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Alaska Air
Wed Jan 05, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.
If you live in a smoggy area, you already know the toll such pollution takes on your view
of things. But on clear days in Alaska, residents can sometimes get views of over 100
miles because the air is so clean. Scientists fear that may be changing, as
correspondent Amy Mayer reports:
From her office at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, atmospheric chemist Cathy Cahill
can look south and see the snow capped, jagged peaks of the Alaska Range.
Our worst 10% of visibility is better than the east coast's best 10% of visibility. We're
spoiled. You would never been able to see the Alaska Range if you were in someplace
like Shenandoah.
But not every day grants that view. Summer wildfires fill the sky with smoke and ash,
and winter's not perfect either.
We have a phenomenon every winter of Arctic Haze, where we've got emissions
primarily from Russia but from some areas of northern Europe as well, crossing the
poles, swinging into Alaska from the North and you can see those as elevated brown
clouds, you can see those as far south as Fairbanks but they're more obvious over the
pole or near Barrow.
Cahill uses small filters to collect air samples around Interior Alaska. At Denali, she
monitors the air quality that is already known to be the cleanest of any national park in
the country.
A lot of what we have is, we've got the cleanest air around, now how do you improve it.
How do you improve on something that's really pretty clean to begin with?
It's tough to sell the idea of clean up at home when the air's generally pristine. Finding
ways to encourage other countries to reduce their emissions is an even greater
challenge.
Amy Mayer takes in the Alaskan Range from her window in Fairbanks. Thanks today to
Subaru for its generous support of The Weather Notebook.
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