Alaska Division of Forestry spokesman Norm McDonald said the 2-acre fire's exact cause has not been determined but is suspected to be similar to that of four smaller Mat-Su wildfires earlier Thursday. Those blazes were tracked to backfires from a white Chevrolet pickup truck.
City park staff have set up barriers in hopes of encouraging passersby to stay far away. Potential fixes could include putting up a wall and relocating the bike path or road.
A new study estimates that climate impacts to public infrastructure in Alaska will total about $5 billion by century's end.
The world’s permafrost holds vast stores of carbon. What happens when it thaws?
The incident appears similar to an oil and gas release in 2017 blamed on thawing permafrost and hot production fluids.
Temperatures in the area were unseasonably high last week, reaching into the mid-40s, according to the National Weather Service. Then temperatures dropped below freezing Sunday and into Monday morning. "There's a lot of water flowing underground in this area," McCarthy said. The freeze-thaw "caused some instability and that made it slide."
Because ice makes up a good portion of the underground foundation of northern Alaska, thawing has dropped the landscape as much as 3 feet in some places.
The 2007 fire was probably the first for that area in 6,500 years, according to scientific evidence examined later, Higuera said. But the wait for the next big burn won't be nearly as long, according to the evidence gathered in the study.
In villages like Kongiganak, communities have stopped burying their dead because, as the permafrost melts, the oldest part of their cemetery is sinking.
"Yesterday we came over to do an assessment of the high-water flood storm," said Northwest Arctic Borough Deputy Director of Public Services Dickie Moto, who grew up in Deering. "They lost a lot of ground on the front and on the back side of town because of the high water and rough seas.
Smoke from a handful of fires in northeast Alaska and across the border in Canada drifted south to Fairbanks on Tuesday and is expected to linger through Wednesday night.
The celebrity glacier on the Kenai Peninsula, though relatively small and getting smaller, looms large in the public consciousness.
Alaskas tundra landscapes carpet a good portion of the state, from the North Slope to the elbow of the Alaska Peninsula. Researchers say it's slowly sinking in places -- as much as a fifth of an inch each year.
A species of seaweed has been washing up on beaches across the Caribbean and South Florida.
Nunavut is not prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change and doesn't have a plan to deal with them, according to the latest report by Canada's auditor general.
The fire came at a time of heightened risk of wildfires in parts of Scotland due to dry weather and large areas of dead vegetation. Other incidents included fires on Ben Lomond in the Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, on Gruinard Island in Wester Ross and near Dornoch.
The Northway Mall in northeast Anchorage sits almost totally empty. That’s led to people dumping loads of trash, furniture, appliances and industrial waste all over the property.
Of the 140 unstable slopes along the 92-mile park road, Pretty Rocks has the most potential to disrupt traffic.
In northern Alaska, an amphitheater of frozen ground thaws where a northern river cuts into it, exposing walls of ice. The feature, known by scientists as “yedoma,” is the largest of its kind yet found in Alaska. A great wall of ice holds a lot of treasures from the past, which science is eager to explore.
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