Science

Fact You May Not Know: America Has Nuked Itself 1,032 Times

A handful of nuclear tests were conducted in Alaska, or more specifically the Aleutian island of Amchitka. The first test, in October 1965, was designed to test nuclear detection techniques and had a yield of eighty kilotons. A second test occurred four years later, and had a yield of one megaton, or one thousand kilotons. The third and largest test, Cannikin, was a test of the Spartan antiballistic-missile warhead and had a yield of less than five megatons.Nuclear weapons have a mysterious qual...

Tick, tick, tick: Alaska braces for invading parasites

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska health and wildlife officials are taking steps to track undesirable parasites showing up in the state. Researchers plan field work this summer to sample non-native ticks that could gain a foothold because of the warming climate. University of Alaska Anchorage assistant professor Micah Hahn says non-native ticks can carry and […]
Tags: Nation, Northwest, Science

Extreme weather continues to batter USA this year: Is global warming to blame?

Tornadoes in the South, floods in the Midwest, crazy heat in Alaska. What's going on with the extreme weather this year?
Tags: Usa, Science, Alaska, Midwest

Al Roker Takes His Crusade Against Climate Change to Ground Zero in Alaska: 'This Is Real'

Al Roker On Alaska Climate Change Trip: 'This Is Real'
Tags: Science, Alaska, Al Roker, Ground Zero, Al Roker On Alaska Climate Change Trip

Record-early Alaska river thaw follows high winter temperatures

Key Alaska rivers that are usually frozen at this time of year are now free-flowing, with record-early thaws following record-high winter and spring temperatures. In the interior Alaska city of Nenana, ice on the Tanana River gave way just after midnight on Sunday. It was by far the earliest breakup in the 102-year history of the Nenana Ice Classic, an iconic Alaska betting pool in which participants predict when thaw will sink a wooden tripod placed on the ice.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Tanana River, Nenana

Annual Competition to Guess When Alaskan River Will Thaw Ends on Earliest Date Since 1917

The Nenana Ice Classic, a betting match on when ice on Alaska’s Tanana River breaks up enough to tip a tripod linked to a clock, set a record this weekend by ending nearly a week earlier than ever recorded, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.Read more...
Tags: Weather, Science, Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming, Alaska, Ice, Climatology, Fairbanks Daily News Miner, Tanana River, Nenana Ice Classic

Earth's glaciers lost 9 trillion tons of ice. That's the weight of 27 billion 747s.

Nine trillion metric tons. That's how much ice Earth's glaciers lost in the 55 years between 1961 and 2016. An international team of scientists used satellite and direct field observations to conclude that Earth's glaciers have melted such a profound sum of ice in the last half-century. They published their report Monday in the journal Nature.  If one were to assume an average weight of 735,000 pounds for a 747 airliner (not the colossal Alaskan bear), that comes out to around 27 bil...
Tags: Asia, Science, Nasa, Earth, Alaska, European Space Agency, Greenland, East Coast, Antarctic, University of Zurich, Robert Rohde, Mendenhall Glacier, Josh Willis, World Glacier Monitoring Service, European Alps, Michael Zemp

How a Sea Ice Meltdown Is Disrupting Life in Coastal Alaska

Every year in the western Alaskan town of Nome, as mushers and their dog teams cross the finish line during what’s locally known as “Iditarod week”, golfers take part in the annual Bering Sea Ice Golf Classic. The tournament takes place on the expanse of shore ice that usually extends miles off the town’s banks over…Read more...
Tags: Science, Climate Change, Alaska, Arctic, Bering Sea, Nome, Coastal Alaska

The Bering Sea Should Be Frozen Right Now. It Isn't.

