Background Articles

Trapped in all that permafrost is an estimated 30 billion tons of carbon. It’s an unfathomable amount, Kirkwood says. With global warming, the permafrost is thawing, threatening to release a “carbon bomb” of heat-trapping methane gas into the atmosphere. But there’s something else lurking in the permafrost that has the potential to be more immediately dangerous to the people and wildlife living in the area: mercury.

More than 700 inches of snow have fallen at Mammoth Mountain, almost burying entire houses and setting new record for snowfall. The snowfall in the Sierra Nevada range will help mitigate drought conditions in coming years.

Atmospheric river boosted California's snowpack, especially in Central and Southern Sierra. Now the levels are record level creating safety issues such as roofs collapsing and helping with drought conditions across the western states.

In addition to blizzard conditions, Kotzebue residents have been experiencing power outages, water service interruptions and travel complications because of the storms.

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.

Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and, in some cases, they may be becoming more acidic. This otherwise undeveloped landscape now looks as if an industrial mine has been in operation for decades, and scientists want to know why.

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

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.

By Seth Borenstein | The Associated Press FILE - A kayaker paddles in Lake Oroville as water levels remain low due to continuing drought conditions in

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.”

This article details the history and environmental concerns surrounding the Red Hill fuel storage facility, including a significant fuel leak and ongoing debates over its operation and oversight.

Drought and extreme heat that scientists link to climate change are altering the UNESCO-protected marshlands. Iraq's average annual temperatures are increasing at nearly double the rate of Earth's.

The Canadian Armed Forces has begun setting up two water purification units at the Sylvia Grinnell River on Monday morning to help Nunavut’s capital with its ongoing water emergency. The military had been waiting for the City of Iqaluit’s approval before setting up the units. The two parties agreed on the location Sunday night, said

A large number of farmers on Saturday staged a protest march against the acute shortage of water at Dadu district located in Pakistan Sindh province located in Pakistan's Sindh province.

The first-ever shortage declaration on the Colorado River forces arid Western states to re-examine their relationship with resources many take for granted, drinking water and cheap hydroelectricity.

Climate warming has accelerated the permafrost degradation, which influences the processes of water supply, runoff and discharge in the Source Area of the Yellow River (SAYR) in the northeast of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

For 30 years now, climate change has been driving the sands further into the Nogai steppe, gradually transforming the traditional homeland of a the people that once dominated much of southern Russia from green and pleasant pasture to barren desert.

Climate change is worsening water scarcity in rural Alaska and a host of new strategies is needed to help address the issue says a recent study.

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Newspaper of record for Nunavut, and the Nunavik territory of Quebec