By Bob Henson 29 July 2019 (Weather Underground) – Over the next few days, meltwater will cascade across the Greenland Ice Sheet, and sea ice will dissolve into the Arctic Ocean in amounts that could be unprecedented for late July and early August. The same air mass that led to the sharpest, hottest heat wave ever […]
By Edward Helmore 26 July 2019 (The Guardian) – The Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia, and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space. The Arctic region has recorded its hottest June ever. Since the start of that month, more than 100 wildfires have […]
By Brian Kahn 18 July 2019 (Gizmodo) – Vast stretches of Earth’s northern latitudes are on fire right now. Hot weather has engulfed a huge portion of the Arctic, from Alaska to Greenland to Siberia. That’s helped create conditions ripe for wildfires, including some truly massive ones burning in remote parts of the region that […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters 5 July 2019 (Weather Underground) – The temperature in Alaska’s largest city of Anchorage soared to an astonishing 90°F on Thursday, July 4, smashing the city’s previous all-time heat record by a remarkable 5°F. Anchorage’s average high temperature for July 4 is 65°F; records for Anchorage date back to 1952. All-time […]
By John Bacon 4 July 2019 (USA TODAY) – Alaska’s biggest city won’t be marking the nation’s 243rd birthday with fireworks displays as Anchorage struggles with dry conditions, wildfires and what could become the hottest day on record. The city’s all-time high temperature record of 85 degrees dates back 50 years. It could fall today, with a […]
By Stephen Rodrick 30 May 2019 (Rolling Stone) – Toby Lingle was cremated in a 49ers cap, a Star Wars T-shirt and sunglasses shortly after his funeral at Highland Park Community Church in Casper, Wyoming. He was 43. The outfit was the daily wear for an aggressively coarse and casual man. Lingle was that guy, […]
By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy 6 June 2019 (The Harvard Gazette) – About a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in permafrost. Now, it turns out these permanently frozen beds of soil, rock, and sediment are actually not so permanent: They’re thawing at an increasing rate. Human-induced climate change is warming these lands, melting the ice […]
By Bob Henson 20 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – The summer solstice arrives on Friday, 21 June 2019, and so does the second year of “warming stripes”. Launched in 2018, this growing campaign builds on a set of imagery developed by University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins: colored stripes that portray a century-plus of global […]
By Oliver Milman 14 June 2019 (The Guardian) – A city in western Alaska has lost a huge stretch of riverbank to erosion that may turn it into an island, amid renewed warnings from scientists over the havoc triggered by the accelerating melting of the state’s ice and permafrost. Residents of the small city of […]
By Jan Wesner Childs 14 June 2019 (The Weather Channel) – Scientists studying climate change expected layers of permafrost in the Canadian Arctic to melt by the year 2090. Instead, it’s happening now. A new study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that unusually warm summers in the Canadian High Arctic between 2003 […]