Humans are living through a dramatic transformation of the planet's surface due to climate change, with the most obvious sign being the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice. And now, imaging has revealed perhaps a new chapter in that decline: The Bering Sea, which under normal circumstances should remain frozen-over until May, is almost entirely free of sea ice in early April.Part of what makes this event so stunning, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) pointed out in a ...
Tags: Science, California, Russia, Earth, Alaska, Arctic, Noaa, Arctic sea ice, Arctic sea, Bering Sea, International Panel on Climate Change IPCC, Arctic sea ice And, Arctic Sea Ice Antarctica

US cities preparing to become havens for mass migration from climate change

The lakefront Minnesota city of Duluth has some of the coldest temperatures outside Alaska in the United States and gets more than seven feet (2m) of snow each winter on average.But Harvard professor Jesse Keenan thinks the frigid city may eventually prove an appealing relocation destination for Florida residents, as climate change brings increasingly unbearable heat to already warm parts of the United States."If you're Florida ... (the predictions) should be quite unnerving," the expert in ...
Tags: Florida, New York, Science, Minnesota, Minneapolis, Oregon, US, Toronto, Harvard, Canada, United States, Alaska, Portland, Miami, Ohio, Buffalo

High March temperatures shortened Alaska's winter weather

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Climatologists in Alaska say unusually high temperatures set records in March and likely are a reflection of the upward warming climate trend.
Tags: Science, Ap, Alaska, Anchorage Alaska

Strong quake hits Alaska’s remote Aleutians

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A strong earthquake has struck a remote section of Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands, but seismologists say it didn’t generate a tsunami. The Alaska Earthquake Center says the 6.5 magnitude quake occurred at 1:36 p.m. Tuesday. It was centered about 55 miles (89 kilometers) northwest of Amchitka, in the Rat Islands. Seismologist […]
Tags: Science, News, Ap, Alaska, Aleutian Islands, Anchorage Alaska, Alaska Earthquake Center, Amchitka

Satellite photos show how pitiful ice cover is in the Arctic right now

Happy early spring. This is the time of year that Arctic sea ice reaches its greatest size, freezing over the vast northern ocean. But in 2019, this ice cover — called the maximum ice extent — is meager, particularly in the usually ice-clad Bering Sea.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a comparison of Bering and Chukchi sea ice in 2014 (a normal year) versus the maximum sea ice extent this year. As you can see, where there is supposed to be ice, there is a grea...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Arctic, Noaa, Norway, Arctic sea, Bering Sea, Jordan Peele, Chukchi, Bering, Brian Brettschneider, Deadhorse AK, Rick Thoman, Zack Labe, Lars Kaleschke, Alaska Center for Climate Assessment

Scientists Say Climate Change Might Turn Denali Into a Literal Mountain of Shit

Look at that mountain. Isn’t it pretty? Isn’t what you see in the above picture a pretty mountain? “Sure is, Rebecca, you dumb idiot!” you say. “I can recognize a beautiful mountain when I see one, you stupid blogger!” But what if I told you that beneath that pristine snow lies decades worth of hikers’ frozen feces?…Read more...
Tags: Science, Climate Change, Global Warming, Rebecca, Alaska, Denali

Ocasio-Cortez says Green New Deal critics are making 'fools of themselves'

Congresswoman hit back at Republicans who claim her resolution would cause ‘genocide’ and the end of hamburgers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to the media after a televised town hall in New York on 29 March. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has rounded on her Republican opponents, accusing them of making “total fools of themselves” in criticising her Green New Deal proposals. The Democratic congresswoman from New York has come under increasing attack from conservati...
Tags: New York, Texas, Science, Congress, US, Barack Obama, Atlantic, Alaska, Washington Dc, Ted Cruz, Paris, Arctic, Keystone Xl, Keystone, Msnbc, Donald Trump

U.S. judge scraps Trump order opening Arctic, Atlantic areas to oil leasing

A federal judge in Alaska has overturned U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to open vast areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas leasing. The decision issued late Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason leaves intact President Barack Obama’s policies putting the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, part of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea and a large swath of Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast off-limits to oil leasing. Trump's attempt to undo Obama’s protections was “unlawful” and ...
Tags: Science, Obama, Barack Obama, Atlantic, Alaska, Arctic, Donald Trump, Trump, Atlantic Ocean, U S District Court, GLEASON, Beaufort Sea, Sharon Gleason, Arctic 's Chukchi Sea

