UNALAKLEET, Alaska — It’s October and we haven’t yet had a frost. The ground is still soft. When my grandpa was little, ice anchored to the shore would begin to form at this time of year. But last year that didn’t happen until around March and it melted soon after.

We are Inupiat , northern indigenous people with communities from Alaska to Greenland. I had always thought the cold was necessary for the ways we relate to this earth. But we may have to learn to live without it. Last winter, there was less ice in the Bering Sea than any winter since the start of record-keeping in 1850.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted a bottom-trawl survey in the summer and found that a large cold pool of water that has historically formed southwest of the fishing community I call home was gone. Sandwiched between Russia and Alaska, the cold-water pool, or curtain, is created when the sea ice melts during the summer, making a natural barrier in the Bering Sea .

The creatures in the part of the sea north of the barrier are usually cold-water fish like small cod and the mammals that eat them. Larger Pacific cod and pollock and creatures like sea lions typically remain in the south. Without the cold-water barrier, these southern fish appear to be moving farther and farther north.