In the News
Beneath the waves or underground, warming Alaska poses multiple threats
When you talk to climatologists about 2016, the phrase “mind-boggling” comes up a lot. “For crying out loud, yesterday it was 36 degrees in Barrow, Alaska, in the middle of winter,” said Rick Fritsch, a climate expert for the National Weather Service in Juneau. “If that doesn’t make the point, I don’t know what does. That’s not supposed to happen, at least not in the world I used to live in.”
Grab Your Ear Muffs, the New Year’s Arriving With a Frigid Bang
A deep freeze is about to descend on North America, Europe and Asia thanks to record high temperatures across the Arctic. How’s that? “Think of it like a seesaw,” said Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. If winter temperatures rise north of Alaska, that “forces an equal-opposite downward-southward push. The cold essentially has to go somewhere else.”
The Arctic is ‘behaving so bizarrely,’ and these scientists think they know why
Last month, temperatures in the high Arctic spiked dramatically, some 36 degrees Fahrenheit above normal — a move that corresponded with record low levels of Arctic sea ice during a time of year when this ice is supposed to be expanding during the freezing polar night.
Arctic Is Warming At 'Astonishing' Rates, Researchers Say
Scientists released this year's so-called Arctic Report Card on Tuesday, and it is a dismal one. Researchers say the Arctic continues to warm up at rates they call "astonishing." They presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.
Untamed shrews herald a warming Arctic
William Shakespeare wrote more than 400 years ago that shrews could be tamed. But not so fast, according to an essay in the 2016 Arctic Report Card. Turns out that some Arctic shrews, those small furry mammals with funny snouts famed on stage and sci-fi screen can not be tamed. In fact, one species of shrew is now invading north into the Arctic, setting off a major reorganization of animal communities at the top of the world.