Russian wants joint mapping, joint resource management and joint development with Norway in the Border areas of the Barents Sea.
Head of the Russian state university for oil and gas, Anatoly Zolotukhin, underlines the importance of a joint development plan for the former disputed areas of the Barents Sea. In April this year a delineation agreement for the disputed areas was signed in Oslo, ending a 40 year long border dispute between Norway and Russia.
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China can make a valuable contribution in the Arctic region, Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a speech at the China Institute of International of International Studies Forum in Beijing this week.
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Russian media speculate if the Danish bulk carrier “MV Nordic Barents” is not fit for the journey from Northern Norway to China through the Northeast Passage.
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The fear that global temperature can change very quickly and cause dramatic climate changes that may have a disastrous impact on many countries and populations is great around the world. But what causes climate change and is it possible to predict future climate change? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen shows that it may be due to an accumulation of different chaotic influences and as a result would be difficult to predict.
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The Environmental Monitoring System for Svalbard and Jan Mayen (MOSJ) observes and describes environmental conditions in the Norwegian Arctic. A new MOSJ-report focuses on climate indicators.
The report "Status and development of climate indicators in the Norwegian Arctic" presents a thorough analysis of several climate indicators on Svalbard and Jan Mayen. Editor John Richard Hansen from the Norwegian Polar Institute summarizes the results...
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In recent years, Russia viewed the threat of climate change in naive or cavalier terms. But this summer's devastating weather was a wake-up call.
Will the heat wave and drought that have created so much havoc in Russia cause the leadership in that country to take climate change more seriously? The answer is important not only for Russia itself but for the world community. Russia is the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases globally, behind only China and the United States.
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The Arctic is set to become the world's last dash for oil after a British energy company reported a discovery off the coast of Greenland.
Cairn Energy said it had found oil and gas bearing sands in one of its exploration wells, indicting there was an ‘active hydrocarbon system’ there.
The Edinburgh-based company is drilling in a basin the size of the North Sea, meaning the find is potentially of enormous significance.
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Metop-A, Europe's first polar-orbiting satellite dedicated to operational meteorology, will complete its 20,000th orbit of the Earth on 27 August delivering its data to the EUMETSAT Polar System ground station on Svalbard around lunchtime.
Since its launch on 19 October 2006, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, Metop-A has travelled over 900 million km and brought in a new era in the way the Earth's weather, climate and environment are observed -- with its state-of-the-art sounding and imaging instruments.
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Royal Dutch Shell Plc has brought the former manager of Sakhalin-2, Russia's first liquefied natural gas project, to Australia to oversee development of a proposed venture that may cost more than $20 billion.
Shell, OAO Gazprom's partner in the $22 billion Russian project, moved Hilary Mercer to Queensland state, Ann Pickard, chairman of the company's Australian unit, said in an interview. Shell and PetroChina Co. this week completed the purchase of Arrow Energy Ltd., gaining gas for an LNG venture that may produce 16 million metric tons of fuel a year.
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There's a lot of hot air and hype over Russia's Arctic posture, but the old adversary's northern policy interests are almost the same as those of Canada, a briefing note prepared for Defence Minister Peter MacKay says.
The document, which examined a 2008 Russian Security Council policy statement, paints a startling contrast to the steady drumbeat of complaints from the Conservative government over repeated probing of Canadian airspace by long-range bombers.
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A relatively new type of El Nino, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Ninos and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.
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The costs of using the service of nuclear icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route through the Northeast Passage should not be particularly higher than the costs of passing through the Suez Canal, says Atomflot.
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New findings by international research group of scientists from England, China and Denmark just published suggest that sea level will likely be 30-70 centimetres higher by 2100 than at the start of the century even if all but the most aggressive geo-engineering schemes are undertaken to mitigate the effects of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions are stringently controlled.
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After months of deliberation, the Canadian government has chosen Cambridge Bay — a hamlet midway along the Northwest Passage in the country's far north — as the site for a world-class Arctic research station.
