Officials are still examining the substance in a lab to determine what it is, but DEC suspects it’s black tar or asphalt.
On Tuesday night, the state of Alaska saw thousands of lightning strikes. “Most of the 3,800 lightning strikes were concentrated in the Northwest Arctic,” said BLM Alaska Fire Service spokeswoman Beth Ipsen. There are several communities in close proximity to new fires.
The Baldwin Peninsula near Kotzebue has seen a massive increase in beavers over the last two decades, according to new research from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
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.”
Dead crowns in the canopy and rusty-colored branches are woven in with the otherwise healthy, green temperate rainforest. About a third of the trees around here were hit by the voracious sawfly. The larvae get mistaken for caterpillars. Adults are a kind of non-stinging wasp, a little smaller than a pinky finger.
An early melt-out date can make for an especially bad wildfire season, but this year, it’s right on schedule for much of the state. Listen now
There are plenty of seals in Unalaska, but ringed seals -- who make their homes on the ice -- are rare.
According to Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, approximately 400 gallons of an oily water mix had been recovered from the Port of Valdez as of Saturday night.
While reproductive failure is common for some species like black-legged kittiwakes, it isn’t for murres. In some places less than one percent of the chicks survived.
Scientists are trying out crowdsourcing to comb through pictures looking for sea lions.
"It was pretty crazy how much water just kind of showed up," said Michelle St. Martin, whose field season was cut short by melting sea ice.
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.
Researchers from the University of Washington used 80 years of data to figure out how much warming fish could withstand. They discovered fish in the tropics are already living in water at the upper end of their threshold.
"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
Scientists found an enriched uranium particle over the Aleutian Islands and don’t know where it came from.
Locals in Kotzebue showed a mix of excitement and concern over the weekend in response to reports that a rare polar bear was spotted in the area.
Biologists are investigating a surprising connection between two animals that aren’t exactly well loved in parts of Southeast. Gustavus locals suspect wolves are picking off deer at a popular hunting spot on an island near the mainland.
At a lab in Kodiak, researchers are working to understand whether crabs can adapt to ocean acidification.
Ocean acidification threatens some of Alaska’s most lucrative crab fisheries. But there’s one ray of hope: it’s possible that crabs might be able to adapt to the changing oceans. The big question scientists are researching at Bob Foy’s lab in Kodiak is – will they have enough time?
In 2014, a warm water system — known as the Blob — wreaked havoc in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska. The relationship between extreme weather events and climate change is complicated. But scientists are getting closer to figuring out how the two are linked.
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