Dan Joling / AP

Lupine grows along Bird Ridge Trail on Thursday, June 13, 2013, in Anchorage, Alaska.

In Alaska, houses are built to keep warm air in and cold air out, not the other way around. So with a record-setting heat wave scorching the state, residents are sweltering amid temperatures soaring past 90 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Southcentral Alaska hit four all-time highs yesterday (June 17), ranging between 88 F in Seward to 94 F in Talkeetna, according to the National Weather Service's Alaska forecast office. In the southeastern portion of the state, Skagway, a popular cruise ship port-of-call, reached 83 F, almost as warm as St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Just about every part of the state was warmer than average yesterday, the NWS said. 

The blazing hot temperatures are just the latest records to fall this year in Alaska. Residents also endured history-making cold temperatures throughout spring and flooding and evacuations caused by the never-ending winter. A mass of Arctic air stuck over the state for weeks this spring was responsible for the chilly weather. It finally fell prey to the warming effects of 18 hours of sunlight at the end of May. 

"Eventually, the sun is going to win out, and once it did, boy, did things change in a hurry," said Michael Lawson, a meteorologist with the NWS Alaska forecast office in Anchorage. 

Marine layer loses 
While Interior Alaska and towns near the Alaska Range regularly see high temperatures in the summer, extreme heat rarely flares up in Alaska's coastal communities, which are cooled by marine breezes. But a high-pressure ridge parked over Southcentral Alaska is pushing refreshing afternoon sea breezes offshore. 

A similar predicament often develops in Southern California, when a high-pressure system keeps the Catalina Eddy offshore, firing up heat waves in beach towns that depend on fog and ocean air for natural air-conditioning. 

"It's really much rarer for places in Southcentral Alaska to get as hot as they've been getting," Lawson told LiveScience. "This ridge has been so strong the sea breeze hasn't been getting a chance to cool us down." 

The heat wave will continue for the rest of the week, the NWS forecasts. The unusually strong, high-pressure system is intensifying over mainland Alaska, continuing the heat wave. Interior and Southwest Alaska will reach upwards of 90 F, and Southeast and Southcentral Alaska will see highs in the upper 70s and 80s F. 

A year without a spring 
Yet just a month ago, Alaska was in the grips of a never-ending winter, with late-season snowstorms and record-low temperatures in mid-May. The wild weather swing has wreaked havoc on the annual ice melt along rivers, causing ice jams and flooding. The town of Galena was evacuated late last month due to flooding from an ice dam on the mighty Yukon River. The Nenana Ice Classic, a betting contest on the Nenana River's ice breakup, set a record for the latest-ever crack and cave in of the ice. 

"It was an incredibly rapid transition," Lawson told LiveScience. "Literally, our spring was about five days before we jumped into summer-type weather." 

A persistent low-pressure trough that remained stuck over the state brought wave after wave of cold Arctic air into Alaska, Lawson said, keeping temperatures lower than normal for most of the winter. 

This week's warm weather could bring more flooding from melting snow and ice at higher elevations, the NWS has warned. A red flag fire warning, which signals dangerously dry air and possible strong winds, was also issued over the weekend for much of the state because of drier conditions caused by the hot air mass. A forest fire broke out east of Fairbanks on Monday evening (June 17), prompting temporary road closures. A 30,000-acre fire is also burning in Southwest Alaska. 

The highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska was 100 F in Ft. Yukon on June 27, 1915. 

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

R. Mabardy / Oregon State University

Research site in Netarts Bay, Oregon, at low tide; rows of bags contain seed oysters.

Oyster hatcheries are dropping the equivalent of Tums and other antacids into water to make it easier for naked mollusk larvae to build their shells. The remedy is working, for now, to keep hatcheries in business and oyster bars well stocked with the slimy delicacies, a hatchery scientist said.

Heartburn for the shellfish industry comes from ocean waters turning ever more corrosive as they absorb a fraction of the carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the atmosphere. The acidification, in turn, makes it harder for oyster larvae to build their shells.

The hatcheries' antacid, sodium carbonate, makes the water less acidic and "raises the amount of carbonate in the water, which is what the shellfish are using," Benoit Eudeline, the chief hatchery scientist at Taylor Shellfish Company in Quilcene, Wash., told NBC News.

Prior to the antacid solution, larvae survival rates at the hatchery had dropped between 60 and 80 percent by 2009 due to acidification from greenhouse gas pollution — as well as runoff from farms and sewage tanks — into the narrow bay where the hatchery is located.

