It has been an exciting year for the Barents Region. The cross-border cooperation is flourishing and the outside world’s attention to the northernmost part of Europe is increasing.
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The Applied Bioacoustics Laboratory (LAB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has developed the first system equipped with hydrophones able to record sounds on the seafloor in real time over the Internet. The system detects the presence of cetaceans and makes it possible to analyze how noise caused by human activity can affect the natural habitat of these animals and the natural balance of oceans. A new EU directive on the sea has ruled that all member states must comply with a set of indicators for measuring marine noise pollution before 2012.
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More than 600 crewmembers are aboard the ten vessels trapped in the ice in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Distress signals have been received from the Sodruzhestvo fishing mother ship and the Professor Kizevetter scientific research vessel. All their attempts to get to the clear water have failed, the state sea rescue coordination centre reported.
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A study in HortTechnology featured a new technology that improved greenhouse climates by reducing solar heat radiation and temperatures during the hot summer season. The study, published by a team of Canadian researchers, was the first investigation into the effects of application of the liquid foam technology as a shading method. Results showed that the technology improved greenhouse and plant microclimates and decreased air temperature more than conventional shading curtains traditionally used by greenhouse growers.
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The International Symposium on Arctic Research is the flagship Arctic science meeting in Japan organized by the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks. The second symposium took place 7-9 December in Tokyo, while the first one took place two years ago. The third symposium is expected to take place late 2012. About 240 scientists and students participated with slightly more Japanese than foreigners. The symposium is thus on its way to become a major international Arctic meeting.
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On 12 December 2010, the day before the 2010 AGU Fall Meeting, 16 early career scientists participated in a career development workshop sponsored by the University of Alaska, the International Arctic Research Center, Arctic Research Consortium of the US (ARCUS), APECS, and the Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN). Seven mentors spent much of the day working with workshop participants, covering information about how to succeed in academic and research careers, outreach methods in proposal writing, and how to communicate polar research to various audiences. The mentors received great reviews from the participants, citing their knowledge and enthusiasm as one of the greatest parts of the workshop. Overall, participants were pleased with the workshop and felt that they would be very likely to use the information they learned in the future.
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A computer program that automatically analyzes mounds of satellite images and other data could help climate scientists keep track of complex, constantly changing environmental conditions, according to an international team of researchers.
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The Research Council of Norway has awarded 10 million NOK annually over the next eight years to a new center for research-based innovation which is headed by NTNU and where UNIS is a vital partner. – This center will make UNIS a stronger scientific node in an area that is vital for the future business development in the Barents Sea, says UNIS director Gunnar Sand.
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The Russian emergencies ministry is planning to build ten centers to monitor the operation and safety of oil and gas pipelines on the Arctic coast.
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A new study of local sea-level trends by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) brings both good and bad news to localities concerned with coastal inundation and flooding along the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
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In fact, while no single storm is anything more than weather, stronger winter storms are exactly what climate scientists expect from a warming climate. How can that be? Simple. Warmer air allows for more water vapor, the key constituent of snow (which accords with the folk wisdom from my home state, where when the temperature got really brisk and the sky was leaden, people would observe: "Too cold to snow.")
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Fog is a common feature along the West Coast during the summer, but a University of Washington scientist has found that summertime coastal fog has declined since 1950 while coastal temperatures have increased slightly.
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More than 10.000 marine species live in the European oceans. But there is no comprehensive pattern of relationship between latitude and marine fauna biodiversity. More coordinated research efforts are needed to fully understand the marine biodiversity and develop proper management mechanisms, according to a recently published paper.
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Siemens Energy will supply power to the Goliat floating offshore platform in the Barents Sea north of Norway via a 106 kilometre long sub-sea cable, a strategy it says will reduce CO2 emissions from the oil and gas operation by 50 percent.
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The Cryosat-2 spacecraft has produced its first major science result.
Radar data from the European satellite has been used to make a map of ocean circulation across the Arctic basin.
Cryosat's primary mission is to measure sea-ice thickness, which has been in sharp decline in recent decades.
But its ability also to map the shape of the sea surface will tell scientists if Arctic currents are changing as a result of winds being allowed to blow more easily on ice-free waters.
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Finding Santa Claus's home at the North Pole is easy on a globe—just look for the point on top where all the lines of longitude meet. But that is just the "geographic" North Pole; there are several other definitions for the poles, all useful in different scientific or navigational contexts. Among the many north poles, let us rejoice that Santa Claus did not choose the magnetic pole for his home, for he would have to spend as much time moving as delivering presents.
