Caribou and geese at Teshekpuk Lake in North Slope Borough, Alaska in 2019. The Trump administration, in its final days, decided to open millions more acres of land in the Alaskan Arctic to oil and gas drilling, including the wetlands around Teshekpuk Lake, which are a crucial breeding area for migratory birds and calving grounds for roaming caribou. Photo: Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

Trump administration opens millions more acres of Alaska to drilling – “A last-minute and irresponsible effort to open an enormous amount of land in a sensitive area”

By Dino Grandoni 5 January 2021 (The Washington Post) – The Trump administration, in its final days, decided to open millions more acres of land in the Alaskan Arctic to oil and gas drilling. The decision from the Bureau of Land Management on Monday, finalized just two weeks before President Trump is set to leave office, will […]

Record flooding caused this landslide in Haines, Alaska on 2 December 2020. Photo: Seaba Heli / Facebook

“The wettest day ever”: At least 6 people missing, homes destroyed after record-breaking Southeast Alaska rainstorm

By Jessica Flores 3 December 2020 (USA TODAY) – Evacuations and search and rescue efforts were underway Wednesday after a record-breaking rainstorm swept across Southeast Alaska, triggering mudslides and widespread flooding. Multiple precipitation records were broken Tuesday across the region, including a single-day rainfall record from 1946, according to the National Weather Service in Juneau. […]

Map showing surface air temperature anomaly for May 2020 relative to the May average for the period 1981-2010. May 2020 was the hottest May on record. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

May 2020 was hottest May on record – “The really large anomalies started during January, and since then this signal has been quite persistent”

By Kelly Macnamara and Marlowe Hood 5 June 2020 PARIS (AFP) – Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average last month in Siberia, home to much of Earth’s permafrost, as the world experienced its warmest May on record, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said Friday. Large swathes of Siberia have been unusually warm for […]

Coastal erosion encroaches on a house in Happisburgh, Norfolk, UK. Photo: Philip Bird, LRPS CPAGB / Shutterstock

15 towns being slowly swallowed by the sea – Coastal communities fighting a losing battle with the ocean

4 March 2020 (Love Property) – Positioned on the frontline of climate change, the world’s most vulnerable shoreline communities face an uncertain future. Plagued by ever-worsening coastal erosion and rising sea levels, their existence hangs precariously in the balance. As the tide continues to draw in, take a look at 15 towns being gradually reclaimed […]

Surface air temperature anomaly for February 2020 relative to the average for the period 1981-2010. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

The boreal winter season 19/20 was by far the warmest winter season ever recorded in Europe – “Europe has been experiencing its mildest winter on record”

4 March 2020 (C3S) – With persistent mild weather over Europe, particularly in the north and east, the past winter was 3.4 °C warmer than the average winter for the period 1981-2010. The temperature was almost 1.4°C higher than that of the previous warmest winter, 2015/16. Back in November C3S seasonal predictions provided strong indications […]

Dead salmon on the shores of the Ugashik, Alaska in July 2019. More than 100,000 fish in Bristol Bay were killed by heat stress in 2019. Photo: Birch Block

Record summer heat in Alaska wiped out at least 100,000 Kuskokwim salmon in Bristol Bay – “I’ve never seen a salmon that is still ocean-bright acting in such a way”

By Isabelle Ross 15 January 2020 DILLINGHAM, Alaska (Alaska Public Media) – The sun beat down relentlessly on Bristol Bay this summer, heating up the rivers and lakes where millions of sockeye salmon returned to spawn. July was the region’s hottest month on record, and in some rivers, that heat was lethal. Tim Sands, an […]

On 1 January 2016 and 2 January 2016, 6,540 common murre carcasses were found washed ashore near Whitter, Alaska, translating into about 8,000 bodies per mile of shoreline — one of the highest beaching rates recorded during the mass mortality event. Photo: David B. Irons

Huge “hot blob” in Pacific Ocean caused mass starvation in largest seabird die-off – “The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent”

By Michelle Ma 15 January 2020 (UW News) – The common murre is a self-sufficient, resilient bird. Though the seabird must eat about half of its body weight in prey each day, common murres are experts at catching the small “forage fish” they need to survive. Herring, sardines, anchovies and even juvenile salmon are no […]

Precipitation averages in the contiguous U.S. for overlapping two-year calendar periods, 1895-2019. The period 2018-19 was the wettest of these, with 69.43” coming in well above the previous record of 68.62” from 1982-83. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

Second wettest year in U.S. history – Warmest year on record in Alaska

By Bob Henson 8 January 2020 (Weather Underground) – Capping a spectacularly soggy period that spanned parts of two calendar years, the contiguous United States saw its second wettest year on record in 2019, according to NOAA’s annual summary issued on Wednesday. The national average temperature wasn’t especially hot by recent standards, but there were […]

Small area income and poverty estimates (SAIPE), 2007-2018. Data: U.S. Census Bureau Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program. Graphic: U.S. Census Bureau

Poverty grew in one-third of U.S. counties despite strong national economy

By Tim Henderson 19 December 2019 (Pew) – Despite an economic recovery that lifted people out of poverty in most areas of the country, poverty increased in at least one county in every state between 2016 and 2018. The poverty rate grew in 30% of counties between 2016 and 2018, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census […]

The tail of a male grey whale that stranded near Victoria, B.C. in April 2019, with skin eaten by an infestation of cyamids, or whale lice. Photo: Fisheries and Oceans Canada

In 2019, 214 grey whales washed up dead on the West Coast of North America – “They get eaten alive”

By Lisa Johnson 28 December 2019 (CBC News) – The first grey whale found dead in B.C. last year was in such rough shape that someone called to report it was tangled up in a big pink buoy. The pink wasn’t plastic, officials learned when they arrived to tow the skinny male to shore near […]

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