Background Articles

"Siku" means sea ice in the Siberian Yup'ik language. But about a hundred other Yup'ik words describe different types of sea ice, including icebergs, floating pressure ice ridges, solid ice safe for travel — and "pequ," "an unsuitable area in ice field where the current causes ice to heave up or break up," Vera Metcalf said.

Story telling provides a powerful tool in a changing climate. Epen Hobson has been experiencing the land and ocean through the perspective of an Inuit photographer and hunter. A recipient of the Arctic Resilient Communities Fellowship he shares, "We're an oral people, we tell stories, we teach by telling stories," The effects of climate change are concrete and dramatic for the Arctic communities such as Utqiagvik, and Hopson is hungry to see infrastructure and policy solutions to address them.

The ice outside of Kotzebue in the sound and further out into the Bering Sea is more like May Ice then March ice.

Questions still linger about what caused the bear to kill a woman and her baby — but more important for Wales is the question of how to move on.

World leaders already have many options to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and protect people, according to the United Nations report.

The Barents area is the fastest warming place on the planet. A new study shows that the warming is happening twice as fast as previously thought.

Residents wonder if a proposed port expansion will help or hinder efforts to address chronic social problems.

Engineers caution that residents wanting to clear their own roofs face greater risk of hurting themselves or damaging roofs than from a collapse.

In coming decades, the ocean conditions that triggered the snow crab crash and harvest closure are expected to be common.

Atmospheric rivers, those long, powerful streams of moisture in the sky, are becoming more frequent in the Arctic, and they’re helping to drive dramatic shrinking of the Arctic’s sea ice cover.

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.

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.

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.

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.