Molly Rettig

The old digital images, due to be released June 28 by the Alaska Satellite Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks reveal an unprecedented view of sea ice, waves, forests, and glaciers.

On a small hill surrounded by boggy muskeg in the Tanana River Valley, prehistoric skin scrapers made of schist, polished slate tools and glass beads were uncovered in the last week.

Swan Point is just north of Delta Junction in Alaska. It's not only the oldest record of humans in Alaska — it’s also quite intact.

Every summer, Alaska's glaciers melt and send vast quantities of water gushing through silty gray rivers, past towns and villages and finally into the sea. Some glaciers calve directly into the ocean, instantly losing car-sized chunks of ice and wowing boats full of tourists.

The total loss of mass from melting glaciers is so giant it changes the earth’s gravity field and alters ocean currents around Alaska. In fact, parts of the earth can bounce up several centimeters when an ancient ice boulder lets loose.

At 8,262 feet, Pavlof Volcano squats near the end of the Alaska Peninsula and is among the most active volcanoes in Alaska, with nearly 40 known eruptions in the past couple of centuries.

The trick to getting a good ice core is to drill straight down into the sea ice, continually clear the slush gurgling up from the ocean, correctly reassemble the core fragments on the tray, take its temperature every couple of inches before it melts or cools, and saw it into hockey-puck-shaped chunks without dropping them in the snow.

Alaska North Slope residents and scientists both say the effects of climate change on sea ice are inescapable. Over the past two decades, shore-fast ice has become thinner and more mobile.

University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers were in Barrow, testing the shore-fast ice along Alaska's North Slope, which has been getting thinner, breaking up earlier, and freezing later in the year.

On the 5-mile snowmachine ride to Point Barrow, we saw several fresh polar bear tracks the size of dinner plates, a pile of whalebones from last year and a 3-foot-wide crack in the sea ice that could swallow a sled. The crack was created when an ice floe in the open water crashed into shore-fast ice.

In Alaska, our lives revolve around the weather. When it comes to predicting conditions like temperature, snow and rain, the best glimpse into the future comes from climate models.

In an Alaska warming scenario, climatologist Steph McAfee finds Southwest and Bristol Bay would see almost exclusively rain by 2100. Read more to find out what future forecasts might look like in Alaska.

Seismologist Carl Tape is conducting the first high-resolution simulations of Alaska earthquakes using supercomputers to better predict quake outcomes.

Red and blue waves triggered by a magnitude 4.6 earthquake rippled outward from the Anchorage area and fizzled out after 45 seconds. Except in Cook Inlet basin, where the waves were trapped for another half-minute, bouncing back and forth, up and down, within the 7.5-kilometer-thick sedimentary basin.

By firing rockets into the upper reaches of the atmosphere and releasing "luminous puffs," scientists from Interior Alaska's Poker Flat Research Range are learning more about solar winds.