By Mark Kaufman Some fires won’t die. They survive underground during the winter and then reemerge the following spring, as documented in places like Alaska. They’re called “overwintering,” “holdover,” or “zombie” fires, and they may have now awoken in the Arctic Circle — a fast-warming region that experienced unprecedented fires in 2019. The European Union’s […]
By Alex Matthews Every year 150 climate scientists fly far into the wilderness and bore deep into Greenland’s largest glacier. Their work is complicated and important. The EastGRIP project is trying to understand how ice streams underneath the glacier are pushing vast amounts of ice into the ocean, and how this contributes to rising sea […]
Ringed seals spend most of the year hidden in icy Arctic waters, breathing through holes they create in the thick sea ice. But when seal pups are born each spring, they don’t have a blubber layer, which is their protection from cold. Marine biologist Brendan Kelly is executive director of a collaborative program called the […]
A record-sized hole has opened in the ozone layer over the Arctic, The Guardian reported Tuesday. While both poles lose some ozone during their winters, the Arctic tends to lose much less than Antarctica, where the larger and more famous ozone hole is located, the European Space Agency (ESA) explained. This year’s anomaly is the […]
Arctic winters are meant to be frigid, but because of rising temperatures and climate change, they aren’t cold enough. The permafrost, the thick subsurface layer of frozen soil that stores one of the world’s largest natural reserves of carbon, is thawing. As it does, it releases potent greenhouse gases that accelerate climate change. European scientists […]
The coronavirus crisis has spread far and wide, indiscriminately affecting civilians, celebrities, sports stars and politicians and touching all parts of society. Now, the pandemic is impacting scientists on a large research expedition in the frozen Arctic Ocean, delaying critical climate research. The researchers are part of the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study […]
The climate crisis wreaks havoc on animals and plants that have trouble adapting to global heating and extreme weather. Some of the most obvious examples are at the far reaches of the planet, as bees disappear from Canada, penguin populations plummet in the Antarctic, and now polar bears in the Arctic are struggling from sea […]
In the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures were, on average, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal last month, making it the warmest January on Earth since comprehensive records have been kept starting 141 years ago, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as The Guardian reported. In some places, the abnormal temperatures […]
The Cherokee Nation will save seeds from the “three-sisters” crops in the Arctic “doomsday vault,” making it the first Native American tribe to ensure culturally emblematic crops will be preserved for the future, as The Guardian reported. Never before has a Native American tribe received an invitation to store heirloom seeds in the Svalbard Global […]