The runoff triggers blooms of algae that release carbon dioxide into the water when the plants die, sink to the ocean floor and decay. Larvae survival rates were impacted most on days when this more corrosive water rose toward the surface and into the hatchery's intake pipes.

Scientists observed that the larvae were most sensitive to these more corrosive waters in the first few days after fertilization. New research published Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters provides "the direct evidence to explain why," George Waldbusser, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University and the study's lead author, told NBC News.

Larvae "have to make a lot of shell very quickly," he said. In their first two days, Pacific oyster larvae will precipitate roughly 90 percent of their body weight as calcium carbonate shell, and they do it with energy derived from the egg since, at this point, they don’t yet have feeding organs. "They can basically run out of energy," he said. And the exhaustion can be long-lasting, even lethal.

After 48 hours, the larvae have built their shell and feeding organs, which allows them to obtain energy from their environment and gain more control over the chemistry needed for building shell, which is done from inside.

Oregon State University

Oysters at hatcheries in Oregon are showing the effects of ocean acidification.

By this point, "they appear much more able to generate shell," said Waldbusser, "even when conditions are corrosive to some degree."

According to Eudeline, who was not part of the new research but has worked closely with Waldbusser and his colleagues, the new findings help explain why the first 48 hours has "a strong impact on how good the larvae will behave after day 14 or day 15."

The findings, he added, also help inform what Taylor Shellfish, along with other major oyster hatcheries such as Whiskey Creek in Oregon, do to supply oysters to an industry unable to rely on natural sets — free-spawning larvae that settle on oyster shells.

In Willapa Bay, in southwestern Washington, for example, natural sets have declined steeply in recent years due to acidification, forcing the growers there to rely more heavily on the hatcheries, Eudeline noted. 

"If you get less natural set, then hatcheries are struggling to provide larvae to the customers, then overall you are getting a decline in seed availability," he explained. "And to some extent, in the last few years, we have seen this. The industry is really dependent on a pretty small amount of hatcheries."

Outside of the hatcheries, dealing with ocean acidification is an even larger challenge, noted Waldbusser

Steps include addressing runoff pollution from sources such as sewage and farms that lead to increased acidification, as well as restoring native sea grasses and shell beds that appear to have a natural, local antacid effect that is beneficial to larval growth, he noted.

"Ultimately, at some point," he added, "they have to be able to address the bigger global CO2 problem." 

John Roach is a contributing writer to NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. 

Dawn Villella / AP file

A gray wolf at the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake, Minn., in 2004.

The gray wolf population has recovered to the point that it can be safely removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday in a proposal that environmental groups suggest is premature.

Under its proposed delisting plan, the wildlife service would return management of gray wolves to the states where they dwell. Federal protections for wolves have been in place since 1978. 

In a second proposal, the service would maintain protections and expand recovery efforts for the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest, where it remains endangered.

The gray wolf was extirpated from the lower 48 states by the middle of the 20th century with exception of the Great Lakes area. Wolves from Canada began to recolonize Montana in 1986. In 1995 and 1996, 66 wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. 

Today, according to the government, there are at least 6,100 gray wolves in the contiguous U.S., including 1,674 in the Northern Rockies and 4,432 in the Western Great Lakes. 

Wolves were delisted from the Northern Rockies in 2012 and the Western Great Lakes in 2011. Today's proposal would delist them throughout the country, including fledgling populations in the Pacific Northwest, noted the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

"Our position is they are walking away from wolf recovery before the job is done," Noah Greenwald, endangered species director with the group, told NBC News. 

In addition to the Pacific Northwest, scientists have concluded suitable wolf habitat remains in California, the southern Rocky Mountains, and parts of the Northeast, Greenwald noted. The federal government, he said, should extend protections to allow wolves to recover in those areas.

Environmental groups are also concerned that anti-wolf policies at the state level will hinder recovery efforts. In the Northern Rockies, more than 1,100 wolves have been killed since protections were removed, for example.

"Now is the time to that we should be pressing in to finish the job of wolf recovery, not abandoning wolves to the same kinds of destructive forces that endangered them in the first place," Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a media statement. 

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, governors and state wildlife agencies in the states with wolves and those expected to gain them as packs disperse across borders, support the proposal and are ready to assume responsibility for management.

A 90-day comment period on the proposed delisting of gray wolves and extended protections for the Mexican wolf subspecies opened upon publication today of the proposals in the Federal Register.

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. 

Fulvio Roiter

Genetic analyses of Corvina grapes grown throughout the Verona region of Italy have identified genes that could help breeders adapt the fruit to climate change.

