Researchers have discovered that thawing permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere stores twice as much mercury as the rest of the planet’s soils, atmosphere, and oceans. The finding has significant implications for human health and ecosystems worldwide. In a new study, scientists measured mercury concentrations in cores of frozen ground—or permafrost—from Alaska and used the data to […]
Two things happened on top of the world this week. In Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), on Jan. 22 the sun topped the horizon for the first time since mid-November. The day before that, Jan. 21, was the first time since Halloween the town’s thermometers recorded a below-normal daily average air temperature. The returning daylight for the […]
NEW ORLEANS — At this gathering of thousands of scientists at a horseshoe bend in the lower Mississippi River, a few talked about a place far away they have been watching for years. “The Arctic shows no sign of returning to the reliably frozen state it was a decade ago,” said Jeremy Mathis, an oceanographer […]
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as anywhere else on Earth, which is already affecting the nearly 4 million people living in the region, the fish and wildlife they depend on for food, and their environment. The changes have ramifications far beyond the Arctic to global economies, weather, climate, sea levels, trade and national […]