An "all-time high" temperature record has been set in the US state of Alaska, despite much of the country sitting in the Arctic circle. Temperatures peaked at 32.22 Celsius (90F) on 4 July at an airport in Anchorage, the state's largest city. National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Clay said Anchorage's …
Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere. The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient …
Large stretches of salmon-spawning streams and thousands of acres of wetlands would be wiped out if a large-scale mining project were to be built in south-western Alaska’s copper-rich Bristol Bay region, according to a report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report, while not directly addressing it, is a …
If Americans ever eat genetically engineered fast-growing salmon, it might be because of a Soviet biologist turned oligarch turned government minister turned fish farming entrepreneur. That man, Kakha Bendukidze, holds the key to either extinction or survival for AquaBounty Technologies, the American company that is hoping for federal approval of …
Large stretches of salmon-spawning streams and thousands of acres of wetlands would be wiped out if a large-scale mining project were to be built in southwestern Alaska's copper-rich Bristol Bay region, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report, while not directly addressing it, is …
Large stretches of salmon-spawning streams and thousands of acres of wetlands would be wiped out if a large-scale mining project were to be built in southwestern Alaska's copper-rich Bristol Bay region, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report, while not directly addressing it, is …
A coalition of environmental and tribal groups filed a challenge Wednesday to a federal air-emissions permit for a Royal Dutch Shell RDSA -1.84% PLC drilling ship, the latest legal maneuver aimed at stopping the oil giant's exploration plan off Alaska's Arctic coast. The Obama administration gave Shell the go-ahead last …
Symptoms of a mysterious disease that has killed scores of seals off Alaska and infected walruses are now showing up in polar bears, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Friday. Nine polar bears from the Beaufort Sea region near Barrow were found with patchy hair loss and oozing sores …
Countries of the Far North are set to be the new players in the emerging Arctic frontier. The polar ice cap is melting at much faster rates than previously predicted, and may be completely ice free by the summer of 2040 or sooner. There are vast untapped resources in the …
The oil giant Shell filed suit in federal court in Alaska last week against a dozen environmental groups, employing a rare — and rarely successful — legal gambit in an effort to pre-empt anticipated legal challenges to its plans to begin exploration in the Arctic Ocean this summer. Was the …
Royal Dutch Shell's bid to drill in the Arctic this summer took another step forward on Friday when the U.S. Interior Department approved its oil spill response plan for the Chukchi Sea. Shell's response plan would allow the company to rapidly contain a massive spill in the challenging Arctic environment, …
U.S. officials have approved an oil-spill plan for Royal Dutch Shell PLC as the company looks to begin drilling in the Arctic, saying Friday that Shell has demonstrated its ability to respond to potential spills in icy waters despite protests from environmental groups. The approval, granted by the U.S. Interior …
Residents of remote Alaska towns and tiny Native villages were working on Friday to tally up damages from a near-record storm that lashed the state's west coast, officials said. "Thirty-seven villages have reported some type of damage, whether that is wind damage or minor flooding or power outages. It's really …
Alaska state officials on Friday were considering a controversial plan to shoot wolves in an effort to boost moose populations in one of the state's top tourist and recreation areas. An estimated 90 to 135 wolves range across the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage, where under the proposal hunters would …
U.S. senators from Alaska and Washington state called on Thursday for more investigation of a contagious and lethal fish virus recently detected for the first time in wild Pacific salmon, alarming marine scientists. The infectious salmon anemia virus, previously limited to Atlantic salmon -- including an outbreak that ravaged Chile's …
Sea-ice coverage across the Arctic Ocean has dwindled to its second-lowest level since satellite records started in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Areas of the Arctic with at least 15 percent sea-ice as of Saturday totaled 1.68 million square miles, slightly above the record-low of …
At the rim of the Arctic Circle in Canada, gold mining firm Agnico-Eagle is learning how tough it is to operate in a remote region with temptingly large, but frustratingly inaccessible, reserves of oil, gas and minerals. Commentators rarely mention nightmarish logistics, polar bears and steel-snapping cold when they confidently …
At the rim of the Arctic Circle in Canada, gold mining firm Agnico-Eagle is learning how tough it is to operate in a remote region with temptingly large, but frustratingly inaccessible, reserves of oil, gas and minerals. Commentators rarely mention nightmarish logistics, polar bears and steel-snapping cold when they confidently …
The state of Alaska filed notice on Friday that it will appeal a federal judge's ruling upholding the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. The state, which maintains that U.S. Endangered Species Act protections are not warranted for polar bears, sued the federal government in 2008 to overturn …
USGS Alaska Science Center researchers, in cooperation with the Native Village of Point Lay, will attempt to attach 35 satellite radio-tags to walruses on the northwestern Alaska coast in August as part of their ongoing study of how the Pacific walrus are responding to reduced sea ice conditions in late …
Making good on a promise, the Interior Department announced Friday that it had scheduled its first sale of offshore oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year. But it is changing some of the rules to ensure that leased parcels are actually drilled and …
