Background Articles

More than 700 inches of snow have fallen at Mammoth Mountain, almost burying entire houses and setting new record for snowfall. The snowfall in the Sierra Nevada range will help mitigate drought conditions in coming years.

With ice declining, bowhead whales of the Pacific Arctic choose to stay longer in the waters up north. A change in migration patterns could affect the bowheads' health and safety, as well as the hunters' access to the subsistence resource.

Atmospheric river boosted California's snowpack, especially in Central and Southern Sierra. Now the levels are record level creating safety issues such as roofs collapsing and helping with drought conditions across the western states.

The Institute of Public Health is expanding the area where they recommend that people take the vaccine against the tick borne encephalitis.

This weekend marks the third anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the global pandemic — and Juneau’s wastewater is awash with COVID. 

A video of the reindeer on the steps of the wind turbine has caused wonder. Aren't the animals intimidated by wind power anyway? Here are some reasons why it is so difficult to find clear facts and secure figures.

At times, the water level in the river Skjoma in Narvik is so low that the salmon freezes to death. But Statkraft has refused to release more water into the watercourse. Now the NVE intervenes.

Libraries at two Anchorage elementary schools — Klatt and Spring Hill — were closed after the maintenance department identified ceiling damage. The district also decided “out of an abundance of caution” to proactively close the libraries of Bear Valley Elementary, Fire Lake Elementary, and Ravenwood Elementary, which share the same building design with Klatt and Spring Hill.

In addition to blizzard conditions, Kotzebue residents have been experiencing power outages, water service interruptions and travel complications because of the storms.

A new variant of bird flu has recently infected both sea lions and mink. Health authorities around the world are now monitoring that it does not begin to infect humans.

Environmental and climate activists are rallying online against ConocoPhillips’ proposed Willow oil and gas drilling project in Alaska’s Arctic as the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden weighs whether to greenlight the controversial plan.

Another species of deer has been detected suffering from chronic wasting disease in Manitoba according to the province.

Although many Alaskan students are familiar with salmon fishing, raising them gives them a new perspective on writing, science, math and art.

Amid an explosion in popularity, access points to the Chugach State Park are overwhelmed and underdeveloped, leading to a push for a new mechanism to handle chronic underfunding.

In the last week, rapid ice melting on the crater lake (Öskjuvatn), usually frozen solid at this time of year, indicated significant geothermal energy being expended, and pointed to at least the increased possibility of an ash eruption at Askja.The police chief in East Iceland encourages people in the region to increase their awareness of a possible eruption of Askja and to familiarise themselves with instructions.

Residents wonder if a proposed port expansion will help or hinder efforts to address chronic social problems.

Highly venomous spiders native to Chile remain a worry for workers at a firm in Sandviken, near Gävle, several years after they were first discovered.

Engineers caution that residents wanting to clear their own roofs face greater risk of hurting themselves or damaging roofs than from a collapse.

Researchers found that the seismic waves get amplified as they bounce back and forth off the sides and bottom of the sedimentary basin near Minto. So people in the flats perceive the earthquakes as bigger than they actually are and it’s all about the reverberation.

Ice lies thick on the Yenisey River as nuclear-powered icebreaker "Sibir" escorts a cargo ship to the remote terminal applied by oil company Rosneft