BEAUFORT SEA – U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy (WAGB 20) crew and embarked researchers ventured onto a floe of multi-year ice for the first of three multi-instrument ice stations in the Arctic Ocean Basin late July and early August. As the Healy carefully approached and maintained position alongside an ice floe above 77 degrees north, […]
Algae that commonly grow on snow in the Pacific Northwest have been ignored in melt models, but their presence significantly increases snowmelt compared with clean, white snow, according to a study conducted on Mount Baker in the North Cascades, Washington. Scientist Alia Khan at Western Washington University and the National Snow and Ice Data Center at […]
In a recent paper, scientists wrote that a small population of polar bears living off Greenland and Arctic Canada increased by 1.6 times when they compared the numbers from the 1990s to 2013 and 2014. They concluded that lighter sea ice might have benefitted the animals. That’s because sunshine penetrates thinner ice better, which stimulates […]