Once built, the station will house scientists all year round, giving them a modern space to study Arctic issues, including climate change and natural resources. It will host conference facilities and laboratories for research on marine biology and geophysics, provide ecologists with the space to do long-term ecological monitoring in aquaria and greenhouses, and give researchers in the health and social sciences a base for their studies.
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In October, the Senior Arctic Officials of the Arctic Council will meet for their fall session, this time in Torshavn, The Faroe Islands. The meeting will be an important step in the preparations for the Ministerial Meeting in Nuuk, Greenland in May 2011, which will mark the ending of the Danish Chairmanship and the starting point for Sweden as Chair of the Arctic Council.
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Bochum researchers have discovered how natural antifreeze works to protect fish in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean from freezing to death. They were able to observe that an antifreeze protein in the fish's blood affects the water molecules in its vicinity such that they cannot freeze, and everything remains fluid. Here, there is no chemical bond between protein and water -- the mere presence of the protein is sufficient.
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A new study of the High Arctic climate roughly 50 million years ago led by the University of Colorado at Boulder helps to explain how ancient alligators and giant tortoises were able to thrive on Ellesmere Island well above the Arctic Circle, even as they endured six months of darkness each year.
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The Northern Research Institute Norut has opened a new research office in Kirkenes, Northern Norway.
The objective of the new office is to launch and carry out applied research in order to develop industrial activities and socioeconomic conditions in the Kirkenes region and in the Russian part of the Barents Region, a press release from the newly established office reads.
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Visa-free travel is discussed as part of a major Russian-US. environmental project in the Arctic.
Russian and US. authorities are reviving plans for the establishment of a huge international park – the Bering Park – which is to stretch over a significant part of Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula and American Alaska. The project idea was originally presented 20 years ago, but has now been revived with the political support from the two countries’presidents.
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Russia’s Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, visited the polar research station “Samoylov” in the Lena Delta, North Siberia, to get an impression of Russian and German permafrost research in the region. Putin visited field experiments related to micrometeorology, greenhouse gas flux studies as well as palaeoclimate research. Members of the “Lena Delta 2010 Expedition”, had the unique opportunity to discuss the future of polar research in Northern Russia with the Prime Minister in person.
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The first high-tonnage tanker to take the Northern Sea Route from Europe to Asia has arrived Pevek on the Chukotka Peninsula one day earlier than expected.
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A team of researchers headed by the well-know scientist Jørn Hurum might have done a historic dinosaur finding at Svalbard.
According to the researchers, there are indications that they have found an abnormal fish eagle.
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The summer of 2010 has been agonizingly hot in much of the continental U.S., and the record-setting temperatures have refocused attention on global warming. Scientists have been looking at ways the Earth might benefit from natural processes to balance the rising heat, and one process had intrigued them, a premise that melting ice at the poles might allow more open water that could absorb carbon dioxide, one of the major compounds implicated in warming.
Now, though, research just published in the journal Science indicates that idea may be one more dead end.
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While Arctic sea ice has been diminishing in recent decades, the Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slightly. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide an explanation for the seeming paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice in a warming climate.
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The aircraft producer Boeing plans to test an airplane of the type Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner on the Longyear airport on Svalbard.
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The extent of the sea ice in the Arctic will reach its annual minimum in September. Forecasts indicate that it will not be as low as in 2007, the year of the smallest area covered by sea ice since satellites started recording such data. Nevertheless, sea ice physicists at the Alfred Wegener Institute are concerned about the long-term equilibrium in the Arctic Ocean.
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This summer has been one of weather-related extremes in Russia, Pakistan, China, Europe, the Arctic – you name it. But does this have anything to do with global warming, and are human emissions to blame?
While it cannot be scientifically proven (or disproven, for that matter) that global warming caused any particular extreme event, we can say that global warming very likely makes many kinds of extreme weather both more frequent and more severe.
