As winters warm, falling through the ice is becoming more common — and deadly

The friends had ventured onto the ice to hunt caribou, under pressure to make the most of shorter and less reliable hunting seasons, said Elmer's brother, Jimmy Brown.

It wasn't the first time the family had lost someone to the ice. The Brown brothers' father drowned in 1999 while seal hunting.

They're among thousands who have died on ice across the Northern Hemisphere in recent decades as warming winters make conditions thinner and less predictable for those who fish, hunt and recreate on frozen lakes, rivers and coastal waters. March and April are particularly dangerous as winter conditions recede.

The risks are especially acute in Alaska, where the unpredictable ice season disrupts traditional hunting practices for Indigenous communities and pushes people to take chances. Though some communities are using satellite imagery to assess conditions and social media to share ice observations, technology can't replace the predictability that generations once relied upon.

Transition seasons are deadliest

A 2020 study examined more than 4,000 winter drownings across 10 countries, including Canada, the U.S., Russia and Japan, over a 26-year period ending in 2017. It found drowning rates surged fivefold when winter temperatures rose to just below freezing. Deaths peaked in March and April, when reduced snow cover allows sunlight to penetrate the ice, melting it from within, said Sapna Sharma, a biology professor at York University and the study's author.

A 2013 study published in the Journal of Public Health found in Alaska alone, some 450 people fell through the ice between 1990 and 2010, with at least 112 deaths. Most accidents occurred in November and March — transition months when ice is forming or melting — while people were traveling or hunting. 

The Brown brothers' hometown of Kotzebue, a predominantly Inupiaq community of 3,000, is perched on a narrow spit of land surrounded almost entirely by water. During winter, frozen waterways are the only way in and out, besides planes. There, average fall temperatures have warmed by 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 50 years.

To the south, in the Bering Sea, ice season is more than 40 days shorter on average than it was in the 1970s.

What was once a predictable early fall freeze-up has become later and more erratic: freezing, then breaking up, sometimes crumbling to open water for weeks before freezing again.

This unpredictability is eroding generations of ice safety knowledge. In a state where more than 80% of communities are not connected to the road system, extended transition periods — too slushy for boats, too unstable for snow machines — can leave villages with few options to hunt or travel.

A matter of food security

Earlier sea ice breakup has shortened Kotzebue's spring seal-hunting season by 26 days compared to a decade ago, research shows.

"Each winter, it gets more and more dangerous to be out on the ice," said Roswell Schaeffer, 78, one of Kotzebue's few Inupiaq who still hunts seals at the treacherous ice edge.

Three years ago, Schaeffer's 50-year-old son fell through the ice while traveling by snowmobile in spring. He sustained a serious brain injury and later died by suicide.

Schaeffer hopes to teach his great-grandson to hunt seals, but worries the rising danger will cause the tradition to fade.

The changes are creating difficult choices. Families once reliably hunted caribou by boat during their August to September migration, stocking freezers before winter. Now, herds often arrive in October or November, just as the ice begins its stuttering formation.

"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," said Alex Whiting, environmental program director for the Native Village of Kotzebue.

In the past, he said, when families could reliably hunt a half-dozen caribou in the fall, they could afford to wait until the ice was solid before heading out again. But with freezers empty and winter setting in, people are more willing to risk traveling on thin ice.

The changes also threaten the food chain. Sea ice fuels the spring algal blooms, which sustain the plankton, fish and other critters whales, walruses and narwhals feed on.

Inland, ice season on Alaskan lakes and rivers has also shrunk by several weeks, according to a decades-long analysis.

"The Arctic only works when it's frozen — that's why it's the Arctic," Whiting said. "Everything up here has evolved to be frozen for a majority of the year. And when that isn't the case anymore, it all starts to fall apart."

Globally, lakes are losing some 17 days of ice cover per century, at a rate that has accelerated sixfold over the past 25 years, research shows.

The risk of drowning will eventually decline — not because conditions improve, but because ice will largely disappear, said York University's Sharma.

"If we continue releasing greenhouse gas emissions at current rates, by the end of the century, thousands of lakes will no longer freeze and people won't fall through the ice," she said.