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 […]
It is one of science’s burning questions: Will the melting Arctic ice reveal a Northwest Passage – the very thing Captain Cook sought but never found? The foremost British explorer of the 18th century, Captain James Cook circumnavigated the globe twice before setting a course for the North Pacific. Mostly celebrated for his explorations of […]
For Arctic marine mammals, the future is especially uncertain. Loss of sea ice and warming temperatures are shifting already fragile Northern ecosystems. The precarious state of those mammals is underscored in a multinational study led by a University of Washington scientist, published this week in Conservation Biology, assessing the status of all circumpolar species and […]
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 […]