Fairbanks’ air quality issues began in 1901, when shallow water grounded a gold rush entrepreneur. That August day, when a hired steamship could take them no farther up the Chena River, E.T. Barnette and his wife found themselves deposited on a sandy shoreline in the middle of Alaska. Gold miners soon found Barnette had sacks […]
Atmospheric scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have launched an effort to better understand urban air quality problems in northern cities. During the next few years, Bill Simpson and Jingqiu Mao of UAF’s Geophysical Institute hope to join international researchers on a large-scale field study to understand the chemistry behind air pollutants in Arctic […]
Fairbanks’s air turns bitter every winter as we fill it with woodsmoke and other things, but just down the road Denali National Park has the clearest air measured among America’s monitored national parks. Scientists at Colorado State University have taken a close look at Denali air as captured near the park entrance. A monitor there […]