Background Articles

The state-owned Swedish mining company LKAB says it has found a deposits containing more than one million tons of rare earth oxides near Kiruna in Northern Sweden.

Warming soils beneath Utqiagvik are triggering erosion that threatens homes, infrastructure and cultural resources. The North Slope has seen some of the fastest changes in coastal erosion in the nation.

The North Slope offers a marginal place for a moose because far fewer willow shrubs grow there than in the boreal forest. Moose are recent invaders of the North Slope due to climate warming and expanding willow growth.

The Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., is collapsing into the ocean as it loses up to a meter of coastline each year. The people who live there are in a race against time to preserve their way of life — and their community — before it is washed away.

Garbage and wood were removed by the municipal services of the village of Rytkuchi of the Pevek urban district from the coastline and tundra near the settlement. This was the final stage of a large-scale clean-up, which began in the summer after a strong storm.

Alpine permafrost is thawing, according to an article by the National Science Foundation. This is bad news because thawing releases carbon dioxide and methane and because it can cause destabilization of the land, as a couple of northbound drivers found out last week when their car was buried in the slide at 23 miles, as reported in a Chilkat Valley News article.

Iñupiat communities have been looking for alternatives to traditional ice cellars. Some households switched to using manmade freezers, which can be effective but they affect the taste and the quality of the food, Nelson said. Additionally, power outages, frequent in the villages, can make this storage method unreliable. So the search is on for creative ideas to preserve traditional ice cellars.

Sweden's highest mountain Kebnekaise's southern peak has not shrunk further over the last year, scientists say. "I think the explanation is that it was quite a cold summer up here in the Kebnekaise Mountains and at the Tarfala research station so it has not melted away so much" says Nina Kirchner, director at Tarfala research center.

Anchorage’s backyard wilderness is experiencing a surge in users that shows no signs of letting up. Driven in part by social media and location tracking apps, more people are recreating in historically less-used parts of the park than before.

The Arctic is no stranger to loss. As the region warms nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, glaciers collapse, wildlife suffers and habitats continue to disappear at a record pace.

Scientists have analyzed 1.4 million global lakes, saying the sky is "thirstier" than ever.

Kvikksølv finnes naturlig i naturen, men store mengder kvikksølv kommer også fra menneskelige utslipp. Metylkvikksølv, den giftige formen av kvikksølv…

The temperature on the delar of Svalbard has risen to twice as fast as the time period known. No can forecast at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute document the greatest warming in the world.

Warmer winters and thicker layers of insulating snow are spurring creation of more taliks, sections of ground that doesn’t freeze even in winter.

The City of St. Mary’s and its two tribes, the Yupiit of Andreakfsiy and the Algaaciq Tribe, held a community meeting on June 9. There, resident Geraldine Beans said that community leaders chose an optional evacuation for elders and people who are considered vulnerable. Other residents will have to wait. The fire is the largest in the history of the Lower Yukon valley. It’s been burning for a week and a half, since May 31, and has grown to about 50,000 acres.

Beavers were not previously recognized as an Arctic species, and their engineering in the tundra is considered negligible. Recent findings suggest that beavers have moved into Arctic tundra regions and are controlling surface water dynamics, which strongly influence permafrost and landscape stability. Here we use 70 years of satellite images and aerial photography to show the scale and magnitude of northwestward beaver expansion in Alaska, indicated by the construction of over 10,000 beaver ponds in the Arctic tundra. The number of beaver ponds doubled in most areas between ~ 2003 and ~ 2017. Earlier stages of beaver engineering are evident in ~ 1980 imagery, and there is no evidence of beaver engineering in ~ 1952 imagery, consistent with observations from Indigenous communities describing the influx of beavers over the period. Rapidly expanding beaver engineering has created a tundra disturbance regime that appears to be thawing permafrost and exacerbating the effects of climate change.

ConocoPhillips' massive Willow project would emit 284 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over its 30-year lifetime.

Caucasian glaciers have lost a quarter of their surface area to climate change since the millennium. “We don’t have winters here anymore,” said Sergei Nureddinov, a guest house owner in the mountaintop village of Verkhniy Kani, gesturing to the glacier from his front yard. “The climate catastrophe is here.”

Permafrost contains microbes, mammoths, and twice as much carbon as Earth’s atmosphere. What happens when it starts to melt?

In 2021, the average temperature in Norway was normal, while precipitation was 10 percent below normal. The year is nevertheless marked by great contrasts. The summary of the weather in 2021 was presented at the Meteorological Institute's annual event Climate Status on 5 January. Here you can see video footage of Climate Status (Vimeo)