State Veterinarian Bob Gerlach told a crowd that turned out Saturday for the 46th Annual Delta Farm Forum that diseases that afflict livestock and wildlife are increasingly showing up in Alaska. Listen now
A sinkhole has opened up on Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks. The 3-foot diameter void discovered Monday near a housing unit, is suspected to be the result of thawing permafrost.
A wildfire north of Delta Junction has reignited. The more than 8,000-acre South Fork Salcha Fire was started by lightning earlier this month in a remote area about 70 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
Moose and other species have advanced north with warming temperatures. University of Alaska Fairbanks assistant professor of water and environmental research Ken Tape said movement of boreal species into far northern Alaska has corresponded over the last century with earlier snow-melt and river ice out.
After a cold winter and spring, high temperatures around the Interior prompted birch tree buds to burst, sending record-setting levels of pollen into the air.
Officials say the floodwaters are swamping Alaska towns, tearing buildings from foundations, seeping into homes and covering roads. In Glennallen, the local utility is setting up Porta-Potties around the community, and area residents are asked to limit water usage. The state transportation department said there was water over a portion of the Glenn Highway on Monday, but the road remained open.
This November in Utqiaġvik was the hottest on record, averaging 17.2°F. It was so warm that NOAA's quality control algorithms flagged the data. “When we look out on the ocean right now we see a few icebergs,” Thomas said. “Normally we would see white to the horizon in the past, and in this case we’re seeing dark water to the horizon.”
The Arctic’s like an air conditioner or refrigerator for the global climate...And as the Arctic warms, partly because the sea ice is going away, it’s like you’re opening that refrigerator door.
“It’s an area that I and some other colleagues have started thinking about: can you get methane forming in terrestrial environments? But it’s a very new area of science,” carbon scientist Katey Walter Anthony said.
"These ridges that we’re standing on, there would have been more of them, and they would have been bigger," ice researcher Andy Mahoney said. "The features that we now see, they’re something of a shadow from the past." Listen now
"Currently we don't have any studies specifically looking at what factors are affecting those demographics," said Jason Caikoski, a wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Listen now
There has been an outbreak in Fairbanks of the amber-marked birch leaf miner (Profenusa thomsoni), an insect that came to North America in the early 1900s and arrived in Fairbanks by about 2002.
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