More than 100 volcanoes pimple the adolescent skin of Alaska, spreading from ear to ear. Some are loud, flamboyant and obnoxious. Others are sneaky and quiet, escaping notice until a pilot sees a gray plume that wasn’t there yesterday. Because people live on the slopes of these volcanoes and thousands more fly through their blast […]
NOAA scientist Bryan Thomas stands outside the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. How does the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere measured at Hawai‘i’s Mauna Loa volcano over the last six decades compare with the air above Alaska? During a recent spring trip to Utqiaġvik, I had a chance to find out by visiting the […]
The Alaska Volcano Observatory will upgrade its volcano monitoring network throughout Alaska due to a $12 million budget increase through the U.S. Geological Survey. The observatory, a joint program of the USGS, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, will replace aging equipment and increase staffing in an […]
The record heat that is baking Alaska is poised to smash a host of climate records in 2016, including the earliest snowmelt date at NOAA’s Barrow Observatory, the northernmost point in the nation. Staff at the observatory reported snowmelt occurred May 13, the earliest snowmelt date in 73 years of record-keeping, beating the previous mark set in […]