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• A megatsunami is an incredibly large wave of about 100 meters (328 ft) or more. These huge waves are often triggered by events such as landslides.
• In August 2025, a megatsunami in Alaska happened when a landslide entered a fjord next to South Sawyer Glacier. The event generated a wave 1,580 feet (481 meters) high.
• Scientists believe a warning system could help alert any people in the area. It would be based on seismic activity in the area.

By Michael E. West, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Ezgi Karasözen, University of Alaska Fairbanks

2025 Alaska megatsunami shows need for warning system

On the evening of August 9, 2025, passengers on the Hanse Explorer yacht finished taking selfies and videos of Alaska’s South Sawyer Glacier, and the ship headed back down the fjord. Twelve hours later, a landslide from the adjacent mountain unexpectedly collapsed into the fjord, initiating the second-highest tsunami in recorded history.

We conduct research on earthquakes and tsunamis at the Alaska Earthquake Center. And one of us serves as Alaska state seismologist. In a new study with colleagues, we detail how that landslide sent water and debris 1,580 feet (481 meters) up the other side of the fjord. That’s higher than the top floor of the Taipei 101 skyscraper. And then the tsunami continued down Tracy Arm. The force of the water stripped the fjord’s walls down to bare rock.

The 2025 Alaska megatsunami

It was just after 5 o’clock in the morning on a dreary day. And fortunately, no ships were nearby. In the months after, some cruise lines started avoiding Tracy Arm. However, the conditions that led to this event are not at all unique to this fjord.

Landslides are common in the coastal mountains of Alaska. In these areas, rapid uplift – caused by tectonic forces and long-term ice loss – converges with the erosive forces of precipitation and moving glaciers. But a curious pattern has emerged in recent years: Multiple major landslides have occurred precisely at the terminus (end point) of a retreating glacier.

Though the mechanics are still poorly understood, these mountains appear to become unstable when the ice disappears. When the landslide hits the water, the momentum of millions of tons of rock is transferred into tsunami waves.

This same phenomenon is playing out from Alaska to Greenland and Norway, sometimes with deadly consequences. Across the Arctic, countries are trying to come to terms with this growing hazard. The options are not attractive: avoid vast swaths of coastline, or live with a poorly understood risk. We believe there is an obvious role for alert systems. But only if scientists have a better understanding of where and when landslides are likely to occur.

Signs that a landslide might be coming

The Tracy Arm landslide is a powerful example.

The landslide occurred in August, when warm ocean waters and heavier precipitation favor both glacier retreat and slope failure. The glacier below the landslide area had experienced rapid calving: large chunks of ice breaking off and falling into the water. And it had retreated more than a third of a mile in the two months prior. Heavy rain had been falling. Rain enters fractures in the mountain and pushes them closer to failure by increasing the water pressure in cracks.

Most provocative are the thousands of small seismic tremors that emanated from the area of the slide in the days prior to the mountainside collapsing.

We believe that this combination of signs would have been sufficient to issue progressive alerts to any ships in the vicinity and homes and businesses that could have been harmed by a tsunami at least a day prior to the failure … had a monitoring program existed.

Escalating alerts are used for everything from terrorism and nuclear plant safety to avalanches and volcanic unrest. They don’t remove the risk. But they do make it easier for people to safely coexist with hazards.

For example, though people are still killed in avalanches, alert systems have played an essential role in making winter backcountry travel safer for more people. The collapse at Tracy Arm demonstrates what could be possible for landslides.

What an alert system could look like

We believe that the combination of weather and rapid glacier retreat in early August 2025 was likely sufficient to issue an alert notifying people that the hazard may be temporarily elevated in a general area. On a yellow-orange-red scale, this would be a yellow alert.

In the hours prior to the landslide, the exponential increase in seismic events and telltale transition to what is known as seismic tremor – a continuous “hum” of seismic energy – were sufficient to communicate a time-sensitive warning for a specific region.