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Russia and Finland have set up a joint company for building ships that can navigate the High Arctic. The two first icebreakers have now been ordered from the new company.
The joint-venture company, called Arctech Helsinki Shipyard Oy, has already received an order worth $200 million for the construction of two icebreakers, which are meant for heavy ice conditions and which can operate independently in 1.7 meter thick ice and in temperatures as low as minus 35 degrees Celsius.
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A fleet of new research vessels and the establishment of a Russian Arctic satellite system are on top of the wishing-list of Leonid Vasiliev, leader of the Arkhangelsk-based Northern Service on Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring.
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What goes in must come out, a truism that now may be applied to global river networks. Human-caused nitrogen loading to river networks is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone destruction.
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Oceanic plates take up a lot of water when submerged into the Earths' interior at continental margins. This water plays a central role in plate boundary volcanism. A team of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 574 "Fluids and Volatiles in Subduction Zones" in Kiel (Germany) has for the first time tracked the pathway of the water up to 120 kilometre depth. This is an important piece in the puzzle to understand the highly active volcanoes in Pacific "ring of fire."
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ESA’s CryoSat-2 satellite, which was launched in April 2010, has produced the first complete picture of ocean dynamic topography in the Arctic Ocean – its first major scientific accomplishment – according to presentation at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting. While the primary mission of the satellite is to measure sea-ice thickness, its ability to map the shape of the sea surface allows scientists to determine whether Arctic currents are changing as a result of winds blowing more freely on ice-free waters.
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NASA and the National Science Foundation launched a scientific balloon on Monday, Dec. 20, to study the effects of cosmic rays on Earth. It was the first of five scientific balloons scheduled to launch from Antarctica in December.
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In a unique and complex example of "science diplomacy," teams of U.S. and Swedish scientists are sailing this month aboard two research vessels to study the ecology of the Amundsen Sea, one of the least-explored and most productive bodies in Antarctic waters, and to gauge the potential effects of a changing climate on the Southern Ocean.
The joint American and Swedish expedition, involving the U.S. icebreaking research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer and the Swedish icebreaker Oden, was cooperatively planned and is being carried out by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat (SPRS).
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Oceanic plates take up a lot of water when submerged into the Earths' interior at continental margins. This water plays a central role in plate boundary volcanism. A team of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 574 "Fluids and Volatiles in Subduction Zones" in Kiel (Germany) has for the first time tracked the pathway of the water up to 120 kilometre depth. This is an important piece in the puzzle to understand the highly active volcanoes in Pacific "ring of fire."
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Russia plans to build railways to two northern settlements that can be used as bases for traffic along the Northern Sea Route from Europe to Asia.
Russian Railways has included railways to Indiga and Amderma in its development plans for the period to 2030, says Governor of Nenets Autonomous Okrug Igor Fedorov to RIA Novosti.
One line is planned to go from the town of Sosnogorsk in the Republic of Komi to the settlement of Indiga, while another I planned to be built from the town of Vorkuta in Nenets Autonomous Okrug to Amderma.
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It’s easy to be disheartened by the failure at Cancun to take major steps toward an international agreement on fighting climate change. Despite apparent consensus on the threat that global warming poses and the need for urgent action, short-term national interest is still being put before the long-term collective good.
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During November and the beginning of December, there has been unusual weather phenomenon over Greenland and Iceland causing unusual high temperature in the area. It is reported on the 29th of November that in the capital of Greenland, Nuuk, that the temperature was as high as 16° C (61°). According to the Danish Meteorological office, the mean temperature in November 2010 in Nuuk was 1,6° C (36° F), while the annual mean temperature in November is -3,7°C (25° F). So far in December, the mean temperature has been 1° C (34° F), which is seven degrees over the annual mean temperature, which is -6,2°C (21° F).
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It is said that the first refugees of climate change will come from the Pacific. In the midst of this ocean's tropical regions are scattered 50,000 small islands, 8,000 of them inhabited. They are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. These effects include rising sea-water levels, drought and diminishing stocks of freshwater. Such water is essential for the life of the fauna and flora and for the human populations' food supplies. On the coral reef islands, freshwater occurs as underground reservoirs, as lenses in balance with the underlying sea water.
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Member states of the Arctic Council, Canada, Denmark on behalf f the Faroe islands and Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and The US have finished drafting a cooperation agreement on search and rescue in the Arctic in a meeting held in Reykjavík 14.-16. December. In addition to state representatives, around 50 academics and experts from the respective states and International Civil Aviation Organization participated in the meeting, which is a final part of a year long work process.
