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 [...]
Spectacled Eiders Overwintering in the Bering Sea By Ned Rozell [fusion_dropcap]L[/fusion_dropcap]ike flecks of pepper on chowder, all of the spectacled eiders on the planet are now gathered amid sea ice and steaming open leads in the Bering Sea. "It's a mass of life in this desolate area," said Matt Sexson, who once rode an icebreaker [...]
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 [...]
Alaska Scientists Launch 4 Rockets Into Aurora Borealis Filled Sky [fusion_dropcap]R[/fusion_dropcap]esearchers at the Poker Flat Research Range sent four rockets into an aurora filled sky early this morning. The four launches were successful and appear to have produced data that will help researchers understand turbulent air currents in the upper atmosphere, said Sue Mitchell a [...]