Alaska bakes under heat wave linked to climate change

Alaska residents accustomed to subzero temperatures are experiencing a heatwave of sorts that is shattering records, with the thermometer jumping to more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in some regions. "Both February and March have been exceptionally warm," Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, told AFP. "At Barrow, through yesterday, they've had daily record high temperatures five separate days this month ... and that's quite an a...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Afp, Barrow, Thoman, Rick Thoman, Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy

Trump's Interior Department pick, a former lobbyist, promises strict ethics

The Interior Department, which oversees more than one-fifth of the U.S. land surface from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, has been central to Trump's policy of boosting domestic crude oil, natural gas and coal production. David Bernhardt, a 49-year-old lawyer, has been acting secretary at the department since December when his predecessor, Ryan Zinke, resigned under a cloud of ethics investigations. Like Zinke, Bernhardt is widely seen as a proponent of expanding energy and mining leasing on pub...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Interior Department, Gulf of Mexico, Trump, Ryan Zinke, David Bernhardt, Trump s Interior Department, Zinke Bernhardt

Offshore drilling center stage as lawmakers grill Trump Interior pick

The Interior Department, which oversees more than a fifth of the U.S. land surface from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, has been central to Trump's policy of boosting domestic crude oil, natural gas and coal production. David Bernhardt, 49, has been acting secretary at the department since December when his predecessor Ryan Zinke resigned under a cloud of ethics investigations. Like Zinke, he is widely seen as a proponent of expanding energy and mining leasing on public acreage.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Interior Department, Gulf of Mexico, Trump, Zinke, Ryan Zinke, David Bernhardt, Trump Interior

Fukushima contaminants found as far north as Alaska's Bering Strait

Radioactive contamination from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant hit by a tsunami in 2011 has drifted as far north as waters off a remote Alaska island in the Bering Strait, scientists said on Wednesday. Analysis of seawater collected last year near St. Lawrence Island revealed a slight elevation in levels of radioactive cesium-137 attributable to the Fukushima disaster, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant program said. "This is the northern edge of the plume," said Gay Sh...
Tags: Japan, Science, Alaska, Fukushima, Bering Strait, Bering Sea, St Lawrence Island, University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant, Gay Sheffield a Sea Grant

How Technology and Climate Change Are Transforming America's Wildest Dog Sled Race

The Iditarod is at a crossroads. The thousand-mile sled dog race through Alaska is bound as much by tradition as by the rigging between dog-sledders, or mushers, and their dog teams, who must lead each other through some of North America’s wildest land. It’s the sort of tradition one would expect to fade into legend,…Read more...
Tags: Outdoors, Science, Climate Change, Sports, America, Racing, Alaska, North America, Iditarod

Temperatures in Alaska are toppling records

It's unusually warm in The Last Frontier.  Large swaths of Alaska have seen record or near-record warmth this March said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. And the trend isn't quitting.  Well above-average temperatures are expected to continue this week. Daily temperature records have broken around the state, and toppled all-time March records in the greater Arctic region. Last week, Alaska saw its earliest ever 70-degree Fahrenhei...
Tags: Science, Canada, Alaska, Arctic, Greenland, University Of California, Yukon, Fairbanks, Irvine, Southeast Alaska, Bering Sea, Labe, Thoman, Rick Thoman, Zack Labe, Lars Kaleschke

If you live in the northern U.S., you could see a radiant celestial treat Saturday night

