Press Releases
More than six million acres of Alaska were burned in wildfires throughout the summer of 2004. Smoke from those fires created unhealthy breathing conditions for residents outdoors, and on some smoky days, the air quality indoors also was hazardous. 
The last three rockets of a four-part rocket experiment successfully launched from Poker Flat Research Range early Friday morning. The first rocket of the experiment was launched March 7th, and the final three launched Friday at 2:15 a.m., 4:03 a.m. and 4:42 a.m.
The first of a four-part rocket experiment successfully launched from Poker Flat Research Range at 1:07 a.m. Thursday morning. The remaining three rockets included in the experiment are scheduled to launch when the weather and aurora conditions are optimal between now and March 23.
For many Alaskans, January 1989 is a month that still numbs the mind, because of the cold snap that gripped much of the state for two weeks. In Fairbanks, fan belts under the hoods of cars snapped like pretzels; the ice fog was thick and smothering, and the city came as close as it ever comes to a halt, with many people opting to stay home after their vehicles succumbed to the monster cold.
The latest meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December 2011 featured hundreds of talks about Earth science, some of those relating to Alaska (and some of those comprehensible to a non-scientist). Here are a few items from the notebook I carried around the Moscone Center:
Last week, Carl Benson, 85, accepted a lifetime achievement award from the place he has worked since Dwight Eisenhower was president. As the snow and ice scientist and professor emeritus at University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute rose to applause from his friends and coworkers, memories rushed back to me.
The White River Ash, blasted from giant eruptions somewhere in today’s Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, drifted as far away as Ireland and Germany, said experts who attended the December 2012 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held in San Francisco.
This just in: 2012 was the coldest year of the new century in Fairbanks, and the second coldest here in the last 40 years.
Forty years ago, an Army helicopter pilot flying over a tundra plateau saw a group of caribou. Thinking something looked weird, he circled for a closer look. The animals, dozens of them, were dead.