Experts say "terroir" — the geography, geology and climate of grapes' native soils — defines the difference between good vintage and bad. But the plants' sensitivity to their environment also means that climate change presents a massive threat to the industry and that delicate balance. However, new genetic research may stave off those worries, even as the planet warms.

Working with Corvina grapes, a team of Italian geneticists identified genes that help protect the fruit from the vagaries of the weather and could serve as a platform "for breeding new cultivars with improved adaptation to the environment," the team reports Friday in the journal Genome Biology.

The team grew the grapes in 11 vineyards across the Verona region and harvested berries at various stages of ripening for three years to analyze which genes were expressed under what conditions — finding genes, for example, associated with a wine's taste, color and mouth-feel.

"We need to know more about this kind of thing across a wider range of varieties and climates," Gregory Jones, who studies the intersection of climate and grape growing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, told NBC News. He said the Italian research, which he did not participate in, is "good stuff." 

Humans have been adapting grapes to different environments throughout the history of making and drinking wine. Understanding what genes to select for just makes the process more efficient and faster. "We may be able to understand and adapt to climates much better," he said.

Historically, most adaptation of grapes has been to colder climates — pushing the cool limits of viticulture. Climate change has sparked interest in the other end of the spectrum, especially in places such as California where wine is a $15 billion a year industry. 

As the climate warms there, the concern is that too much heat will impair the ability of the grapes to produce the sugars needed for fermentation. As a result, grape growers and wine makers may be forced to pull up roots and head to cooler climates in Oregon, Washington and Canada.

The new genetic research, however, highlights the possibility to breed traits that expand the temperature range for a grape's optimal growth. "You are potentially looking at staving off a certain amount of climate change," Jones said.

But how new climate-resistant strains of each grape varietal will affect the wine itself is another issue.

"In an ideal world, of course, you would never breed out beneficial or quality characteristics while you're trying to breed in" environmental defenses, Jones said. "So there is clearly a balance that has to be done there."

John Roach is a contributing writer to NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website.

Bruce Doran

New research links gradual greening of arid areas like Australia's outback to increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Large stretches of arid land have become greener since the 1980s due to rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, which fertilizes plant growth, a new study shows.

While this greening has long been noted in satellite imagery, its direct link to carbon dioxide (CO2) has been difficult to prove, explained study leader Randall Donohue, an environmental scientist at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. 

"There are so many processes occurring simultaneously that affect plant behavior, it is very difficult to determine which process is responsible for any given change," he told NBC News in an email. Teasing out a CO2 fertilization effect amongst the other processes "hasn't been done before," he added.

CO2 is also a major player in global climate change, which is making the planet warmer and, in places, wetter. Warmer temperatures in cold regions and increasing precipitation in dry areas are also expected to spur plant growth, he noted.

Increases in CO2 also fertilize plant growth by making more carbon available to plants and allowing plants to lose less water to the air during the process of photosynthesis. Plants need carbon and water for growth. More of both, means more growth, Donohue explained.

To detect the effect in nature, he and colleagues focused on satellite imagery of warm and dry environments around the world where rainfall — the biggest factor in plant growth — is limited. This makes it easier to see vegetation growth in satellite imagery and account for the effect of rainfall.

"If you go to a rainforest, it is much harder to detect this (CO2 fertilization effect) in the canopy cover because it is already covered," Ramakrishna Nemani, an Earth scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, explained to NBC News.

Nemani, who was not part of the research, said the team's approach and finding of 11 percent more foliage due to the CO2 fertilization effect is "quite plausible and theoretically correct."

The praise in only tempered by the length of the dataset, which, he noted, is about a decade longer than what he used for his own "global greening" research published in 2003. Still, he said, "30 years is not really that long." Further monitoring should increase confidence that "this is happening."

The greening effect of increased CO2 is a global phenomenon. It is even seen in areas that are getting drier due to reduced rainfall and warmer temperatures as a result of global climate change, the researchers noted.

"If a brown place is getting drier, we can expect that the 'browning' won't be as severe as it would have been if CO2 levels were unchanged," Donohue explained. "Similarly, we can expect that the greening that would occur when a dry place gets wetter will be greater now because of higher CO2 levels."

The implications of the findings are potentially significant, he added. For example, it could change how much carbon is soaked up by plants and the amount of woody fuel available for forest fires. 

"It needs to be considered as an important piece of the overall global-change puzzle that we are still trying to figure out."

The findings are reported in a paper accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. 

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. 

Portland General Electric

Rows of battery racks at Portland General Electric's Salem Smart Power Center in Salem, Ore., are being used to test several smart grid technologies and approaches.

A bank of lithium-ion batteries big enough to supply about 500 U.S. homes with electricity during a power outage went online today to demonstrate the future of smart grid technologies.

