Background Articles

'There's nothing good about them.' They carry disease and cause billions in damage

Permafrost in some areas of the Canadian Arctic is thawing so fast that it's gulping up the equipment left there to study it.

“Climate change is happening faster than it’s ever happened before in our record,” Utquiagvik-based NOAA scientist Bryan Thomas said. “We’re right in the middle of it.”

This spring has seen record-breaking warm temperatures across Alaska. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the Kuskokwim River is melting early — with devastating consequences.

Colorado has seen more 2,500 avalanches this season, some larger than any on record.

The Kuskokwim River in Southwest Alaska is taking longer to freeze. Mark Leary, a volunteer for Bethel Search and Rescue, talks about what that means for winter transportation in the region.

The Kremlin is tightening its grasp on the Northern Sea Route as diplomatic tensions flare with the US and NATO over Russia's military expansion in the Arctic.

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.

While most of Canada has been experiencing a colder winter, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk have had their warmest February since 2006.

If the trend of reduced ice on the world's lakes continues at its current pace, the Canadian tradition of shinny could become a thing of the past, according to new research.

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.

An official says time and money was running out. No decisions have been made yet on what to do next winter.

Underneath the ground is a thick layer of permafrost and trillions of cubic meters of natural gas. Development is the main source of concern for the reindeer herders who increasingly are hindered by new pipelines, roads and railway lines.

If the ice road between Detah and Yellowknife doesn’t open on Friday, it will break a decades-old record.

The director of Yukon Wildland Fire Management says firefighters had quite a summer, as conditions seem to be changing in the territory.

While public comment has been mixed, the issue of potential risk to subsistence lifestyles in many of Alaska Native villages along the proposed road have played a large part in testimony from Fairbanks community members, specifically at a public comment hearing in November of last year.

Researchers from the National Research Council Canada investigated why the Yukon River didnt freeze at the George Black ferry crossing, where the ice bridge is usually built, for the last two winters.

From Longyearbyen to Kiribati, Bangladesh and California. Author Teresa Grøtan has collected young people's everyday life with climate change in the book "Before the Island Sink."

The B.C. Centre for Disease Control recommends children and elderly stay indoors during lingering smoke from forest fires.

The smoke has pushed pollution in Calgary and other cities to dangerous levels, and cast an unsettling, spooky haze over almost every part of B.C.