SAN FRANCISCO — On rare winter mornings here, a skim of ice forms on sidewalk puddles. But water’s solid form is mostly an abstraction in this land of blooming flowers and the hummingbirds that visit them. Except for the week of the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Dozens of the 22,000 scientists gathering […]
A new mapping project has identified regions worldwide that are most susceptible to dramatic permafrost thaw formations, known as thermokarst, and the resulting release of greenhouse gases. University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers David McGuire and Vladimir Romanovsky were part of the project, which was led by University of Alberta researcher David Olefeldt. They found […]
Eight summers ago, a bolt of lightning struck a dry tundra hillside in northern Alaska. Fanned by a warm wind that curled over the Brooks Range, the Anaktuvuk River fire burned for three months, leaving a scar visible from the International Space Station. The charred area was larger than Cape Cod. While northern Alaska’s treeless […]