The varnished wooden cross stands amid a cluster of grave markers tilted at odd angles in the cemetery, because the ground beneath them is sinking. Rising temperatures are thawing the once-frozen earth, forming pools of water that run through the graveyard. In late May, Martha Itta buried her 89-year-old grandmother here. Before the ceremony even began, a young villager had to siphon off water that had crept into the grave. Not even the dead are immune from climate change. Water surrounds the graves at the cemetery in Nuiqsut, Alaska, in May. Rising temperatures are thawing the once-frozen earth. On Alaska’s North Slope, a remote wilderness of astonishing vastness and variety, the cold Arctic landscape once seemed eternal. When her grandmother was a girl, Itta’s ancestors were nomads, roaming the mountains, rivers and frozen tundra in search of caribou and other game. Now, Itta lives in Nuiqsut […]