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After kneeling in defrosted marine mammal goo ... doctors treated me for a seal finger infection," Peterson wrote. Seal finger is a bacterial infection that hunters contract from handling the body parts of seals. The only seals Peterson had handled were those in the log cabin. Those seals had been frozen in permafrost for decades.

A scientific paper published recently hints at how increasing winter rainfall will affect the Arctic muskox. An N.W.T. biologist says winter rain isn't good for the mammal, but it's actually warmer summers that could prove detrimental.

Average number of days with heavy rain or snow across Canada has been outside norm since spring 2013

A new study has uncovered previously unknown effects of rain-on-snow events, winter precipitation and ice tidal surges on the muskoxen.

Researchers reveal why Arctic sea ice began to melt in the middle of winter two years ago -- and that the increased melting of ice in summer is linked to recurring periods of fair weather.

Oversight of fish farming companies is lacking according to ecologist Cristian Gallo of the Westfjords Natural History Institute.

The winter season of 2016-2017 proved to be the fifth warmest on record for Georgia, sparking an unusually large number of insects during the following warm months.

This is not the first time the village of Chefornak has faced the threat of erosion and flooding, but relocating won’t be as easy as it was last time.

Climate change may be enabling beavers to move deeper into the Arctic. And as they move, they magnify climate change’s effects.

A team of scientists presented data on Tuesday suggesting that even as the state of Alaska has warmed up extremely rapidly in recent years, snowfall in the iconic Denali National Park has increased dramatically during the era of human-driven global warming.

The warmth of the Bering Sea in 2016 was unprecedented in the historical record, and the warmth of the GOA nearly so. The FAR values Fig. 8.2. Normalized anomalies of (a) heat content and (b) SSTs for the present (black) and preindustrial (blue) climate of the GOA (circle and plus) and Bering Sea (triangle and x) regions from the five model ensembles. Anomalies exceeding 2016 value are in red (shapes as indicated), and the ensemble/region means are shown by the solid lines. Mean probability distributions (%) of (c) heat content and (d) SSTs from the model ensembles; solid (open) circles indicate present (preindustrial) climate for the GOA (blue) and Bering Sea (red). Spread of individual models is shown by the smaller, corresponding open/closed circles. Dashed vertical lines show the 2016 anomalies: GOA (blue), Bering Sea (red). AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY JANUARY 2018 | S43 based on an ensemble of five global climate models indicate that the 2016 warm ocean anomalies cannot be explained without anthropogenic climate warming, although the region’s large internal variability was also a contributing factor (Fig. 8.1 and online supplement material). A strong El Niño with a positive PDO (warm) phase, together with preconditioning of the waters during 2014/15 and the anomalous atmospheric circulation of early 2016, made for a “perfect storm” of marine heating around Alaska. Both anthropogenic forcing and internal variability were necessary for the extreme warmth of the subarctic seas. Our conclusions are consistent with and extend previous findings concerning the 2014 warm SST anomalies in the northeast Pacific (Weller et al. 2015). Additionally, the trajectory of the present climate with RCP8.5 indicates that SST and HC extreme anomalies like 2016 will become common in the coming decades. Given the many impacts of the 2016 anomaly, the future climate projected here will result in a profound shift for people, systems, and species when such warm ocean temperatures become common and not extreme in the GOA and Bering regions.

On a remote Alaskan sandbar, under the watchful eye of a devoted scientist for more than four decades, climate change is forcing a colony of seabirds into a real-time race: evolve or go extinct.

When the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a satellite into orbit on Oct. 13, it did so despite opposition from Inuit leaders in Canada and Greenland over its potential to contaminate an important Arctic area.

The study is base on total flying insect biomass in 63 nature protection areas in Germany over the course of 27 years.

Recent decline of sea ice habitat has coincided with increased use of land by polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the southern Beaufort Sea (SB), which may alter the risks of exposure to pathogens and contaminants. We assayed blood samples from SB polar bears to assess prior exposure to the pathogens Brucella spp., Toxoplasma gondii, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, and Neospora caninum, estimate concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and evaluate risk factors associated with exposure to pathogens and POPs. We found that seroprevalence of Brucella spp. and T. gondii antibodies likely increased through time, and provide the first evidence of exposure of polar bears to C. burnetii, N. caninum, and F. tularensis. Additionally, the odds of exposure to T. gondii were greater for bears that used land than for bears that remained on the sea ice during summer and fall, while mean concentrations of the POP chlordane (ΣCHL) were lower for land-based bears. Changes in polar bear behavior brought about by climate-induced modifications to the Arctic marine ecosystem may increase exposure risk to certain pathogens and alter contaminant exposure pathways.

A study of rock avalanches in the western part of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve found that the likelihood of large slides covering about 2 square miles has at least doubled in the last five years.

Climate warming is likely to bring more episodes of heavy rain, above-freezing winter thaws and scorching hot summer days in the coming decades, says a study by scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Only 1,123 adult winter Chinook salmon, once one of the biggest salmon runs on the Sacramento River and its tributaries, returned to the Sacramento Valley in 2017, according to a report sent to the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) by the...

Need a reason to be concerned about rising sea level? I've got eight.

Alberta consistently sees an average of 1400 wildfires each year however, the increased economic costs due to firefighting, equipment, damaged properties, evacuations, insurance, remote housing and food can be a challenge.