NUIQSUT, Alaska - A 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.

It is, along with a sliver of Siberia and the Norwegian island of Svalbard, the fastest-warming spot of land on Earth. With global greenhouse gas emissions continuing to climb, and a new oil boom in Alaska on the horizon, there is no cure in sight.

These changes are drowning Alaska Native towns. Twelve rural villages are hoping to relocate to drier ground, making their nearly 4,000 residents among the first climate refugees in the United States. Fourteen more are considered “high priority” for relocation.

All manner of wildlife have been affected. Bowhead whales were late to appear this fall in the warming Arctic waters. Grizzlies and beavers have been showing up in greater numbers in recent years as the changing climate makes the Arctic more hospitable. And tens of thousands of summer chum salmon died of heat stress this summer in western Alaska, where river temperatures soared above 21.1 degrees Celsius.