Photo gallery: Seattle kayakers protest Shell’s Polar Pioneer drilling rig

17 May 2015 (Grist) – An estimated 500 climate activists took to kayaks, canoes, paddleboards, and even a solar-powered party barge on Saturday to tell Shell to get the hell out of Seattle. Rallying cry: #sHellNo! The oil giant brought a huge drilling rig, the Polar Pioneer, to the city’s port on Thursday, over objections […]

‘Epic’ flooding on Alaska’s Dalton Highway hinders North Slope oil operations

By Alex DeMarban21 May 2015 DEADHORSE (Alaska Dispatch News) – Unprecedented flooding continues to interfere with daily operations on the North Slope oil patch after surging waters wiped away swaths of the Dalton Highway and isolated a section of Deadhorse, the jumping-off point for the sprawling industrial region. “This is just epic,” said Mike Coffey, […]

Tree-cover loss spikes in Russia and Canada, remains high globally

By Nigel Sizer, Rachael Petersen, James Anderson, Matt Hansen, Peter Potapov, and David Thau2 April 2015 (WRI) – New, high-resolution satellite-based maps released today by the University of Maryland and Google on Global Forest Watch, a partnership of over 60 organizations convened by the World Resources Institute, reveal a significant recent surge in tree cover […]

Massive amounts of fresh water, glacial melt pouring into Gulf of Alaska – Melt adds 57 cubic kilometers of water per year

CORVALLIS, Oregon, 19 March 2015 (OSU) – Incessant mountain rain, snow and melting glaciers in a comparatively small region of land that hugs the southern Alaska coast and empties fresh water into the Gulf of Alaska would create the sixth largest coastal river in the world if it emerged as a single stream, a recent […]

Graph of the Day: Observed surface radiative forcing by CO2, 2000-2010

25 February 2015 (Nature) – a, Time series of observed spectrally integrated (520–1,800 cm−1) CO2 surface radiative forcing at SGP (in red) with overlaid CT2011 estimate of CO2 concentration from the surface to an altitude of 2 km (grey), and a least-squares trend of the forcing and its uncertainty (blue). b, Power spectral density of […]

Iditarod show goes on despite lack of snow – City crews overnight delivered up to 350 dump truck loads of snow and spread it out over city blocks so the show could go on

By MARK THIESSEN8 March 2015 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – If there is one day when mushers in the Iditarod sled dog race don’t have to worry about trail conditions, it should be Saturday during the ceremonial start. A lack of snow south of the Alaska Range created treacherous trail conditions, forcing race officials to move […]

Polar ice loss worries photographer Camille Seaman – ‘It’s painful to see the devastation. It’s painful to know what is being lost’

By Duncan McCue 2 March 2015 (CBC News) – It was by chance that Camille Seaman first travelled north — a bumped flight on Alaska Airlines led to a free trip to Kotzebue on the Bering Strait. Little did the San Francisco-based photographer know it was the beginning of a decade-long quest, an unshakable compulsion […]

The front line of climate change: Alaska village must relocate as Arctic sea ice thins

By Michael Walsh 25 February 2015 (Yahoo News) – Climate change is forcing an isolated Alaskan village, roughly 80 miles above the Arctic Circle, to relocate. The very existence of Kivalina, a town with about 400 residents on a tiny barrier island off Alaska’s northwest coast, is under threat as Arctic sea ice continues to […]

Greenhouse effect observed directly over 10-year span – ‘We’re actually measuring the fact that rising carbon dioxide concentrations are leading to the greenhouse effect’

By Becky Oskin   25 February 2015 (LiveScience) – The climate-changing greenhouse effect exists and has been directly measured in the United States, a new study reports. The results confirm what scientists had already proved through models and laboratory experiments: Pumping carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere is warming the Earth’s surface. “We’re actually measuring the […]

Scientists solve mystery of West Coast starfish die-off

By Katie Campbell17 November 2014 SEATTLE (KCTS9) – After months of research, scientists have identified the pathogen at the heart of the starfish wasting disease that’s been killing starfish by the millions along the Pacific shores of North America, according to research published Monday. They said it’s a virus that’s different from all other known […]

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