Background Articles

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

Some of the world's leading makers of flu vaccines say they could make hundreds of millions of bird flu shots for humans within months if a new strain of avian influenza ever jumps across the species divide.

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.

A loose raft of brown seaweed spanning about twice the width of the U.S. is inching across the Caribbean. Among annual Sargassum censuses in the Atlantic Ocean, “2018 was the record year, and we’ve had several big years since,” says Brian Lapointe, an oceanographer at Florida Atlantic University, who has studied seaweed for decades. “This is the new normal, and we’re going to have to adapt to it.”

The lawmakers discussed the challenges faced by Alaska’s fishermen in a remote address to Kodiak’s annual commercial fishing trade show.

A study published in Nature Climate Change examined how 10 big rivers in the Arctic had moved 50 years, and found they did not migrate as much as expected.

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.

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.

Oulu has more than 900 kilometres of separated bike paths, which is comparable to Montreal. In the winter, the city plows this huge bike network by 6 a.m. every day and will plow multiple times a day if needed.

With ice declining, bowhead whales of the Pacific Arctic choose to stay longer in the waters up north. A change in migration patterns could affect the bowheads' health and safety, as well as the hunters' access to the subsistence resource.

The recent death of an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia's Prey Veng province infected with avian influenza has reinvigorated concern over the virus potentially gaining the ability to spread among humans. And while experts maintain the risk of that happening "remains low" at this time, the World Health Organization has said that increasing reports of avian influenza infection in humans are "worrying."

Seen as a bright spot in a troubled coastal economy, seaweed cultivation must overcome many obstacles to become big business in Alaska.

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.

The Institute of Public Health is expanding the area where they recommend that people take the vaccine against the tick borne encephalitis.

This weekend marks the third anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the global pandemic — and Juneau’s wastewater is awash with COVID. 

A video of the reindeer on the steps of the wind turbine has caused wonder. Aren't the animals intimidated by wind power anyway? Here are some reasons why it is so difficult to find clear facts and secure figures.

At times, the water level in the river Skjoma in Narvik is so low that the salmon freezes to death. But Statkraft has refused to release more water into the watercourse. Now the NVE intervenes.

A scientist explains the interaction between "rain-on-snow" events and California's snowpack in Northern California.

Libraries at two Anchorage elementary schools — Klatt and Spring Hill — were closed after the maintenance department identified ceiling damage. The district also decided “out of an abundance of caution” to proactively close the libraries of Bear Valley Elementary, Fire Lake Elementary, and Ravenwood Elementary, which share the same building design with Klatt and Spring Hill.

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