By Andrea Germanos “The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge faces its biggest threat yet.” That’s the warning issued by the National Audubon Society on Tuesday — a day before the Trump administration is set to sell oil and gas leasing rights in the refuge’s coastal plain, a biodiversity hotspot of critical importance to the Gwich’in people […]
By Jessica Corbett Climate action advocates and wildlife defenders celebrated Monday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s approval of Liberty, a proposed offshore oil-drilling project in federal Arctic waters that opponents warned would endanger local communities, animals, and the environment. “This is a huge victory for polar […]
After ongoing pressure from environmental groups and Indigenous communities, Bank of America has said it will not finance any oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, making it the last major U.S. financial institution to do so. The decision is especially significant because outgoing President Donald Trump has opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge […]
Arctic Ocean sediments are full of frozen gases known as hydrates, and scientists have long been concerned about what will happen when and if the climate crisis induces them to thaw. That is because one of them is methane, a greenhouse gas that has 80 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over a 20 […]
By Sharon Guynup At this time of year, in Russia’s far north Laptev Sea, the sun hovers near the horizon during the day, generating little warmth, as the region heads towards months of polar night. By late September or early October, the sea’s shallow waters should be a vast, frozen expanse. But not this year. […]
The largest Arctic research expedition in history returned to Germany Monday after 13 months in the Arctic, including several months with its ship deliberately trapped by sea ice, according to The New York Times. The mission aboard the German Alfred Wegener Institute’s Polarstern ship spent the year gathering vital information that would give scientists a […]
The Earth has experienced its warmest September since record-keeping began, according to a European Union agency’s report published Wednesday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service, which tracks global temperatures, published statistics that show 2020 is, so far, tying with 2016 for the warmest calendar year. Global temperatures in January, May and September exceeded those in 2016 […]
The wildfires that ignited in the Arctic this year started earlier and emitted more carbon dioxide than ever before. Now, a group of researchers is warning that the nature of Arctic fires may be changing, and it’s important to understand how in order to better predict the future of the global climate. “It’s not just […]
A recent Science Magazine feature blamed an underwater heat blob for exacerbating sea ice loss as it proclaimed what many Arctic scientists already know: Arctic sea ice is racing toward its demise. Even without the blob, ice levels were already catastrophically low. “There can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth’s ice loss […]