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Scientists have expected for some time that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in summer by the end of this century. Writing in the December 15 issue of the journal Nature, a trio of researchers say the seasonal loss of this ice sheet, a continent-sized natural barrier between species such as bears, whales and seals, could mean extinction of some rare marine mammals and the loss of many adaptive gene combinations.
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As the flagship of the Russian polar fleet, the Akademik Fyodorov, returns from a research expedition in the Arctic Ocean aimed at finding evidence that areas of the continental Arctic shelf belong to Russia, governments continue to dispute the issue, mediated by the UN.
The debate over the Arctic continental shelf gained momentum this year, with Russia, Canada, the U.S., Denmark and Norway all vying for a piece of the oil in the Arctic.
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The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling.
Researchers believe the trees -- buried by a landslide and exquisitely preserved 2 to 8 million years ago -- will help them predict how today's Arctic will respond to global warming.
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Vessels and units from Russia’s Northern Fleet will take part in at least three international exercises in 2011 and continue to patrol the waters in the Gulf of Aden, says Vice Admiral Nikolay Maksimov.
According to Commander of the Northern Fleet Vice Admiral Maksimov, his men and vessels will take part in the Norwegian-Russian joint exercise “Pomor-2011”, the international search and rescue exercise “Barents Rescue-2011” and the quadrilateral exercise “Frukus-2011” together with naval forces from France, the U.S. and Great Britain.
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A novel project using cameras mounted on unmanned aircraft flying over the Arctic is serving double duty by assessing the characteristics of declining sea ice and using the same aerial photos to pinpoint seals that have hauled up on ice floes.
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Arkhangelsk is suggested to host the next year’s Arctic Forum.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced on Saturday that Arctic Forums will be hold annually. The Prime Minister said to RIA Novosti that Russia wants to continue an open discussion of key Arctic problems, including nature protection and climate changes.
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Deep sediment cores retrieved from the Bering Sea floor indicate that the region was ice-free all year and biological productivity was high during the last major warm period in Earth's climate history.
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A Russian Glonass-K satellite has been delivered to the Plesetsk Space Center in Arkhangelsk Oblast, where it will be launched later this month.
The satellite will be sent into orbit atop a modernized Soyuz rocket.
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The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 10.8 billion miles from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.
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Russia will also next summer send out its Arctic research vessel “Akademik Fyodorov” to collect geological shelf data.
- Once the additional research is done, and consultations with circumpolar nations are held, Russia will lodge its application with the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, said Arthur Chilinarov this Sunday.
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The Midwest got blasted by sub-zero temperatures Monday morning after its first big snowfall of the season, which was slowing grain and livestock movement to markets, a forecaster said.
"It will be a tough, tough day for transportation across the Midwest whether we are talking livestock, barges or human beings," said Mike Palmerino of Telvent DTN.
Temperatures dipped to -15 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit in southern Minnesota (-26 to -29 Celsius) -- the coldest spot in the heartland.
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Study suggests that trace amounts of water created oceans on Earth and other terrestrial planets, including those outside the solar system.
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Geophysical phenomena such as the dynamics of the atmosphere and ocean circulation are typically modeled mathematically by tracking the motion of air or water particles. These mathematical models define velocity fields that, given (i) a position in three-dimensional space and (ii) a time instant, provide a speed and direction for a particle at that position and time instant.
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Russia wants to continue an open discussion of key Arctic problems, including nature protection and climate change, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Saturday.
"Therefore we have decided to hold Arctic forums annually," Putin said at the 14th congress of the Russian Geographic Society.
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a resolution to set up a special structure to develop the new national park Russian Arctica. The premier said about it at the 14th congress of the Russian Geographic Society.
The work of the structure will be aimed at preservation of unique natural complexes, ecological education of citizens and organisation of conditions for civilised tourism, Putin said.
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Despite a 30-year warming trend, the last three years in the Bering Sea have been the coldest on record. A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist says that the cold temperatures have helped produce larger zooplankton in the Bering Sea, which may be changing the way Walleye pollock are feeding.
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The Russian nuclear icebreaker “Rossiya” has sailed to the Bering Strait to meet the Swedish icebreaking tug “Tor Viking”, which is planning to go through the Northeast Passage to Europe.
The sailing season on the Northern Sea Route officially ended a month ago.
