In June, a search party discovered newly unthawed wreckage and human remains from a crashed plane trapped in ice for 60 years. The discovery evokes the ongoing legacy of Arctic militarization.
A new study raises intriguing questions about these green balls of vegetation that travel in unison across glacier surfaces.
Geoscientists estimate that a mountain slope could collapse into Prince William Sound within a year, and likely within 20 years, triggering devastating waves.
We’re developing a technique that uses ice-penetrating radar to measure how quickly snow turns to ice. To take our measurements, we needed to camp out in the Juneau icefields for a few weeks.
One of the most rapidly changing glaciers in the world shows us that once climate change triggers retreat, glacial mechanics can make melting a whole lot worse.
Congress is moving closer to opening Alaska’s pristine wilderness to oil and gas development. What might that mean for the creatures living there?
Scientists probing under the seafloor off Alaska have mapped a geologic structure that they say signals potential for a major tsunami in an area that normally would be considered benign.
When a fault slips, the temperature can spike by hundreds of degrees, high enough to alter organic compounds in the rocks and leave a signature. Lamont scientists have developed methods to use those organic signatures to reconstruct past earthquakes and better understand what controls them.
Due to warming climate and increasing human exploitation, far northern forests and the tundra beyond are undergoing rapid changes. In northern Alaska, scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and other institutions are studying the responses of trees at the very edge of their range.
In northern Alaska’s Brooks Range, the earth as most of us know it comes to an end. The northern tree line-a boundary that circles all of earth’s northern landmasses for more than 8,300 miles, and forms the planet’s biggest ecological transition zone–runs through here. Scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are studying how climate may change it, and the tundra beyond.
