Tag Archives: arctic

Fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce in many countries, but not in Greenland. Its ice sheet contains around 6.5 percent of the world’s fresh water, and over 350 trillion liters are estimated to run into the ocean annually. And with climate change accelerating Arctic melting, more and more of Greenland’s …

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. So-called zombie fires in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smolder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in …

Anywhere else in the world, more trees would be a blessing. But in the far north of Alaska, they’re a reckoning. As the Arctic warms up to four times as fast as the rest of the planet, white spruce trees are now spreading into tundra that was once inhospitable. Bully …

The Norwegian Parliament voted this week to allow companies to scour its territorial waters for mining opportunities. The decision is a historic event: While some exploration has taken place in international waters in the Pacific, Norway is the first country to open its continental shelf up to deep-sea mining. Environmental …

If you had lived some 50 million years ago and taken a trip to the poles, you would have found lush forests and creatures like crocodiles instead of miles-thick ice sheets. That’s because during the Eocene, greenhouse gas concentrations were much higher than they are today, leading to a natural …