NORTH SLOPE, Alaska — “Chick chick whirrr, chick whirrr.” Although it was a recorded birdsong that chattered through each of the poplar stands we entered, I still occasionally caught myself believing we were hearing the real thing — the call of the gray-headed chickadee, last heard in Alaska in 2018. Tom Glass, a postdoctoral researcher […]
A proposal to cover Arctic sea ice with layers of tiny hollow glass spheres about the thickness of one human hair would actually accelerate sea-ice loss and warm the climate rather than creating thick ice and lowering the temperature as proponents claim. Sea ice, by reflecting the majority of the sun’s energy back to space, […]
New analysis of materials from an archeological site in Syria suggests it may be the only human settlement we know about that was destroyed by pieces of an exploding comet. Abu Hureyra, an ancient mound site, is covered by the waters of Lake Assad, created when the Tabqa Dam was completed in 1974. In […]
On Dec. 15, 1989, a pilot who had flown a 747 passenger jet all the way from Amsterdam was looking forward to landing in Anchorage. There, he would take a short break before continuing to Tokyo. Descending over Southcentral Alaska, he and his co-pilot saw what looked like an inky storm cloud ahead. Flying into […]