Published Sep 14, 2023

Communities hit hard by climate change in Alaska and elsewhere in the U.S. could benefit from a new research project aimed at improving their electric grids.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks Alaska Center for Energy and Power and partners have received $6 million from the National Science Foundation to conduct the study.

The project aims to advance the nation’s “smart grid” — a planned nationwide network that uses information technology to deliver electricity efficiently and securely.

A secure electric grid is vital for the U.S., but more frequent and intense storms, flooding and temperature shifts, as well as cyberattacks, have been testing it.

The five-year project is named “STORM: Data-Driven Approaches for Secure Electric Grids in Communities Disproportionately Impacted by Climate Change.”

STORM will connect researchers and community members to study electrical grids and create tools to improve them. That will help make communities more resilient.

Published Sep 14, 2023

Climate change isn’t just creating havoc for the living. It’s coming for our dead.

For centuries, people have buried their dead in peaceful, scenic spots meant to comfort the living and the spirits of the dead. Today many of those burial grounds rest in precarious positions, subject to rising seas and storm surge, swollen streams, wildfire and a litany of natural disasters made worse by the steady march of a warming climate.

Rows of white crosses lean this way and that among gravesites in some cemeteries in Alaska.

Rising temperatures are thawing the permafrost into watery swamp as the ice underneath melts and loses volume, said Louise Farqurharson, a research assistant professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Sinking graves are just one of many concerns warming creates for the state's Indigenous communities.