish and pretty good gardening.

Wildfires burned an area larger than the state of Hawaii, many triggered by some of the 100,000 lightning strikes, double the seasonal average. Some Anchorage backyard raspberries and pumpkins ripened into early October, weeks past the normal killing frost. A 300-pound ocean sunfish was caught off Kodiak in July, maybe 1,000 miles north of its regular range.

Warmer sea water and a lack of food may even be driving birds to abandon nests in the Pribilof Islands, reported oceanographer Alan Springer, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Cliff ledges covered with beautiful eggs, but essentially no adults present at all," he wrote Wednesday in an e-mail message.

The new temperature and rain data, from the Alaska Climate Research Center, offers yet another glimpse of climate change in the North. Arctic sea ice shrank to its smallest area on record last month, while NASA reported recently that 2005 might beat 1998 as the Earth's warmest year ever.

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http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/7123009p-7031187c.html