Background Articles

The Copper River Basin in Alaska has experienced less reliable snow and ice conditions in recent years, impacting winter activities such as trapping, hunting, and gathering firewood. This study, based on nine oral interviews with local residents, reveals that crossing rivers has become more treacherous and difficult, with significant changes in ice conditions observed since the 1970s. Decreased snowpacks and increased shrub growth have also posed obstacles for accessing winter trails, requiring individuals to cut through forests. These changes, combined with socio-economic and technological factors, have affected the way people engage in winter activities in the Copper River Basin. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding of climate change's impact on winter activities in Alaska and the Circumpolar North.

Climate change has been observed for hundreds of years by the plant specialists of three Odawa Tribes in the Upper Great Lakes along Lake Michigan. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is the focus of two National Park Service (NPS) studies of Odawa Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of plants, ecosystems, and climate change. Data collected during these studies contributed to developing Plant Gathering Agreements between tribes and parks. This analysis derived from 95 ethnographic interviews conducted by University of Arizona (UofA) anthropologists in partnership with tribal appointed representatives. Odawa people recognized in the park 288 plants and five habitats of traditional and contemporary concern. Tribal representatives explained that 115 of these traditional plants and all five habitats are known from multigenerational eyewitness accounts to have been impacted by climate change. The TEK study thus represents what Native people know about the environment. These research findings are neither intended to test their TEK nor the findings of Western science.

The ice outside of Kotzebue in the sound and further out into the Bering Sea is more like May Ice then March ice.

Questions still linger about what caused the bear to kill a woman and her baby — but more important for Wales is the question of how to move on.

World leaders already have many options to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and protect people, according to the United Nations report.

The Barents area is the fastest warming place on the planet. A new study shows that the warming is happening twice as fast as previously thought.

A scientist explains the interaction between "rain-on-snow" events and California's snowpack in Northern California.

The Baltic Sea is experiencing a reduction in ice due to climate change, with this winter seeing significantly less ice compared to previous years.

Residents wonder if a proposed port expansion will help or hinder efforts to address chronic social problems.

Engineers caution that residents wanting to clear their own roofs face greater risk of hurting themselves or damaging roofs than from a collapse.

In coming decades, the ocean conditions that triggered the snow crab crash and harvest closure are expected to be common.

Atmospheric rivers, those long, powerful streams of moisture in the sky, are becoming more frequent in the Arctic, and they’re helping to drive dramatic shrinking of the Arctic’s sea ice cover.

Backyard Buoys project will give residents real time data such as wave height to whaling crews and communities throughout the North Slope. A system of buoys will be displaced across the slope this summer.

For isolated communities at the top of the world, keeping the planet’s largest land predators -- polar bears -- out of town is key to coexistence.

Climatologist Rick Thoman says climate change is driving this more extreme winter snowfall. As the oceans warm, more moisture evaporates into the air. Then, when the atmospheric conditions are right for a storm, that increased evaporation results in “heavier and heavier precipitation,” Thoman said. That’s in part why Anchorage saw 41.2 inches of snow last month, capping off its wettest year on record, according to the National Weather Service.

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.

Canada's outdoor skating on rivers and ponds is increasingly affected by warming winters due to climate change, resulting in unpredictable skating seasons.

The troublesome shipping on the Northern Sea Route continues into the new year. Almost three weeks after the world's most powerful icebreaker arrived in the Chukchi Sea, none of the four vessels stuck in the area have broken out of the ice.

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)

It has been an Arctic odyssey for the ships and crews that in November got stuck in sea-ice on the remote Northern Sea Route. After a month of icy captivity and subsequent icebreaker rescue, a convoy of nine vessels this week made it to safety in the Kara Sea. On December 7, a Russian nuclear icebreaker completed