Background Articles

As the climate warms and Arctic sea ice retreats and gets thinner, more light is getting through. “Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behaviour – especially how the tiny organisms rise and fall within the water column,” the AWI said in a news release on their website.

A squall that dropped barely an inch of snow Friday morning added just enough accumulation to make this the snowiest November in Anchorage since recordkeeping began in 1953. The National Weather Service measured 1.1 inches at the agency’s Sand Lake offices between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., according to meteorologist Kristine Chen. That puts the total snow accumulation at 39.1 inches, narrowly surpassing the 1994 total of 38.8 inches, she said.

Climate change is causing infrastructure collapse and increased polar bear encounters on Little Diomede Island, Alaska, as melting permafrost undermines buildings and ice loss affects wildlife behavior.

Coyotes’ recent occupation of one of the most densely human-populated cities in America may have started around 2003. That’s when a team led by Benjamin Sacks of the University of California, Davis extracted DNA from the blood of a male coyote captured in the Presidio and later returned there.

New research from the University of Alaska Southeast shows the scale of mountain goat mortality from avalanches for the first time.

The article reports on a successful emergency response drill in Chukotka, Russia, where a simulated bird flu outbreak was contained.

Worms infecting fish grow four times faster at higher temperatures and manipulate the behavior of fish.

Winter drownings become more common on warmer days or when rain has fallen on snow, leaving the ice thinner, weaker, and less stable.

The Arctic Sounder - Serving the Northwest Arctic and the North Slope

City construction leaves trees weaker long after the construction project is over and the trees have less of a positive impact on the urban environment.

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.

As earthworms silently devour leaf litter across the country, they are changing soils, restructuring ecosystems and depleting our forests' carbon stocks.

Low stocks have prompted the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) to cancel the red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea.

The Arctic has long been portrayed as a distant end-of-the-Earth place, disconnected from everyday common experience. But as the planet rapidly warms, what happens in this icy region, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the globe, increasingly affects lives around the world. On Dec. 14, 2021, a team of 111

Authorities try to talk down a wave of panic buying in B.C. stores as washed-out roads and rail lines snarl supply chains

"White-nose syndrome" was found in Ontario and Quebec caves, mines and attics in the winter of 2009-2010. A decade after a devastating fungus first appeared in Ontario, wiping out up to 95 per cent of the province’s bats, scientists are beginning to see encouraging signs that bats may be on the rebound.

Scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences hypothesize that as the melting of the permafrost becomes more prevalent, so will the incidence of lung cancer.

With homes dilapidating, shores eroding and staircases falling off the houses, Point Lay residents are living through some of the most severe consequences of the warming climate in Alaska.

As atmospheric scientists, we found in a recent study that thawing permafrost contains lots of microscopic ice-nucleating particles. These particles make it easier for water droplets to freeze; and if the ones in permafrost get airborne, they could affect Arctic clouds.