Climate

1440  - A tsunami last year in southeastern Alaska was the second-largest in recorded history, a study published yesterday revealed. Waves reached 1,578 feet high, second only to a 1958 tsunami in Alaska that produced up to 1,720-foot waves.

At 5:26 am on Aug. 10, 2025, a mass of rock measuring 83 million cubic yards—24 times the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza—fell into Alaska’s Tracy Arm fjord (what is a fjord?). The study’s authors blamed climate change, saying the melting glacier next to the mountain left the rock unsupported and vulnerable to collapse. Waves sloshed in the fjord for days and produced seismic activity equivalent to a 5.4-magnitude earthquake, shaking the planet.

NPR - The U.S. Forest Service is entering this year's fire season with significantly less work completed than in previous years to manage the dry, flammable vegetation that can lead to catastrophic fires. Last year, the Forest Service reduced vegetation on almost 1.5 million fewer acres than in 2024, according to an analysis of the agency's data by NPR and firefighting experts. This is a significant decrease from more than 4 million acres of hazardous vegetation work completed during the last year of the Biden administration. As conditions have grown hotter, the buildup of dense vegetation has fueled extreme fires that have torn through vast stretches of land. The Forest Service lost 16% of its workforce as of last summer as part of the Trump administration's efforts to reduce the government's size.

🔥 Controlled burns improve forest health and give wildland firefighters a better chance of fighting forest fires in challenging conditions. 
🔥 The Forest Service has long said that prescribed burns are a priority. In 2022, the agency set a goal to reduce flammable fuels on an additional 20 million acres over the next decade.
🔥 Prescribed burning fell to about 900,000 acres in 2025, according to an NPR analysis of agency data. In both 2023 and 2024, it reached over 1.6 million acres.
🔥 Forest Service chief Tom Schultz testified that the agency had hired approximately 9,700 firefighters as of early March, a slight increase from last year. Firefighting experts say these new hires don't necessarily replace key support staff that was lost.
🔥 As wildfires become more extreme, agency personnel have less time to reduce vegetation, setting the stage for even larger blazes, experts say.