NASA will 'break the ice' on a pair of new airborne radars that can help monitor climate change when a team of scientists embarks this week on a two-month expedition to the vast, frigid terrain of Greenland and Iceland.
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-NATO is not a main player in the High North, Allies are only interested in keeping the region stable, the way it is today, Norwegian Ambassador to NATO Kim Traavik said in a presentation last week. He also highlighted that Norway wants NATO and Russia to have open channels and productive cooperation.
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The Russian mining company Trust Arktikugol is by a court in Nord-Troms, Norway, sentenced to pay a 50.000 NOK corporate penalty for helicopter flights in a protected nature area on Svalbard.
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A wide range of challenges are facing people in the Arctic regions as the climate warms up twice as fast as the global average. People in some communities in Northern Norway see wind patterns changing and fish moving towards the North. People in Tuktoyaktuk in Northern Canada, who have seen their coastlines eroding for a long time, may see erosion happen faster due to warming temperatures and stronger storms.
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Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme study tells of profound changes to sea ice and permafrost, among others.
Extensive climate change is now affecting every form of life in the Arctic, according to a major new assessment by international polar scientists.
In the past four years, air temperatures have increased, sea ice has declined sharply, surface waters in the Arctic ocean have warmed and permafrost is in some areas rapidly thawing.
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An intelligent, ocean-going glider has spent six months on a record-breaking deployment to sample the icy waters off western Greenland. The samples will contribute to the longest continuous measurement of Arctic currents that help to drive ocean circulation and regulate global seawater temperatures.
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Russia plans to open a post office on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard in the near future. Telecommunication networks, including satellite and mobile systems will be expanded and developed further.
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US. Under Secretary of State William Burns believes the Arctic can serve as a ground for cooperation between Russia and the USA. Meanwhile, Russia's Ambassador to the Arctic Council says peace and stability is a Russian national priority.
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Indigenous delegates at a UN conference on climate change in Alaska could not agree on a final summit document due to disagreements over oil and gas drilling on native lands.
Some delegations at the UN-sponsored Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change were demanding a complete moratorium. Others disputed that language, saying that the use of fossil fuels should be phased out but indigenous people should be allowed to develop their resources.
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Arctic oil industry was on the agenda, when the Norwegian Minister of Oil and Energy yesterday met with his Russian counterpart in Moscow.
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Despite the fact that the European Commission places increasing stress on the Arctic Council as an instrument in Arctic developments, the European government body will not send any commissioners to the upcoming Arctic Council meeting in Tromsø, northern Norway.
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The UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf has issued its final recommendations on the outer limits of the Norwegian continental shelf in the High North. This means that a final assessment has been made as regards the part of the seabed where Norway is responsible for natural resource management.
This means that a final assessment has been made as regards the part of the seabed where Norway is responsible for natural resource management.
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The winter of 2009 was warm for the Barents Sea region. The high temperatures probably stemmed from unusually low sea ice generation in the region throughout much of the winter, which allowed the ocean to pump heat into the atmosphere.
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17 billion rubles are allocated from Russia’s federal budget to the development of the third generation nuclear powered icebreakers to operate from Murmansk.
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Increased growth in Antarctic sea ice during the past 30 years is a result of changing weather patterns caused by the ozone hole according to new research published this week.
Reporting in the journal Geophysical Research Letters scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA say that while there has been a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice has increased by a small amount as a result of the ozone hole delaying the impact of greenhouse gas increases on the climate of the continent.
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Rivers in some of the world's most populous regions are losing water, according to a comprehensive study of global stream flows.
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Russia is to submit to the UN new data on the boundaries of its continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, an ambassador at large said Monday.
"To bring to a close matters relating to the Arctic Ocean, we need to convince 21 members of the UN commission on the continental shelf that sections of the sea bed...are of a continental nature and are a continuation of the continent," said Anton Vasilyev, who is also a high-ranking official on the Arctic Council.
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Japan submitted its membership bid to the chair of the Arctic Council, Norway, and is considering sending foreign ministry officials to the council's ministerial meeting in Troms? on April 29.
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With the first climate change-related relocation of an Inuit village already underway, some 400 Indigenous People and observers from 80 nations are convening in Alaska for a UN-affiliated conference April 20-24 to discuss ways in which traditional knowledge can be used to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.
