Following the warmest March Alaskans have ever felt, forecasters are predicting a mellow transition from ice to water for most big rivers in the state. Things don’t always go that way during spring breakup, when chunks of river ice freed from the cold grip of winter can lock up in river bends and back […]
A gigantic cavity — two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall — growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers’ undersides […]
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]hildren in Alaska whose diet includes a lot of fish from rivers fed by the Eastern Alaska Mountain Range may have a long-term elevated risk for cancer because of insecticides — including DDT — in the meltwater. Even with low levels of organochlorine pollutants (OCPs) in glacial meltwater, the risk of cancer for youth […]
Uma Bhatt remembers summers in Fairbanks when she could open a package of crackers, leave it unsealed, and find them in a near-identical state a few weeks later. Those crackers now seem to lose their snap in just a few days. An atmospheric scientist at UAF, Bhatt gave a recent talk on a rainy October […]