Background Articles

Algae isn't just causing swimmers' itch anymore; it's threatening water supplies. State regulations are starting to address it.

Iqaluit is prepared to spend $566,000 on an emergency backup plan, but there's a risk it may never be used, says a city director.

Since 2018, Kerala has faced increasingly severe and frequent floods, a stark contrast to its historical rarity, driven by factors like Indian Ocean warming and local environmental changes, underscoring a global trend of climate-driven extremes and the urgent need for improved flood management and climate adaptation.

In Gachuurt Village in Bayanzurkh district, beavers are being introduced to restore the headwaters of the Tuul River, the main drinking water source of the capital city, Ulaanbaatar.

The combination of abundant rain and snowfall and extremely warm mean annual air temperatures may have led to the destabilization of permafrost around lake margins. Rapid snow melt and high amounts of excess meltwater further promoted rapid lateral breaching at lake shores and consequently sudden drainage of some of the largest lakes of the study region.

Climate change may be enabling beavers to move deeper into the Arctic. And as they move, they magnify climate change’s effects.

High severity burns bring higher concentrations of white ash and burned soil organic matter, which is more prone to erosion, overland flow, and leaching, while also being associated with low plant survival.

Under the one-two punch of a dry fall and a frigid winter, winter crops in Ukraine were in poor condition in April and May 2006. This vegetation anomaly (difference from normal) image was created from data collected by MODIS. Widespread brown indicates that plants throughout the region had grown less compared to the average growth for 2000-2005. The Foreign Agricultural Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, estimated that only 10 metric tons of winter wheat, the primary crop growing here, would be harvested in July and August. That figure was down about 46 percent from the 18.7 metric tons harvested in 2005.

Warming of Alaska has dire consequences for state; effects of 7-degree rise in Alaska's temperature over last 30 years include buckling highways, shoreline erosion and forests killed by beatles; in Alaska, rising temperatures, whether caused by greenhouse gas emissions or nature in prolonged mood swing, are not a topic of debate or an abstraction; Sen Ted Stevens says that no place is experiencing more startling change from rising temperatures than Alaska and that problems will cost Alaska hundreds of millions of dollars; photos (M)

Janice Moore, who lives along the West Channel, is worried about fuel contamination after intense flooding in Hay River, N.W.T., left multiple fuel containers strewn about her property. "You can smell the diesel smell and fuel smell," she said.

Nunavut communities have seen a five-year high of water advisories in 2021, without counting Iqaluit’s ongoing water emergency. As of Friday, about a month before the year’s end, 14 water advisories had been issued in seven communities outside of the capital city this year, more than tripling the four advisories issued in 2017.

For the residents of Tuluksak, breakup means that they will once again be losing their source of running water.

Nunavut's chief public health officer says Iqaluit residents complaining about skin irritations should get checked out by their doctors, but so far, Dr. Michael Patterson said he hasn't heard of any formal diagnoses.

Drought, economic collapse and soaring food prices have pushed millions into hunger. Cash aid from the Disasters Emergency Committee is helping families feed their children and send them back to school

Climate change and warmer conditions have altered snow-driven extremes and previous studies predict less and slower snowmelt in the northern United States and Canada. However, mixed-phase precipitation—shifting between snow and rain—is increasing, especially in higher elevations, making it more challenging to predict future snowmelt, a dominant driver of severe flooding. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire took a closer look at previous studies, and because geographical areas respond differently to climate change, they found future snowmelt incidences could vary greatly by the late 21st century. Snowmelt could decrease over the continental U.S. and southern Canada but increase in Alaska and northern Canada resulting in larger flooding vulnerabilities and possibly causing major societal and economic consequences including costly infrastructure failures.

By Ed Struzik. This article was originally published on Yale Environment 360. Canadian scientist Philip Marsh and I were flying along the coast of the Beaufort Sea, where the frozen tundra had recently opened up into a crater the size of a football stadium. Located along the shoreline of an unnamed lake, the so-called thaw...

Growing population and limited water has Utah lawmakers and conservation groups discussing how to replenish the state's water sources. A new state grant program will help farmers convert idle land in an effort to mitigate the environmental and economic effects of drought on the state.

The Institute of Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) Tribes and Climate Change Program is publishing a report called the Status of Tribes and Climate C...

Recently, however, scientists have observed not just shrinking lakes but lakes that have completely gone away. A paper published this year in Nature Climate Change, based on satellite imagery, found widespread lake loss across the Arctic over the past 20 years.

Disagreements persist over the extent of the restoration plan for the Eklutna River in Alaska, with utilities arguing that a replacement dam would be costly and increase electric rates, while proponents of the plan believe it would benefit the public interest by boosting local fishing and tourism and improving the ecosystem.