Alaska Dispatch: "the longtime cooling spell that put the chill on global warming in Alaska shows no signs of letting up"

The cold, hard facts: New century frigid for Alaska | Alaska Dispatch

With cyclists hammering through snow-showers on Bike to Work Day and greening lawns now blanketed in slushy white, it should come as no surprise that the longtime cooling spell that put the chill on global warming in Alaska shows no signs of letting up.
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The state's overall temperature dipped 2.4 degrees during the first decade of the new century, a notable shift from the previous 100 years, which had generally trended warmer, according to a study published last summer by the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
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Alaska in 2012 was 2.9 degrees colder than normal. Normal is defined as a 30-year stretch starting in 1981 when Alaska temperatures averaged 32.9 degrees. "Especially remarkable" was January, when the state shivered through record cold, with 20 National Weather Service stations across Alaska were collectively 14 degrees below normal. "For one station it would be a very large deviation, however for the mean value of twenty stations, fairly well distributed over such a large area as Alaska, it is astounding," the paper said.
...Last year, excessive sea ice in Norton Sound led to the cancellation of the herring sac roe fishery, the first time sea ice had called the season since 1992.
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Meanwhile, the Unalakleet and Shaktoolik rivers in Norton Sound are still frozen with very little overflow, allowing safe travel and belated trout fishing through the ice.
"There's no trouble navigating the Unalakleet with snowmachines at this time, which is unheard of," he said. "It's just crazy."
And across the entire Bering Sea, the ice is slowly growing at a time when it should be breaking up, said Kathleen Cole, lead ice forecaster in Alaska for the National Weather Service.
"We're actually making ice rather than having it dissipate," she said.