These observations, recorded as a byproduct of regional earthquake monitoring, warranted an “orange” alert noting immediate concern. The signs were arguably sufficient to recommend keeping boats and ships out of the fjord.

Alerts are possible

Our research over the past few years has demonstrated that once a large landslide has started, it is possible to detect and measure the event within a couple of minutes. In this amount of time, seismic waves in the surrounding area can indicate the rough size of the landslide and whether it occurred near open water.

A monitoring program that could quickly communicate this would be able to issue a red alert, signaling an event in progress.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tsunami warning program has spent decades fine-tuning rapid message dissemination. A warning system would have offered little help for ships in the immediate vicinity, but it could have provided perhaps 10 minutes of warning for those who rode out the harrowing tsunami farther away.

There is no landslide monitoring system operating yet at this scale in the U.S. Building one will require cooperation across state and federal agencies, and strengthened monitoring and communication networks. Even then, it will not be fail-proof.

Understanding risk, not removing it

Alert systems do not remove the risk entirely, but they are a better option than no warning at all. Over time, they also build awareness as communities and visitors get used to thinking about these hazards.

Many of the most alluring places on Earth come with significant hazards. Arctic fjords are among them. The same processes that create this hazard – glacier retreat, steep terrain, dynamic geology – are also what make these landscapes so compelling. The mix of glaciers, ice-choked waters and steep mountains is exactly what draws people to these places. People will continue to visit and experience them.

The question is not whether these places should be avoided altogether, but how to help people make more informed decisions. We believe that stronger geophysical and meteorological monitoring, coupled with new research and communication channels, is the first step.

On August 9, visitors unknowingly passed through a landscape on the cusp of failure. An alert system might have given tour companies and people in the area the information they needed to make more informed choices and avoid being caught by surprise.

Michael E. West, Director of the Alaska Earthquake Center and State Seismologist, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Ezgi Karasözen, Research Seismologist, Alaska Earthquake Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: A 2025 Alaska megatsunami sent a 1,580-foot wave of water up the Tracy Arm fjord. It revealed the need for a landslide-triggered tsunami warning system.

Read more: Landslide-triggered tsunamis becoming more common

Alaskans are still paying high prices for oil.

We are paying outrageously high prices for a resource from our own ground while seeing too little benefit. This is not a resource problem. It is a system problem. And it is fixable.

When oil prices rise, Alaska should not just collect more revenue. It should capture more value and return it to Alaskans in a way that is timely, predictable and meaningful.

There is a clear path to do that. When oil prices rise above certain thresholds, the state can be structured to capture a larger share of that increase and return a portion of it to Alaskans more quickly.

This is not a new concept. Alaska has adjusted its fiscal system before in response to changing economic conditions. It can and should do it again.

First, the state can structure its production taxes so that when prices spike, the public share increases accordingly. If companies benefit from higher global prices, the state should as well.

Second, a portion of the additional revenue should be automatically reserved for immediate relief, not debated months later.

That could mean energy rebates, fuel cost offsets or direct payments tied to price increases, so people get this benefit when they are paying higher costs.

Third, relief efforts should be targeted where they are needed most. In many parts of Alaska, especially rural communities, energy costs are not just high; they are a barrier to living in your own home.

When geopolitical events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine spike prices and disrupt energy supply, those rural energy costs skyrocket, as described in a recent Alaska Beacon op-ed written by a chief scientist at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and the president of the Alaska Federation of Natives. Any serious policy must recognize and address this reality.

To get there, we have to stop leaving our fair share of Alaska’s resource income on the table.

We also need the will to implement a forward-thinking energy policy that breaks our dependence on overpriced oil and gas.

This means eliminating outdated oil and gas tax credits that still pay out even when those companies are highly profitable, closing loopholes and special carve-outs that reduce what large producers contribute as their fair share of corporate income taxes, and creating a Department of Energy to bring Alaska’s energy operations under one roof rather than scattering them across agencies.

