If a lake drains on top of the world, will anyone hear it? Ben Jones and Chris Arp did. The Anchorage- and Fairbanks-based scientists placed sensors in a bathtub-shaped lake on Alaska’s northern coast a few years ago. From what they can tell, the lake topped its rim and eroded/thawed a channel to the Beaufort […]
As he contemplates another long snowmachine journey, Matthew Sturm might consider packing a raincoat. Rain fell in Interior Alaska a few weeks before his trip, glazing supercooled highways and forming a crust on the snowpack. “You remember all the jokes about how climate change is going to be good for (Alaskans)?” said Sturm, a snow […]
Fairbanks’s air turns bitter every winter as we fill it with woodsmoke and other things, but just down the road Denali National Park has the clearest air measured among America’s monitored national parks. Scientists at Colorado State University have taken a close look at Denali air as captured near the park entrance. A monitor there […]
On a February day long ago, a family living in a sod hut near the Arctic Ocean saw blocks of sea ice bulldozing their way onto shore. Winds shoved more ice until the mass towered above them and started dripping water through a ventilation hole. The father urged his family outside just before a slab […]