By Bill Hoffman28 November 2013 (Sunshine Coast Daily) – Lindsay Dines has been watching dead mutton birds wash in at Teewah for more than a month. He knows death is part of their migratory fate. Their long, figure eight of the Pacific that starts in Tasmania, touches the northern hemisphere Aleutian Islands, and then California […]
By Ben Tracy12 November 2013 SANTA CRUZ, California (CBS News) – Scientists on the West Coast are at a loss to explain what’s killing sea stars, also known as starfish. In some places, 95 percent of the starfish population has died. Marine biologist Pete Raimondi showed CBS News the tide pools along California’s Monterey Bay. […]
By Wendy Koch9 October 2013 NORTH POLE, Alaska (USA TODAY) – Up the road from Santa Claus Lane, past the candy cane-striped streetlamps, Cathy Richard’s backyard has a problem that not even elves — or the big guy in red — could fix. The wood deck moves up and down, like a slow-motion sleigh. “You […]
By Jason Samenow4 October 2013 (Washington Post) – In an official public forecast discussion, the Anchorage National Weather Service office – whose employees are working without knowledge of when they will be paid during the ongoing Federal shutdown – encoded this secret message: “Please pay us.” The first letter in each of the first 11 […]
By DAN JOLING, Associated Press 1 October 2013 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – An estimated 10,000 walrus unable to find sea ice over shallow Arctic Ocean water have come ashore on Alaska’s northwest coast. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Friday photographed walrus packed onto a beach on a barrier island near Point […]
By Frances Beinecke28 August 2013 (NRDC) – Earlier this summer, I walked along the spit of land where the Chukchi Sea meets the Beaufort Sea at the top of Alaska. As our group looked out at pack-ice sculpted by wind and water currents, our local guide told us about the Inupiat whaling crew captained by […]
17 August 2013 (AP) – An intense heat wave in Siberia has contributed to an unusual flare up of wildfires across the fragile and carbon-rich landscape. Smoke from the fires is lofting high into the atmosphere, and is drifting toward the Arctic, where soot can hasten the melting of snow and sea ice. The Siberian […]
By by Adam Voiland17 July 2013 (NASA) – On July 14, 2013, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of three large wildfires burning in the Yukon territory of western Canada. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fire. The image is […]
By Jason Samenow19 June 2013 (Washington Post) – After Monday’s record-breaking temperatures, it remains unseasonably warm in Alaska. And the heat may stick around – at least in the northern part of the state. Writes the NWS office serving Fairbanks: …REGARDLESS OF WHICH MODEL IS FOLLOWED…ALL OF THEM SPELL EXTREME HEAT FOR NORTHERN ALASKA ALL […]
By Aaron Kase 20 June 2013 (Salon) – The habitat for half the world supply of wild sockeye salmon — as well as a critical area for other wildlife, tourism and native peoples — is at urgent risk of being filled with pollutants, and sterilized in the name of gold and copper mining. Dillingham is […]
