London:– As a meeting of the International Maritime Organization’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 74) closed today in London, the Clean Arctic Alliance expressed frustration over Members States’ failure to address the risk to the Arctic from emissions of black carbon from international shipping [1]. A proposal by the Clean Shipping Coalition and Clean […]
Over the past five years, winter atmospheric conditions that influence the Bering Sea have been markedly different from previous years. Strong, warm winds out of the south—sometimes lasting more than 30 days—have forced sea ice northward. Water temperatures have been warmer than normal and NOAA scientists have observed some significant changes in marine species. They […]
Anaqiitaq—Sea Cucumber Allrani guangkuta nertaartukut anaqiitanek.—Sometimes we eat sea cucumbers. The sea cucumber is an echinoderm, a creature related to sea urchins and sea stars. There are many varieties of sea cucumbers found in Alaska waters, from intertidal areas to the edge of the continental shelf. Sea cucumbers are known for their ability to expel […]
This is the last year for Operation IceBridge, NASA’s most comprehensive airborne survey of ice change. Since the launch of its first Arctic campaign in spring 2009, IceBridge has enabled discoveries ranging from water aquifers hidden within snow in southeast Greenland, to the first map indicating where the base of the massive Greenland Ice […]
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ogoslof Island is the gray tip of a mountain that pokes from the choppy surface of the Bering Sea. The volcano stands alone just north of the Aleutians, far south of the larger islands of St. George and St. Paul. Nora Rojek, a biologist at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge based in Homer, once […]
ANCHORAGE— Conservation groups Monday filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s approval of the first offshore oil drilling development in federal Arctic waters. Hilcorp Alaska received approval in October to build and operate the controversial Liberty project, an artificial drilling island and underwater pipeline that risks oil spills in the sensitive Beaufort Sea and threatens […]
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he frozen cliffs of Drew Point, Alaska, (population zero) are tumbling to the ocean faster than perhaps any other location in the Arctic. The sea has eaten house-size chunks of tundra at a rate of more than 50 feet per year recently. Ben Jones has watched pieces of Alaska’s northern coast disappear since 2003. […]
New NASA research has found that increases in the rate at which Arctic sea ice grows in the winter may have partially slowed down the decline of the Arctic sea ice cover. As temperatures in the Arctic have warmed at double the pace of the rest of the planet, the expanse of frozen seawater that […]
[dropcap]P[/dropcap]alo Alto, CA– New research, led by former Carnegie postdoctoral fellow Summer Praetorius, shows that changes in the heat flow of the northern Pacific Ocean may have a larger effect on the Arctic climate than previously thought. The findings are published in the August 7, 2018, issue of Nature Communications. The Arctic is experiencing larger […]