All Episodes

Alaska Weather Voices – Episode 1: Origins

May 14, 2025

This podcast miniseries focuses on the life and career of Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP)’s climate specialist, Rick Thoman. This podcast, hosted by Liz Carter, is made by ACCAP in partnership with Alaska Voices. In this episode Rick Thoman describes how he came to love weather, climate and Alaska. Starting in childhood, the episode follows Rick from elementary school projects on Alaska and tracking the weather in Pennsylvania to his first Alaska trip in 1986 that launched his weather and climate career.

“I’ve been interested in weather and climate from my earliest memories. As a child, probably late elementary school, junior high school age, every morning I would get up and I would look at the temperature on the thermometer that was outside my bedroom window. And I would write it down and I would plot it on a piece of graph paper.” – Rick Thoman

Alaska Weather Voices Miniseries Starts Wednesday

May 12, 2025

This Wednesday weʼll release, the first episode of the 4-episode miniseries on Alaskaʼs beloved weather and climate communicator, Rick Thoman. Stay tuned for Rickʼs story and a new Alaska Voices season.

Tracking community coastal change

May 24, 2021

“I’ve seen an artistry come out of Alaska, it has changed, the way in which we’ve articulated in which our resources are important to us and how we’ve done that through art, and other type of expression, that makes me really hopeful.” – Davin Holen

Weathering winter rainstorms

May 17, 2021

“An actual inch of rain between November and March had only happened one other time in the climate record.” – Eric Stevens

When the ice dam fails

May 10, 2021

“We landed and when we landed the basin was finishing draining. So the glacier ice where we landed was still settling and cracking, it was very disconcerting.” – Eran Hood

Lightning, wildfires, and Martian ice

May 3, 2021

“We asked them if they could tailor their models from the Martian landscape to Earth permafrost landscapes and from there we developed some early calculations of impacts of climate change on permafrost.” – Cathy Wilson

What faces tomorrow’s climate scientists

April 26, 2021

“Once we destroy those natural areas it’s very difficult to get them back.” – Emily Fort

Reaching passersby through poetry

April 19, 2021

“Creating doesn’t have to be a scary thing where you have to go into your special corner and turn a light on and turn the world off and think about how awful life is.” – Rebecca Lawhorne