Degrading permafrost and earlier small quakes likely weakened a rock slope until it collapsed and buried an Arctic glacier in tons of rock.
permafrost
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Melting Permafrost Impacts Arctic Rivers in Vulnerable Regions
Changes in river chemistry in the northwestern North American Arctic reflect increased acid rock drainage associated with permafrost thaw, an unexpected consequence of Arctic warming.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Patchier Permafrost Is Linked to More Intense Hillslope Erosion
Arctic landscapes with spots of disconnected permafrost erode faster than those with continuous permafrost, a new study finds.
Posted inScience Updates
A Snow Machine Traverse Connects Arctic Coastal Communities
A scientific expedition connected community perspectives, landscape conditions, and coastal hazards across nearly 3,200 kilometers of Alaska coastline.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
New Insights into Permafrost Degradation and Subsidence
A 20-year monitoring study in the discontinuous permafrost zone of Nunavik, Canada documents changing ground thermal dynamics and associated thaw subsidence.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Patterned Frozen Soils Get Their Shape from Gravity and Funky Physics
An enigmatic feature of frozen soils can be explained in part by non-Newtonian fluid physics. Enter the Oobleck.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
A Digital Twin for Arctic Permafrost Beneath Roads
A physics-informed digital twin uses high-resolution temperature data to track, update, and predict permafrost conditions beneath an Alaskan embankment road.
Posted inNews
Alaska’s Wildfires Heat the Planet, but Canada’s Cool It
Using 2 decades of satellite data, researchers learned that wildfires in North America don’t follow the same script: In western Canada, snow reflectivity drives a cooling effect, whereas in Alaska, permafrost burning leads to net warming.
Posted inThe Landslide Blog
The unusual 1 June 2025 Dingqing landslide on the Tibetan Plateau
A new paper (Yunjian et al. 2026) in the journal Landslides discusses a 2 million cubic metre landslide that was triggered by freeze-thaw processes. On 1 June 2025, the Dingqing landslide occurred on the Tibetan Plateau. The landslide struck a temporary encampment being used by collectors of medicinal fungus, killing ten people. This landslide has […]