Some of us Earthlings may see dancing, green lights in the sky on Saturday night. The sun blasted out a flare of energized particles into space on March 20, and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Prediction Center forecasts that a strip of the northern U.S. may experience a visible effect of this event: an aurora, or eerie dancing greenish light, created when the sun's particles interact with Earth's atmosphere. Such an atmospheric event is stoked by ...
Tags: Science, Colorado, Washington, Nasa, Earth, Maine, Alaska, Noaa, CME, National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA Space Prediction Center

4 ways to fight climate change and also protect states that depend on fossil fuel jobs

We can't ask these communities to trade one crisis for another. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Joe Manchin of West Virginia can show us the way forward.
Tags: Science, West Virginia, Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, Joe Manchin

The ocean keeps gulping up a colossal amount of CO2 from the air, but will it last?

The ocean has proved to be an exceptionally selfless and dependable planetary companion. With no benefit to itself, Earth's vast sea has gulped up around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide humans emitted into Earth's atmosphere over the last century. Critically, scientists have now confirmed that the ocean in recent decades has continued its steadfast rate of CO2 absorption, rather than letting the potent greenhouse gas further saturate the skies. Their research, published Thursday in the ...
Tags: Science, Nasa, Earth, Marine, Alaska, Hawaii, Great Barrier Reef, University of Washington, Deutsch, Willis, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Mathis, Matthew Long, Josh Willis, Curtis Deutsch, Jeremy Mathis

While the Bear Cam bears hibernate, the Trump admin weighs a big plan to mine their world

When the peak of summer arrives in Alaska and the radiant midnight sun hangs in the northern sky, tens of millions of salmon make their move. They race up rivers, leap over waterfalls, and clog narrow streams with their hefty, five-pound bodies. It is then that Alaska's Bristol Bay — home to the largest run of sockeye salmon on the planet — comes to life. Wolverines, foxes, lynx, and bald eagles descend upon this untrammeled realm. And the most dominant creature of the land, the brown bear,...
Tags: Science, Obama, America, Earth, Cnn, Salmon, Atlantic, Alaska, Epa, West Coast, North America, East Coast, Scott Pruitt, Pacific Northwest, Bristol Bay, Pebble Mine

Scientists revise magnitude of recent Alaska earthquake

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Seismologists announced Friday the magnitude of Alaska’s powerful Nov. 30 earthquake has been revised to 7.1 from the earlier magnitude 7.0 Alaska Earthquake Center officials say in a release the change comes after quake data was reviewed by multiple agency and academic groups. U.S. Geological Survey spokesman Paul Laustsen says the […]
Tags: Science, News, Nation, Alaska, Northwest, U S Geological Survey, Anchorage, Paul Laustsen, Alaska AP, Alaska Earthquake Center

UM researchers study Alaska forest fires over past 450 years

In a recent study, University of Montana researchers explored the ways forest succession and climate variability interacted and influenced fires in Alaska's boreal forests over the past four centuries -- from 1550 to 2015.
Tags: Science, Alaska, University of Montana

The Bering Strait should be covered in ice, but it's nearly all gone

During winter, the Bering Strait has historically been blanketed in ice. But this year, the ice has nearly vanished."The usually ice-covered Bering Strait is almost completely open water," Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, said over email.At its narrowest point, the Arctic strait between the U.S. and Russia is 55 miles across, and there's a prominent theory that people once crossed from Asia into North America across an exposed Beri...
Tags: Asia, Science, Montana, Russia, United States, Alaska, Arctic, Norway, North America, University Of California, National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration, Bering Strait, Irvine, Bering Sea, Bering, Labe

U.S. holds major oil and gas lease sale in sage grouse habitat

The Bureau of Land Management is offering 565 parcels of land, representing more than 750,000 acres, for leasing via an online auction taking place all week. By acreage offered, it is the Trump administration's largest lease sale so far in a single state outside of Alaska, according to BLM sale notices and summaries. Wyoming is the top U.S. state for gas production and the second-biggest for oil production on federal lands, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Tags: Science, Wyoming, Alaska, BLM, Trump, Bureau of Land Management