Last week, social media across Western Alaska lit up as residents posted photos and videos of open water where, normally, there's ice.
How will climate change affect health in Alaska? Dangerous travel conditions could cause more accidents, warmer temperatures could spread new diseases and the topsy-turvy weather could worsen mental health. Those are some conclusions from a new state report released Monday. Listen now
When the river takes the first houses, the village could start to scatter. And Newtok’s blend of the modern and traditional could erode away with the land.
At a lab in Kodiak, researchers are working to understand whether crabs can adapt to ocean acidification.
The ice road on the frozen Kuskokwim River has been plowed to its longest length ever: 355 miles. That’s longer than most traditional highways in the state.
The river is so rough in the Upper Kuskokwim area that it is impassable to vehicle and snow machine traffic. Big boulders of snow-covered ice are scattered across the river caused by high water and a late freeze up.
While many communities along the Kuskokwim River escaped major flooding, one small village is still seeing high water.
Napakiak doesn’t have a boat landing anymore. Storms over the past week ate huge chunks from the Kuskokwim riverbank close to the city school and fuel
Melting permafrost and major storms are eating away at the coastal Alaskan village of Newtok. Residents are desperate to move, but the U.S. has no climate change policy that could help them.
Thawing permafrost is warping water and sewer lines. Along the coast and rivers, erosion is threatening the lakes that communities use for drinking water or the lagoons where they dump sewage.
This November in Utqiaġvik was the hottest on record, averaging 17.2°F. It was so warm that NOAA's quality control algorithms flagged the data. “When we look out on the ocean right now we see a few icebergs,” Thomas said. “Normally we would see white to the horizon in the past, and in this case we’re seeing dark water to the horizon.”
An early melt-out date can make for an especially bad wildfire season, but this year, it’s right on schedule for much of the state. Listen now
"It was pretty crazy how much water just kind of showed up," said Michelle St. Martin, whose field season was cut short by melting sea ice.
There are plenty of seals in Unalaska, but ringed seals -- who make their homes on the ice -- are rare.
According to Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, approximately 400 gallons of an oily water mix had been recovered from the Port of Valdez as of Saturday night.
While reproductive failure is common for some species like black-legged kittiwakes, it isn’t for murres. In some places less than one percent of the chicks survived.
Scientists are trying out crowdsourcing to comb through pictures looking for sea lions.
Dead crowns in the canopy and rusty-colored branches are woven in with the otherwise healthy, green temperate rainforest. About a third of the trees around here were hit by the voracious sawfly. The larvae get mistaken for caterpillars. Adults are a kind of non-stinging wasp, a little smaller than a pinky finger.
"These ridges that we’re standing on, there would have been more of them, and they would have been bigger," ice researcher Andy Mahoney said. "The features that we now see, they’re something of a shadow from the past." Listen now
Scientists found an enriched uranium particle over the Aleutian Islands and don’t know where it came from.
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