Looking over a longer time span, bears in the southern Beaufort Sea are now using land to an extent they haven’t used it historically,” a researcher said.

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake rattled a remote region of Alaska's North Slope southeast of Prudhoe Bay Sunday morning. The state seismologist called it the biggest quake ever recorded in the region.

The Air Force is trying to better understand the erosion bearing down on its valuable radar sites.

"Currently we don't have any studies specifically looking at what factors are affecting those demographics," said Jason Caikoski, a wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Listen now

More polar bears on land have been encountering more people in the Arctic, a perfect storm of dangerous conditions, one scientist says.

Sixty years ago there were 12 of these such cellars in Kaktovik.Today there is only one left. All the other family cellars have been flooded and have collapsed.

The bears that come to the northern village of Kaktovik are climate refugees, on land because the sea ice they rely on for hunting seals is receding.

Because ice makes up a good portion of the underground foundation of northern Alaska, thawing has dropped the landscape as much as 3 feet in some places.

Polar bear researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey are only halfway into their annual survey in Alaska and they've already come across nine bears – six in Barrow and 3 in Kaktovik – with signs of alopecia and skin lesions. The muzzle, face, eyes, ears and neck appear most affected, according to a bulletin published Friday by the agency.