Sea ice study goes beyond the numbers
Matt Druckenmiller, right, and his research advisor Hajo Eicken, a professor of Geophysics, on an ice floe near Barrow.
Photo by Daniel Pringle.
In places where the air gets cold enough to freeze seawater, sea ice creates a world known by few people — a shifting, ephemeral, both jagged and smooth platform of white that clings to the s
Bringing the world to a standstill
The Valley of 10,000 Smokes on the Alaska Peninsula.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
On a fine June day about 100 years ago, in a green mountain valley where the Aleutians stick to the rest of Alaska, the world fell apart.
Earthquakes swayed the alders and spruce
Study of a dying glacier
Matt Druckenmiller, right, and his research advisor Hajo Eicken, a professor of Geophysics, on an ice floe near Barrow.
Photo by Daniel Pringle.
Yakutat Glacier, near the Alaska town of the same name and flowing from the mountains near the Canada border, calves into a lake as deep as an ocean bay. The icefield that feeds Yakutat is large enough to cover the five boroughs of New York City. Despite its bulk, the glacier is doomed unless we experience a drastic change in climate.
Visiting a far-north ice cellar
Kivalina, Alaska, on Alaska’s northwest coast.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
KIVALINA — As charter pilot Dave Lorring taxis a twin-engine Piper PA-31 Navajo through a dogleg in the Kivalina airstrip, he sees resident Perry Hawley waiting on top of a snowdrift with a snowmachine and a sled.
As soon as the Navajo props stop spinning, out jumps Kenji Yoshikawa, there for one of his patented science hit and runs. Yoshikawa is soon kneeling on a long wooden sled towed by Hawley, who heads for a few wooden tripods standing on the white arctic plain outside town.
A high-country Eden for sockeye salmon
Hatchery manager Gary Martinek shows a “salmon incubator” at the Gulkana Hatchery, where many Copper River red salmon are born.
Photo by Ned Rozell
EAST FORK OF THE GULKANA RIVER — In early August, a few months before this mossy valley will feel the sting of 40-below air, bright red salmon dart through a crystal clear pool amid fragrant green vegetation. The Gulkana Hatchery has a Garden-of-Eden feel, which is fitting since millions of sockeye salmon begin life here each year.
Northern Canada glaciers melting fast
A tidewater glacier calving into Hayes Fiord, on Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Arctic.
Photo by Gabriel Wolken.
The glaciers and ice fields of Canada’s far-north islands have lost enough water over the last few summers to fill three-quarters of Illiamna Lake, Alaska’s largest. This news comes jus
Information from space, via Alaska, for 20 years
The Alaska Satellite Facility uses the 10-meter receiving antenna on top of UAF’s Elvey Building, at right, on the west ridge of the UAF campus. The building at left houses the International Arctic Research Center.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
As late August brings night back to the far north, our old friend darkness is restoring our view of the aurora, stars and satellites, seen as pinpoints of light streaking through the heavens. In the last 50 years, researchers have blasted thousands of these devices into Earth’s orbit.
Making sea ice 300 miles from the ocean
Sea ice made by Marc Mueller-Stoffels, who suspended chunks of fresh-water ice in salty brine at below-zero temperatures. He took this photo of a thin cross-section of ice using a polarizing filter. Individual shapes are ice crystals.
Photo by Marc Mueller-Stoffels
Marc Mueller-Stoffels unscrews the top of a glass jar and invites a visitor to smell the powder inside. A sniff evokes the image of kayaking Prince William Sound or walking a beach in Southeast.
“We call it ‘Instant Ocean,’” he says, returning the lid to the jar.
A new era of rocket recovery in the far north
A parachute and a rocket payload as seen from a small aircraft over northern Alaska the same day the rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Chatanika, Alaska, 170 miles away.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
NEAR ACKERMAN LAKE, NORTHWEST OF VENETIE — “Brian, the chute’s right there,” Chuck Brodell says from the middle seat of a Cessna Caravan.
Brian Lawson, wh
Greenup hits, so does pollen
A parachute and a rocket payload as seen from a small aircraft over northern Alaska the same day the rocket launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Chatanika, Alaska, 170 miles away.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
Greenup — the great, silent collective explosion of freed tree buds that had been frozen all winter like a clenched fist — happened yesterday in interior Alaska. I know this because it&
