Image of the Day: Early ice breakup of Beaufort Sea due to early warm temperatures

By Sarah Loff15 April 2016 (NASA) – This image of early ice breakup of the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, was taken by the Suomi NPP satellite’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument infrared channel, at around 1148 UTC on 13 April 2016. Every year, the cap of frozen seawater floating on top of […]

In the Iditarod, global warming makes it a year for the record books – ‘I’m not sure winter ever came to south-central Alaska’

By William Yardley and Kyle Hopkins15 March 2016 NOME, Alaska (Los Angeles Times) – The winters keep getting warmer. The racers keep getting faster. When Dallas Seavey and his team of sled dogs arrived in this remote old gold rush town on the Bering Sea shortly after 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Seavey celebrated his fourth […]

Here’s what global warming has done to the season formerly known as winter

By Matt Smith 10 March 2016 (VICE News) – It’s not just you — it really is hot in here. Winter is coming to a warm, wet close in the Northern Hemisphere, knocking down records on the way. Though fading, the Pacific warming phenomenon El Niño helped drive the average temperatures in the continental United […]

Anchorage is so snow-starved it has to haul snow in by train for Iditarod start

By Tegan Hanlon29 February 2016 (ADN) – How weird has Anchorage’s weather been this winter? Weird enough that an Alaska Railroad spokesman said Monday that a train will deliver seven rail cars loaded with snow to the state’s largest city this week in time for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race ceremonial start on Saturday. […]

As the Arctic roasts, Alaska bakes in one of its warmest winters ever

By Jason Samenow 23 February 2016 (Washington Post) – This winter’s shocking warmth in the Arctic, some seven degrees above average, has oozed into the Alaska which is experiencing one of its mildest recorded winters. So far this winter, Alaska’s temperature has averaged about 10 degrees above normal, ranking third warmest in records that date […]

Testing detects algal toxins in Alaska marine mammals – ‘What really surprised us was finding these toxins so widespread in Alaska, far north of where they have been previously documented’

By Michael MilsteinFebruary 2016 (Northwest Fisheries Science Center) – Toxins from harmful algae are present in Alaskan marine food webs in high enough concentrations to be detected in marine mammals from Southeast Alaska to the Arctic Ocean, including whales, walruses, sea lions, seals, porpoises and sea otters, according to new research published today [Prevalence of […]

In pitiful animal die-offs across the globe — from antelopes to bees to seabirds — global warming may be culprit

By Sarah Kaplan 13 January 2016 (Washington Post) – On the chilly shores of Alaska’s Prince William Sound, tens of thousands of battered bird carcasses are washing up. The birds, all members of a species known as the common murre, appear to have starved to death, wildlife officials said Tuesday. Their black and white bodies […]

What Exxon knew about global warming’s impact on the Arctic

By Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch, and Susanne Rust9 October 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions […]

The rapid and startling decline of the world’s vast boreal forest – ‘Shifts that researchers thought would take place over 50 or a hundred years have taken place over a decade’

By Jim Robbins12 Oct 2015: Report (Yale e360) – The boreal forest wraps around the globe at the top of the Northern Hemisphere in North America and Eurasia. Also known as taiga or snow forest, this landscape is characterized by its long, cold and snowy winters. In North America it extends from the Arctic Circle […]

In the ‘new North’, forest fires are permanently altering the landscape

By Adam Wernick3 October 2015 (PRI) – Scientists are warning that intense wildfires in the northernmost areas of North America are changing the composition of the tundra ecosystem, degrading permafrost and contributing to a northward migration of trees, all of which have serious implications for the future of the climate. Warming air masses resulting from […]

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