Background Articles

I knew that those Japanese currents would come to our waters, and so that’s why I volunteered to do the testing,” Eddie Ungott, a resident of Gambell.

March becomes the hundredth month in a row with temperatures above normal. "It is unique and shows how fast climate change is happening in the Arctic," says climate scientist Ketil Isaksen at the Meteorological Institute (MET).

Recent storms have destroyed the progress made in ice formation endangering coastal habitats and fishing practices.

Since 2014 St. Lawrence Islanders have been collecting sea water samples, knowing that the radiation would eventually show up. Now the signature of Fukushima has finally been identified, the northern most sample evidence of the plume. Fortunately the levels are low.

Warmer seas have led the fishery to move 300 kilometers further northeast - towards the North Pole. At the same time, cruising traffic in the outlying sea areas is increasing.

The 2015 to 2016 El Niño event brought weather conditions that triggered regional disease outbreaks throughout the world.

Fish provide a vital source of protein for over half the world's population, with over 56 million people employed by or subsisting on fisheries. But climate change is beginning to disrupt the complex, interconnected systems that underpin this major source of food.

Fish populations are declining as oceans warm, putting a key source of food and income at risk for millions of people, according to new research.

The survey started in 1971 as a review of commercially important fish like cod and halibut, but has grown into an annual scientific assessment of all sea life hauled up from the deep.

The winter commercial crabbing season in the Norton Sound will begin February 25 with a quota less than half of its 2018 figure and a third of the 2017 quota.

A new study has documented unexpected consequences following the decline of great white sharks from an area off South Africa. The study found that the disappearance of great whites has led to the emergence of sevengill sharks, a top predator from a different habitat. A living fossil, sevengill sharks closely resemble relatives from the Jurassic period, unique for having seven gills instead of the typical five in most other sharks.

Scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have declared 2018 the fourth warmest year on record. It ranks behind 2016, 2017 and 2015, respectively. And it's only going to get warmer from here, they predict.

Greenhouse gas emissions provide extreme warming on Svalbard.

A new study suggests Greenland ice has hit a new tipping point with unprecedented melting since the early 2000s — and this will have consequences for East Coast cities.

Alex Weber discovered more than 50,000 balls in the ocean near coastal California golf courses. When golf balls degrade, as these were doing, they release plastic particles and toxic chemicals.

Slik har Norge forandret seg. Sakte, nesten umerkelig.

Thousands of female penguins are being stranded along the coast of South America because of water pollution and fishing, research shows. A new study of Megellanic penguins, which breed in Patagonia in southern Argentina, explains for the first time why so many become stuck on beaches hundreds of miles further north.  Researchers found the man-made threats encountered as the

Glacial melt is a source of atmospheric methane.

In some regions, this was the first time in 37 years of water surveys that there was no cold pool.