The 5-megawatt battery is a piece of a larger, government-backed $178 million research project in the Pacific Northwest to make the electric grid more efficient and friendly to additional loads of renewable energy such as wind and solar, which fluctuate depending on the weather and time of day.

The battery itself consists of 1,440 individual modules that are "just like electric vehicle batteries," Elaina Medina, a spokeswoman for Portland General Electric in Salem, Ore., where the battery bank is installed, explained to NBC News.

The company has partnered with the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to use the battery in a range of smart grid tests, including as a storage system for renewable energy that is produced when demand is low.

For example, Oregon's Biglow Canyon Wind Farm is most productive at night when everyone is asleep. The power will be stored in the battery and then released when "everyone's getting up, getting ready to go to work in the morning and we've got more demand on the system," Medina said.

The utility also plans to use the battery as a backup power supply during blackouts. It will turn on the instant an outage occurs on the system, keeping everyone on the local grid humming along. "What that means for customers is they won't see any blip," Medina noted.

The battery should last long enough for backup diesel generators to fire up and begin serving as a power source until the grid is ultimately restored.

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website. 

Sixty years ago, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay struggled to make the first ascent of Mt. Everest — but today, anyone with an Internet connection can easily trek to basecamp, take a virtual flight over the region's glaciers, and see how the mountain has changed over the years. 

"What we've heard from the scientists that study these specific glaciers is that the melt rate is increasing dramatically," David Breashears, a famed mountaineer and filmmaker, told NBC News. 

"One then says, well if we continue to put more carbon into the air … what will the glaciers look like and what will the consequences be?"

GlacierWorks / IE Microsoft

A screenshot from the Everest: Rivers of Ice website shows an image a glacier flowing from Mount Everest in 1921 compared to what it looked like 2007.

The website, Everest: Rivers of Ice, uses a new interactive storytelling technology from Microsoft Research to help Breashears prod people to ponder the consequences of the region's changing glaciers.

The project started in 2007 when Breashears was asked by PBS to match an iconic 1921 image taken by George Mallory of the Main Rongbuk Glacier, which begins in the North Face of Mount Everest. "The vertical melt rate of the glacier was just astonishing," said Breashears.

GlacierWorks / IE Microsoft

Famed mountaineer, filmmaker and photographer David Breashears discusses the project in a video on the Everest: Rivers of Change website.

The experience compelled him to start the non-profit GlacierWorks, which aims to document, educate and raise awareness about the glaciers in the Himalaya, which are a water source for as many as 1.5 billion people and reflect sunlight back to the atmosphere, slowing the pace of warming. 

What can the Web be?
Microsoft teamed up with the non-profit "to showcase what the Web can be," Roger Capriotti, director of product marketing for Internet Explorer, explained to NBC News.

The image of the basecamp, for example, contains on the order of 4 gigabytes of data and is the amalgamation of more than 400 images that have been stitched together. Visitors take in the broad view, and then zoom-in on basecamp to see individual people or climbers higher up the mountain.

At of the heart of website is a storytelling platform developed by Microsoft Research called Rich Interactive Narratives (RIN), which allows for integration of data heavy video, images, and maps in a way that lets users explore Everest on their own.

"We are just starting down a path of building great interactive experiences in a way that we just haven't done before," Capriotti said.

Storytelling context
For Breashears, the Web technology allows him to use his vast archives of imagery as well as those collected by his mountaineering colleagues and scientists to lure visitors to a region of the world many would otherwise never visit and, hopefully, prod them to think about global change.

Key to this lesson is a series of images of vanishing glaciers that allow comparisons of historic photographs with those taken in recent years. The images are laid on top of each other, allowing the user to scroll back and forth between them with a flick of the finger or mouse.

GlacierWorks / IE Microsoft

Historic and recent images of glaciers in the Himalaya allow visitors to the website to see the melting ice.

But the website is more than glaciers, Breashears noted. He wants visitors to learn about the Himalaya region in general and as they do never forget where they are. 

For this reason, users can zoom in on Namche Bazaar, for example, which serves as a trading post between Nepal and Tibet, but not into the doorway of a home there. But once zoomed down on the town, a video becomes available showing a street level view of the traders. 

In future iterations of the website, he noted, users may be offered an opportunity to watch an interview with an expert on the local people, or a slideshow showing what the village looked like before the first Westerners arrived in the mid-20th century. 

"The goal is that if you get this storytelling platform developed today at a certain level then there will be a tremendous amount of high-quality user-generated content … and what we've done is we've just presented this great architecture, this stage."

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, visit his website.