Coal mining in Svalbard has long been criticized for the contradictions of allowing the fossil fuel industry to operate in a place where climate changes are felt more harshly than anywhere else on Earth.

The long journey of these compounds — likely originating in the United States and Eurasia — points to the near-global reach of industrial and agricultural pollution.

Artifacts from a receding ice patch provide a glimpse of Iron Age and Viking activity along a mountain pass.

The rise of the Vikings was not a sudden event, but part of a long continuum of human development in the harsh conditions of northern Scandinavia. How did the Vikings make a living over the long term, and what might have influenced their brief florescence? Today, their experiences may provide a kind of object lesson on how changing climate can affect civilizations.

Billy D’Andrea, a Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory paleoclimatologist and Center for Climate and Life Fellow, is investigating the relationship between environmental change and characteristics of early settlements in Norway’s Lofoten Islands.