Background Articles

11,500 years ago, Norway experienced one of the fastest meltdowns the world has seen. Now scientists fear the same thing is happening elsewhere.

A spill that dumped thousands of tons of diesel fuel into the Russian Arctic earlier this year was caused by violations during construction and operation of a storage tank, not permafrost melt, according to a preliminary investigation. 

The sudden deaths of some 330 elephants in northwestern Botswana earlier this year may have occurred because they drank water contaminated by toxic blue-green algae, the government announced Monday.

If carbon emissions continue at current rates, so much mercury will leach from thawing permafrost that fish in the Yukon River could become dangerous to eat within a few decades.

The Red Dog Mine announced last week that it was able to start the use of a new waste water treatment system to purify water after record-breaking warm weather in 2019 caused the sediment levels to rise in the Ikalukrok and Wulik Rivers.

Permafrost thaw surrounding the massive Red Dog Mine is releasing higher natural levels of dissolved minerals and other particles into streams, Teck Resources Ltd. says

In the largest study of glacial lakes ever conducted, researchers using satellite data from NASA and Google Earth have found the volume of water in glacial lakes has increased by 50 per cent since 1990 as glaciers melt due to climate change.

In the Murmansk region, the reclamation of a large waste storage facility for the former Snezhnaya poultry farm, which ceased to exist about 15 years ago, has begun. The total cost of the project is over 461 million rubles.

The largest part of the continental United States to warm more than 2 degrees Celsius since 1895 feeds the Colorado River.

A combination in Colorado of paltry spring snow, warmer temperatures that triggered earlier melting of winter mountain snowpack, feeble rain through summer, and parched soil from previous dry years led to this formal label.

The Russian region is threatened by water- both its excess and its absence. This was announced on Monday at a weekly conference at the National Anti-Crisis Center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia

The number of deaths was more than 13,000

Nine waterways on P.E.I. have experienced anoxic events so far this year, something experts say is unusual. 

Maksim Tokarev, the head of the Save Baikal project, told Sputnik radio about new initiatives aimed at maintaining the cleanliness of the lake.

A group advocating for the conservation of wild Atlantic salmon says the number of adult salmon returning to North America rivers fell to near historic lows last year.

How the beavers got to the Baldwin Peninsula, which is surrounded by salt water and extends north of the Arctic Circle, is anyone’s guess.

Scientists have documented a recent population explosion of beavers on the Baldwin Peninsula near Kotzebue.

Numbers from Fishing Branch, a tributary of the Porcupine River, fell below management and treaty goals, experts from Alaska and the Yukon said at the Yukon River Panel’s meeting in Whitehorse earlier this month.

BRUNY ISLAND, TASMANIA (WASHINGTON POST) - Even before the ocean caught fever and reached temperatures no one had ever seen, Australia's ancient giant kelp was cooked.. Read more at straitstimes.com.

The Arctic Salmon Project collected 2,400 samples from the western Arctic this year — more than the past 20 years combined.