Associate research professor Carl Schmitt with the cloud particle imager he developed. Photo by Bryan Whitten

Researcher helps examine puzzling Arctic Ocean ice fog

October 17, 2025
A type of cloud that forms low near Alaska’s northern coast and over the Arctic Ocean lasts far longer than scientific understanding says it...
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Pascal Buri, left, holds a drone ready for flying in the Swiss Alps in August 2021 for the study of how mountain glaciers interact with the atmosphere. Thomas Shaw of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria prepares to pilot the drone. Photo courtesy of Pascal Buri

Mountain glaciers will lose their insulating air layer, study finds

October 16, 2025
A natural cooling mechanism has been shielding the world’s mountain glaciers from increasingly warm summer melt seasons, but new research by an...
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Two Windracers ULTRA aircraft, which ACUASI purchased to test cargo deliveries and emergency responses to remote Alaska locations, occupy a hangar in Nenana. Photo by Jason Williams/ACUASI

ACUASI adds new drones for cargo trials

October 14, 2025
Two large-payload unmanned aircraft have joined the fleet of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ drone industry development program. They will be...
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Plumbing for answers to an Alaska volcano mystery

October 9, 2025
Mount Edgecumbe volcano in Southeast Alaska sits in a place where a volcano shouldn’t really be sitting. Research underway with new federal...
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Mount Edgecumbe rises in the foreground with Crater Ridge behind and to the north on May 19, 2022. Photo by Max Kaufman/Alaska Volcano Observatory

Scientists aim to map Mount Edgecumbe volcano’s upper plumbing

October 9, 2025
Mount Edgecumbe volcano in Southeast Alaska sits in a place where a volcano shouldn’t really be sitting. Research underway with new federal...
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This map of Northern Hemisphere sea ice concentration for Sept. 24, 2025, also shows the contours of the 15% edge during the years with the least extent of ice (in red) and the greatest extent of ice (in orange) during the period from November 1978 to the present. Image courtesy of NASA

Alaska climate report: Sea ice growth and other winter transitions

October 7, 2025
Sea ice has returned to its annual growing season, though it’s a slow turnaround as usual. The Arctic sea ice extent likely reached its 2025...
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Lee Ann Munk of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute at a National Science Foundation event in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18, 2025. Photo by Steve Masterman

UAF critical minerals proposal a finalist for NSF funding

September 19, 2025
A University of Alaska Fairbanks proposal to reduce the United States’ dependency on foreign sources of minerals critical to the technology and...
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Unstable ground

September 16, 2025
Point Lay, Alaska, has been at its current site since 1980, but change has followed. The land beneath the people and their homes is shifting and...
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Most of Point Lay’s residential area sits on permafrost that is rapidly thawing. The subsiding ground exposes more of each building’s support pilings. UAF photo by Benjamin Jones

Research highlights rapid permafrost thaw at Point Lay, Alaska

September 16, 2025
A team of scientists working with local residents has detailed the rapidly accelerating “catastrophic” permafrost thawing and infrastructure...
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About

Since it was established by an Act of Congress in 1946, scientists at the Geophysical Institute have studied geophysical processes from the center of the Earth to the surface of the sun and beyond, turning data and observations into information useful for state, Arctic and national priorities.

Contact info

The GI is located on the West Ridge of the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus.

2156 Koyukuk Drive
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, AK 99775

We acknowledge the Alaska Native nations upon whose ancestral lands our campuses reside. In Fairbanks, our Troth Yeddha' Campus is located on the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River.

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