Background Articles

The Homer Spit’s future as an iconic tourist attraction is in danger of washing away. Erosion along the spit’s sea walls is not a new problem. City officials are working with state and federal agencies to find a lasting solution.

Extreme erosion of Arctic coastlines in a changing climate—up to a metre a day—has been revealed with drone surveys.

The drought has had damaging economic and ecological impacts.

In the Eureka Sound Lowlands on Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands, the permafrost is more than half a kilometre deep, and the average air temperature is –19.7 C. But higher summer temperatures have caused the earth to collapse.

Debris on Cocos (Keeling) Islands was mostly bottles, cutlery, bags and straws, but also included 977,000 shoes, study says

Indigenous Australians from low-lying islands in the Torres Strait argue that the government, by failing to act on climate change, has violated their fundamental right to maintain their culture.

Due to the recent devastating drought, soybean production in Uruguay is forecast to drop to 1.7 million tons in 2017-18, according to an April 30 Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Permafrost in some areas of the Canadian Arctic is thawing so fast that it's gulping up the equipment left there to study it.

Climate change has caused a 60-fold increase in active landslides on one Canadian Arctic island.

Increasing ground temperatures in the Arctic are indicators of global climate change, but until recently, areas of cold permafrost were thought to be relatively immune to severe impacts. A new study by Antoni Lewkowicz, a professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Ottawa and published in the journal Nature Communications, however, shows that areas of cold permafrost can be vulnerable to rising summer temperatures.

The average temperature for the entire country was 1.2 degrees above normal in March. It is thus the twelfth month in a row that the temperature in Norway has been above normal.

Officials cited rockfall danger and traffic hazards created by people stopping to fill containers.

March becomes the hundredth month in a row with temperatures above normal. "It is unique and shows how fast climate change is happening in the Arctic," says climate scientist Ketil Isaksen at the Meteorological Institute (MET).

Huerfano County says it's preparing for the worst when it comes to this year's flood season and it wants residents to be prepared.

Last year's drought summer resulted in halved grass crops in Eastern Norway compared to the previous year, according to recent figures from Statistics Norway. - The consequences of the drought continue to affect the daily lives of many farmers, says Lars Petter Bartnes, leader of the Norwegian Farmers' Union.

“Nobody knows how old it is. We do know that it’s disappearing.”

When geophysicist Sigurjón Jónsson started researching South Iceland earthquakes a short while after the big one in 2000, he was struck by how many of the other big shakes had also occurred during summertime. He decided to search through old records and found 30 earthquakes in South Iceland that had caused damage were recorded—either by date or at least by time of year. He noticed a pattern and wanted to learn more.

Greenhouse gas emissions provide extreme warming on Svalbard.

The Arctic is expected to get warmer and wetter by the end of this century and new research says that could mean trouble for infrastructure in Inuvik.