On the cusp of Interior Alaska’s springtime, Melinda Webster will not experience it this year. She’ll miss most of summer, too. Webster will soon head north of Earth’s landmasses, to spend the next half year cradled in ice. Webster, a sea-ice specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, will in a […]
A review article published in Nature Climate Change evaluates whether severe winter weather in the United States, Europe and Asia is sensitive to Arctic temperatures. The lead author is NSF-funded scientist Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research. Despite a warming planet, winter weather has remained surprisingly resilient across the mid-latitudes of the Northern […]
[smartslider3 slider=4] Nate Becker lives with his family on a quiet stretch of the Yukon River as it flows into Alaska. On a recent ski trip, I visited the Beckers’ home along with two geologist friends. Nate had a question for them. “Why are all the gold deposits located on the south side of […]
A long-feared scenario in which global warming causes Arctic permafrost to melt and release enough methane—a potent greenhouse gas–to accelerate warming and cause catastrophe probably won’t happen. That is the conclusion of a study appearing in the journal Science that began more than 20 years ago as a query posed by Jeff Severinghaus, a geoscientist at the Scripps Institution […]