Beaufort Sea Lake Drains Into the Sea By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]I[/fusion_dropcap]f a lake drains on top of the world, will anyone hear it? Ben Jones and Chris Arp did. The Anchorage- and Fairbanks-based scientists placed sensors in a bathtub-shaped lake on Alaska's northern coast a few years ago. From what they can tell, the lake [...]
Northern trails sponging up winter rainfall By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]A[/fusion_dropcap]s he contemplates another long snowmachine journey, Matthew Sturm might consider packing a raincoat. Rain fell in Interior Alaska a few weeks before his trip, glazing supercooled highways and forming a crust on the snowpack. "You remember all the jokes about how climate change is going [...]
Denali has the clearest air of any monitored U.S. national park By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]F[/fusion_dropcap]airbanks's air turns bitter every winter as we fill it with woodsmoke and other things, but just down the road Denali National Park has the clearest air measured among America's monitored national parks. Scientists at Colorado State University have taken a [...]
Sea Ice at the Top of the World By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]O[/fusion_dropcap]n a February day long ago, a family living in a sod hut near the Arctic Ocean saw blocks of sea ice bulldozing their way onto shore. Winds shoved more ice until the mass towered above them and started dripping water through a ventilation [...]
A Yearly Flood into the Gulf of Alaska By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]S[/fusion_dropcap]atellite data has confirmed that the amount of freshwater released into the Gulf of Alaska from streams and rivers in Alaska and northern Canada is about 1.5 times what the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico each year. That astounding flow of [...]
Alaska's Denali May Become A Volcano By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]N[/fusion_dropcap]orth America's highest mountain should be a volcano. Denali sits about 60 miles above where the Pacific Plate grinds beneath the North American plate, as do Iliamna, Redoubt and Augustine. If you draw a line from the Aleutians to volcanic features in interior Alaska, the curve [...]
Alaska mosquitoes spreading malaria in birds By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]T[/fusion_dropcap]housands of Alaska mosquitoes are now on sabbatical at the University of California, Davis. They are not pestering suntanned Californians. Researchers are analyzing their tiny corpses to see if the parasites that cause malaria are inside them. During the last two summers, Ravinder Sehgal and his [...]
Alaska's Augustine Volcano By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]A[/fusion_dropcap]laska's Augustine Volcano sits alone, a 4,000-foot pyramid on its own island in Cook Inlet. Like many volcanoes, it has a tendency to become top heavy. When gravity acts on Augustine's oversteepened dome, rockslides spill into the ocean. A scientist recently found new evidence for an Augustine-generated tsunami from [...]
Tidal stresses and giant earthquakes By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]A[/fusion_dropcap] scientist once noticed a connection between the stress that tides inflict on the planet and the number of small earthquakes that happen in some areas when that pressure is greatest. She saw a pattern to these earthquakes leading up to great tsunamis. A graduate student is [...]
The demise of Scotch Cap lighthouse By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]I[/fusion_dropcap]n spring of 1946, five men stationed at the Scotch Cap lighthouse had reasons to be happy. World War II was over. They had survived. Their lonely Coast Guard assignment on Unimak Island would be over in a few months. But the lighthouse tenders would never [...]
