Beetle damage skyrockets to nearly a million acres in Southcentral Alaska – “This may just be the beginning”

By Zaz Hollander 1 October 2018 PALMER (Anchorage Daily News) – A beetle infestation already decimating Susitna Valley spruce trees worsened sharply this summer. Spruce beetles killed trees across nearly 558,000 acres of forest this year and mostly in Mat-Su, according to an update released Monday by the U.S. Forest Service and Alaska Department of […]

Unprecedented ice loss in Russian ice cap – “We’ve never seen anything like this before, this study has raised as many questions as it has answered”

18 September 2018 (CIRES) – In the last few years, the Vavilov Ice Cap in the Russian High Arctic has dramatically accelerated, sliding as much as 82 feet a day in 2015, according to a new multi-national, multi-institute study led by CIRES Fellow Mike Willis, an assistant professor of Geology at CU Boulder. That dwarfs […]

World leaders “have moral obligation to act” after UN climate report

ByJonathan Watts and Matthew Taylor 8 October 2018 (The Guardian) – World leaders have been told they have moral obligation to ramp up their action on the climate crisis in the wake of a new UN report that shows even half a degree of extra warming will affect hundreds of millions of people, decimate corals, […]

Across the Arctic, lakes are leaking dangerous greenhouse gases – “These lakes speed up permafrost thaw. It’s an acceleration.”

By Chris Mooney 25 September 2018 (The Washington Post) – “The lake, about 20 football fields in size, looked as if it was boiling. Its waters hissed, bubbled and popped as a powerful greenhouse gas escaped from the lake bed. Some bubbles grew as big as grapefruits, visibly lifting the water’s surface several inches and […]

Study ranks marine mammals’ risks from Arctic shipping – “Even going right over the North Pole may be passable within a matter of decades”

By Heather McFarland 2 July 2018 (UAF News) – Bowhead whales are the marine mammals most vulnerable to disruption from increased ship traffic in waters off Alaska, a new study has concluded. Across the Arctic, narwhals are the most vulnerable.The study is the first to assess the vulnerability of the seven marine mammal species that […]

Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record

By Jonathan Watts 21 August 2018 (The Guardian) – The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer.This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a […]

Summer weather is getting “stuck” due to Arctic warming – “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic”

By Jonathan Watts 20 August 2018 (The Guardian) – Summer weather patterns are increasingly likely to stall in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, according to a new climate study that explains why Arctic warming is making heatwaves elsewhere more persistent and dangerous. Rising temperatures in the Arctic have slowed the circulation of the […]

Warming in the North continues as predicted – “One of the ironies is that it takes a disaster to wake people up”

By Ned Rozell 21 June 2018 FAIRBANKS (Daily News-Miner) – Just outside my window here at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, workers are drilling into the asphalt of a parking lot using a truck-mounted rig. They twist a hollow bit 25 feet into the ground and pull up hard, clear evidence of why the blacktop […]

2017 was one of three warmest years on record, international report confirms – Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level reach all-time highs

2 August 2018 (NOAA) – It’s official: 2017 was the third-warmest year on record for the globe, trailing 2016 and 2015, according to the 28th annual State of the Climate report. The planet also experienced record-high greenhouse gas concentrations as well as rises in sea level. The annual checkup for the planet, led by scientists […]

Planet at risk of heading toward “Hothouse Earth” state – “Places on Earth will become uninhabitable”

6 August 2018 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of Earth entering what the scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions.A […]

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