This week, we’re sharing some of the ways NOAA monitors and predicts, responds to, and prepares for the impacts of climate change. In this guest blog, Alaska Sea Grant is a coastal community resilience specialist Davin Holen writes about the impacts climate change has on native communities in Alaska.

MAY 2, 2019 — On this day, one year ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its counterpart in the north, Environment and Climate Change Canada, worked together to create the North American Satellite Tracking of Pollution (NASTOP) Program to bolster our shared capacity to respond to marine pollution events.

How do you handle a polar bear covered in oil?  That was just one aspect of the annual Mutual Aid Deployment exercise last month on Alaska’s North Slope oil field.

Staff members from our Emergency Response Division and the Assessment and Restoration Division as well as other NOAA offices participated in the three-day exercise. Each year government agencies, oil companies, and oil spill removal organizations in the region work together to respond to a simulated oil spill in Alaska.

NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration is assisting the U.S. Coast Guard in responding to a leaking natural gas pipeline in Cook Inlet, Alaska.

The leak was first reported to federal regulatory agencies on Feb. 7, by Hilcorp Alaska, LLC, which owns the pipeline located about 3.5 miles northeast of Nikiski, Alaska.