Arctic Rivers Are Turning Orange as the Ground Thaws Beneath Them. A report describes an Arctic that is warmer and wetter than at any point in the modern record—and increasingly unpredictable.

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1. Local pilots flying over northern Alaska were the first to spot that something was wrong. Below them, pristine river networks looked like they had rusted overnight.

   The vivid orange color suggested industrial contamination, but the surrounding land was wild and untouched. There were no mines, no factories, and no human activity for miles.

   What scientists eventually realized was far more unsettling: The Arctic itself is leaking.

   Across hundreds of miles of Alaska’s North Slope, long-frozen ground is thawing. As it does, naturally occurring metals locked in the soil for millennia are bleeding into streams and rivers. The result is a growing network of what researchers now call “rusting rivers,” a striking and troubling signal of just how quickly the Arctic is changing.

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