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The combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for March 2009 was the 10th warmest since records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
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The Antarctic Treaty turns 50 this year, and the United States marked this milestone by hosting, from April 6 through Friday, the Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore and Washington.
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A reservoir of briny liquid buried deep beneath an Antarctic glacier supports hardy microbes that have lived in isolation for millions of years, researchers report April 17 in the journal Science.
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A new study by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks offers evidence that in one breed of northern seabird, the size of males’ feather crests may be more than simple ornamentation.
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Norway is the first Arctic nation to settle an agreement with the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in the north. Norway’s newly defined continental shelf in the north covers 235,000 km2 or three-quarters the size of mainland Norway.
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Russia needs to lead economic activity on Svalbard in order to secure its national interests on the archipelago says Head of the Federation Council’s Committee on the North. Preparatory work on the planned Russian fish processing factory in Barentsburg will start this year.
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Of the 22 worldwide seabed claims submitted to the U.N. commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the most serious potential for disputes is in the Arctic, writes The New York Times. Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia all have competing claims.
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The Northern Contaminants Program (NCP) and Arctic Monitoring Assessment Program (AMAP) are hosting a joint symposium in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada from 10-12 June 2009. The results of the two assessments on human health effects of environmental contaminants in the Arctic over the past 6 years will be released at this meeting. This symposium will provide a forum for health professionals, Indigenous and local people, senior scientists, policy-makers, and young scientists to contribute to the future directions of the NCP and AMAP.
Abstracts Due: May 1, 2009
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Earth's ozone layer should eventually recover from the unintended destruction brought on by the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar ozone-depleting chemicals in the 20th century. But new research by NASA scientists suggests the ozone layer of the future is unlikely to look much like the past because greenhouse gases are changing the dynamics of the atmosphere.
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Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.
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Content:
1. Polar Oceans Weeks - March 2009
2. Changes in the IPO
3. Changes to ipy.org
4. Polar plans and assessments from ISAC and SCAR
5. Upcoming conferences and meetings
6. Update from APECS
7. Archiving IPY materials
8. Data, data, data - monthly reminder
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The Arctic sea ice cover continues to shrink and become thinner, according to satellite measurements and other data released yesterday, providing further evidence that the region is warming more rapidly than scientists had expected.
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Budget cutbacks may have a negative impact on Russia’s study of the continental shelf in the Arctic.
The financial crisis may have a negative impact on Russia’s ambitions in the Arctic, says Anatoly Ledovskikh, Head of the Federal Agency of sub-soil resources (Rosnedra).
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A blue-ribbon panel is urging Congress and the Obama administration today to toughen federal coastal protections in the face of rising climate threats and increased pressure from offshore energy producers.
The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative outlined a short-term agenda calling for a new White House-level ocean policy coordinator and the long-stalled ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty.
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Canada should push for the creation of an international park that would protect the area around the North Pole, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Monday.
It's crucial Canada get involved in international talks about who owns the North to help figure out a way to take care of the region, he told a group of Calgary high school students.
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Climate change and the High North were high on the agenda when Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre yesterday met with US. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. –We have a joint focus on the High North, Minister Støre said after the meeting.
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Arctic sea ice, which acts as the world's air conditioner, continued to shrink this winter as the ice cap grew thinner, according to NASA researchers.
This winter had the fifth-lowest total area of the arctic covered by ice since scientists began tracking it 30 years ago. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) also reported today that according to satellite observations, the six thinnest polar ice covers have occurred in the past six years.
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Russia does not intend to build Arctic military bases or establish an Arctic military district. We are not talking about a Russian militarization of the Arctic, a representative of the Russian Security Council says.
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In its white paper to Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, the Norwegian Government will go in for a nomination for Svalbard to the prestigious World Heritage List.
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The economic crisis made the world concentrate on the here and now, but this doesn’t mean ambitious plans have been abandoned. This is the case with the Arctic race, among other things: on March 23, Russia announced it intends to use its military submarines to explore the northern ocean shelf and defend it (not specified, from whom). It’s the latest move in the game that has been going on since 2006, the other participants being Denmark, Norway and the USA, all wanting to claim for themselves a piece of the Arctic.
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