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On the 14 of August the ice-class tanker SCF Baltica began it's voyage through the Northern sea-route. The tanker will be accompanied by three nuclear powered ice breakers during the two week sail. For the duration of the trip the crew till gather information on ice conditions in the area and the data used to estimate the commercial benefit of choosing the Northern sea-route vs. traditional routes in the south.
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The combined global land and ocean surface temperature made this July the second warmest on record, behind 1998, and the warmest averaged January-July on record. The global average land surface temperature for July and January-July was warmest on record. The global ocean surface temperature for July was the fifth warmest, and for January-July 2010 was the second warmest on record, behind 1998.
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This summer, the Norwegian Polar Institute has marked nine ringed seals with advanced satellite tags at Nordaustlandet. One of the seals has been swimming far into the ice covered Arctic Ocean and already reached 84° N.
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Researchers from the University of Luxembourg are the first to use radon in a study of glacier outflow.
Since september 2006 Professor Antoine Kies from the University of Luxembourg and his colleagues have been sampling meltwater from the two glaciers Werenskioldbreen and Ariebreen, close to the Polish Station in Hornsund.
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Permafrost warming continues throughout a wide swath of the Northern Hemisphere, according to a team of scientists assembled during the recent International Polar Year.
Their extensive findings, published in the April-June 2010 edition of Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, describe the thermal state of high-latitude permafrost during the International Polar Year, 2007-2009. Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor with the snow, ice and permafrost group at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is the lead author of the paper, which also details the significant expansion of Northern Hemisphere permafrost monitoring.
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Participants of the 2010 Shintop Trophy expedition set a new world record and hope to be recognized by the Guinness Book of Records with their unique car race from the Pacific to the Arctic Ocean in amphibian off-road vehicles.
The world’s first ‘amphibian’ expedition kicked off on July 1 in Yakutsk. Three crews driving three off-road vehicles nicknamed Stremitelny (Swift), Avos’ (On the Off Chance) and Nautilus covered nearly 5,000 km by land and almost 2,000 km on water down the Kolyma River in the course of only one month.
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The summer of 2010 has been agonizingly hot in much of the continental U.S., and the record-setting temperatures have refocused attention on global warming. Scientists have been looking at ways the Earth might benefit from natural processes to balance the rising heat, and one process had intrigued them, a premise that melting ice at the poles might allow more open water that could absorb carbon dioxide, one of the major compounds implicating in warming.
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A new study confirms that black carbon -- more commonly known as soot -- is a significant player in global warming.
The work by Mark Jacobson, director of Stanford University's Atmosphere/Energy program and a fellow at the university's Woods Institute, argues that cutting emissions of black carbon may be the fastest method to limit the ongoing loss of ice in the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the global average.
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An international science team involving the University of Colorado at Boulder that is working on the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project hit bedrock July 27 after two summers of work, drilling down more than 1.5 miles in an effort to help assess the risks of abrupt future climate change on Earth.
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Last summer, before "Deepwater Horizon" became shorthand for the worst oil spill in U.S. history, two members of an Inuit wildlife-protection agency flew from the Canadian Arctic to the Houston headquarters of Cameron, one of the world's leading developers of offshore-drilling technology.
The purpose of their corporate-funded trip was to check out the Alternative Well Kill System, or AWKS, a blowout-prevention system being developed by Cameron along with Chevron, the California-based energy giant.
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The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association for the first time sent its Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) on an under-ice mission at about 79° North. The four-metre-long, torpedo shaped underwater vehicle was deployed from the research icebreaker Polarstern under heavy pack ice. The vehicle was subsequently recovered by helicopter.
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Canadian Air Force fighters intercepted two Russian strategic bombers over the Atlantic Ocean, CBC television reported, citing Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay.
Canadian F-18 pilots took to the air from the Bagotville Air Force Base in Quebec after identifying two Russsian Tu-95 Bears in the country's buffer zone on Wednesday. The Russian aircraft were 450 kilometers off the coast of Labrador.
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