Alaska holds enduring advantages in global energy markets: political stability, established regulatory systems and long-term production potential. These strengths give the state leverage in how it structures its fiscal framework.

This is about more than fuel prices. It is about whether Alaska can generate stable, long-term revenue to grow an economy that will sustain its population.

In recent years, the state has faced ongoing challenges in funding education, maintaining infrastructure and retaining residents. At the same time, a significant share of the value generated from resource extraction does not remain in state.

That imbalance should concern all of us. The resource-based fiscal solutions outlined above are part of a comprehensive plan that can address that imbalance.

Alaska should not be a place where resources are extracted, profits leave and communities are left to manage the consequences.

If nothing changes, the pattern is likely to continue: Prices rise, Alaskans pay more and the long-term challenges persist.

Alaska has the resources, the position and the leverage to get our fair share and invest in its future. I have a plan to do it. No more excuses. Let’s get it done.

Tom Begich is a former Alaska state senator, a small-business owner and a candidate for governor of Alaska. He has worked with communities across the state on education, energy policy and juvenile justice.

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Alaska wildlife agents can resume shooting and killing black and brown bears — including from helicopters — as part of a plan to help recover a caribou herd that was once an important source of food for Alaska Native hunters, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Two conservation groups, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and Center for Biological Diversity, sought to halt the program while their lawsuit challenging its legality plays out. But Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman said the groups had failed to show that the state acted without a reasonable basis for approving the plan.

The timing of the ruling is important: The Mulchatna caribou herd in southwest Alaska is expected to begin calving soon. The babies are particularly susceptible to being eaten by bears or wolves.

State officials see the bear-killing program as important to helping the caribou herd recover. The herd, which once provided up to about 4,770 caribou a year for subsistence hunters from dozens of communities, peaked at around 190,000 animals.

But the caribou population began declining in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2019 numbered around 13,000 animals. Last year, the population was estimated around 16,280, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. Hunting has not been allowed since 2021.

The state killed 180 bears from 2023 to 2024, most of them brown bears, plus 11 more last year, according to the conservation groups’ lawsuit. According to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, 99 bears, including 20 cubs, were killed by the state from the air in less than a month in 2023.

The groups argue that the Alaska Board of Game last year authorized reinstating the program without key data on the bears’ population numbers and sustainability.

Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement the groups want to see the caribou herd thrive, “but the state simply hasn’t shown that the unrestrained killing of bears is going to help us get there.”

“We need to stop this disgraceful waste of the state’s limited resources and work based on science to protect all our wildlife,” Freeman said.

State attorneys have said that officials took a “hard look” at factors related to bear numbers in adopting the plan. Alaska is home to an estimated 100,000 black bears and 30,000 brown bears.

“The herd has persisted at low numbers but started showing a positive response since 2023, when bear removal during calving seasons began,” they wrote in a court filing.

The Alaska Department of Law welcomed Zeman’s decision “to allow this management program to continue during the upcoming caribou calving season, a crucial time for herd recovery,” spokesperson Sam Curtis said by email. The department represents the board and Department of Fish and Game.

“Continuing this program makes sense in light of the scientific record,” Curtis said.

Attorneys with Trustees for Alaska, representing the conservation groups, are reviewing the ruling and “will consider all available options,” spokesperson Madison Grosvenor said by email.

The program has been the subject of ongoing litigation. A judge last year, in a case previously brought by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, found fault with the process in which it was adopted and concluded the state lacked data on bear sustainability.

Emergency regulations implemented by the state were later struck down. A subsequent public process was announced surrounding plans to reauthorize the program, which the board did last July.

According to the Alaska Wildlife Association, a group of state biologists in 2020 determined that the main reasons for the herd’s decline were disease and a lack of food and “bear predation isn’t even in the top three identified causes of mortality among the Mulchatna herd.”

“We are concerned that big game management in Alaska has become a process whereby population objectives for wild ungulates are established based on public demand rather than on habitat capacity, promoting unsustainable management,” the alliance says in a position paper.