Life exists everywhere you look. Even on glacier ice, home to inch-long worms, snow fleas, bacteria and algae. When gathered by the millions on the ice, algae cells can help make the water they need to survive. Alaska scientists recently studied this living agent of glacier melt. “If you went to a place on a […]
The wolf tracks appeared as they always do, as a surprise. On a day between fall and winter, with the leaves fallen and browning but the ground not yet hard, I was walking with my dog and an a.m. radio. We were descending a four-wheeler trail on a hillside 20 miles from the nearest town, […]
Seismic station A19K, it’s called, and it’s now at the edge of an abandoned airstrip far above the Arctic Circle. The nearest population center is 127 miles northeast in Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow), the northernmost city in the United States. What a way to celebrate Earth Science Week, Oct. 8-14, 2017. The seismic station […]
Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute are exploring the changing chemistry of the Arctic’s atmosphere to help answer the question of what happens as snow and ice begin to melt. The research, led by chemistry professor William R. Simpson, is concerned with the Arctic’s reactive bromine season, which is the period of […]