The Denali Fault is a weak spot in Earth’s crust that has maintained a frown across the middle of Alaska with its continual jerky movement. Ten scientists are performing fieldwork here, where they are driving 400 seismometers into frozen soil.
During “irruptions,” birders in New England can suddenly find their feeders clogged with redpolls from Canada and Alaska. People in the Lower 48 documented winter irruptions (“to increase rapidly or irregularly in number,” according to the American Heritage College Dictionary) of redpolls during 2008-2009 and 2012-2013.
Rosanne D’Arrigo of the tree-ring lab at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York recently told the story of Alaska’s year without a summer. She attended the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union last month in Washington, DC.
When constructing in the Arctic or near-Arctic regions of the world where permafrost dominates, the adage “If it’s frozen, keep it frozen; if it’s thawed keep it thawed” provides a strong foundation. Doing this, however, is one of the greatest challenges for engineers and construction companies that specialize in building in some of the coldest places on Earth.