Background Articles

Six weeks after a series of snowstorms dumped more than three feet of snow, bus stops along a handful of state-maintained roads remain buried, forcing transit users to navigate deep, slippery drifts and towers of snow.

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.

Local farms help provide eggs with statewide shortage during avian flu outbreak.

Federal officials denied an emergency request to close crucial habitat for Bristol Bay red king crab to all commercial fishing.

Bristol Bay will receive 13 million in Federal Funding to help with projects such as safe drinking water.

The potential impact on caribou and the way of life in Northwest Arctic if Ambler Mining District is opened.

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.

Ship captains are battling with major volumes of sea-ice across the Russian far north. Temperature data show that the Arctic has almost never before been this hot.

Rain began to fall on the already snow-covered Yamal Peninsula, an Arctic region of northwest Siberia, in November 2013. Rain fell for the next 24 hours.  As rain saturated the snow, the temperature dropped below freezing, turning the precipitation into a thick, icy crust. 

A recent Interior Department grant aims to help residents in Newtok move to higher ground, but it’s just a sliver of what’s needed.

National Weather Service says Alaska has been lucky to have three La Niña years. Due to climate change we could see a shift into warmer La and El Nino's.

Mayors of power municipalities in Norway want new industry in the villages where electricity is produced, instead of sending it away to the city. Local power is very efficient.

The arctic fox population across the Nordic region has declined for decades, but recent data suggests cross-border cooperation between Finland, Norway and Sweden is helping turn things around. Arctic Fox dens and cub population is highest in all three countries.

The state-owned Swedish mining company LKAB says it has found a deposits containing more than one million tons of rare earth oxides near Kiruna in Northern Sweden.

Language supported by the AVMA in new legislation will coordinate federal activities aimed at combating zoonotic disease outbreaks. The measure was among other provisions relevant to animal health that Congress passed before the end of the 2022.

Avian flu outbreak in Washington prompts cull of over 1 million eggs. This has led to a shortage of eggs in urbans areas such as Anchorage and rural communities in Alaska. The egg-shortage adds to the Covid-19 supply chain issues.

The Yukon, the N.W.T. and western Nunavut are experiencing above-average temperatures. According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, it's going to stay that way for the month of January.

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.

Streams in Alaska are turning orange with iron and sulfuric acid. Scientists are trying to figure out why

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.