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The federal government will begin consultations to determine the boundaries of a new national marine conservation area in the Lancaster Sound at the northern tip of Baffin Island.
Those lines will designate an ecologically sensitive body of Arctic water, approximately twice the size of Lake Erie, that is off limits to resource exploration and extraction.
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Global warming in the next 40 years will allow Russian authorities to save on central heating, increase agricultural production and extend sea navigation in the north, a leading Russian climatologist told a Russian-German conference Wednesday.
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Sudden changes in the volume of meltwater contribute more to the acceleration -- and eventual loss -- of the Greenland ice sheet than the gradual increase of temperature, according to a University of British Columbia study.
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Ph.D. candidate Fabrice Caline built a 50 meter long breakwater in Svea to study the action of sea ice on coastal infrastructures. Caline will defend his Ph.D. thesis on December 10 at UNIS.Ph.D. candidate Fabrice Caline built a 50 meter long breakwater in Svea to study the action of sea ice on coastal infrastructures. Caline will defend his Ph.D. thesis on December 10 at UNIS.
The background for Caline’s Ph.D. project is that the Store Norske mining company wants to open a new coal mine in Ispallen, close to the existing mining community Svea, Svalbard. The coal from this mine will need to be transported across a tidal inlet, Sveasundet, which is covered by sea ice several months of the year.
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A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback -- a cooling effect -- in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.
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Arctic sea ice grew more slowly than average in November, leading to the second-lowest ice extent for the month. At the end of November, Hudson Bay was still nearly ice-free.
Arctic sea ice extent averaged over November 2010 was 9.89 million square kilometers (3.82 million square miles).
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Scientists Warn that Many Low-Lying Ones Vital for Dryland Communities May Disappear Over Coming Decades.News Comes as Norway Announces Funding for Himalayan Climate Adaptation Initiative.
These are among the findings of a new report compiled by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in partnership with scientists and research centres from around the world, including the Norwegian Polar Institute and Norut Alta.
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Climate change increases the exposure of persistent organic pollutants, which have long-term health effects on humans, a U.N. study released in Mexico said.
A U.N. research team unveiled the first comprehensive review of the link between climate change and exposure to persistent organic pollutants.
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Polar Research, the respected international peer-reviewed journal of the Norwegian Polar Institute, will become an open-access journal starting January 1st 2011. Now readers around the world will have free access to the latest scientific articles on climate, biodiversity, polar history and other diverse topics that are investigated in the polar regions.
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A team led by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre have measured the air-sea exchange of carbon dioxide in the open ocean at higher wind speed then anyone else has ever managed. Their findings are important for understanding how interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere influence climate.
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A Career Development workshop sponsored to bring early career Arctic and Antarctic researchers together for a series of career development training sessions to develop professional skill, work with senior mentors, and develop international and interdisciplinary collaborations was held 4-8 December 2009, in Victoria, B.C.
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Analysis from NIWA’s ozone research shows that the Antarctic ozone hole is smaller this year than any of the previous five years. Calculations made by combining satellite data with ground-based measurements, including the Antarctica New Zealand Arrival …NIWA Media ReleaseAnalysis from NIWA’s ozone research shows that the Antarctic ozone hole is smaller this year than any of the previous five years. Calculations made by combining satellite data with ground-based measurements, including the Antarctica New Zealand Arrival …NIWA Media Release
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Should global warming cause sea levels to rise as predicted in coming decades, thousands of archaeological sites in coastal areas around the world will be lost to erosion. With no hope of saving all of these sites, archaeologists Torben Rick from the Smithsonian Institution, Leslie Reeder of Southern Methodist University, and Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon have issued a call to action for scientists to assess the sites most at risk.
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CHERSKY, Sakha Republic — The scientist shuffles across the frozen lake, scuffing aside ankle-deep snow until he finds a cluster of bubbles trapped under the ice. With a cigarette lighter in one hand and a knife in the other, he lances the ice like a blister. Methane whooshes out and bursts into a thin blue flame.
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Three female polar bears were tagged with satellite collars during a research expedition on the Franz Josef Land archipelago in Russia's far north, the Russian environment watchdog said on Friday.
"The expedition found 40 polar bears," the watchdog said, adding that the researchers had immobilized 12 bears, weighed them and taken blood and fur samples for genetic and biochemical tests.
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A rally against the Kremlin's plans to legalize the killing of polar bears will be held in Moscow on Saturday.
Legislation allowing the indigenous peoples in Russia's Far Eastern region of Chukotka to kill polar bears may be pushed through parliament next year.
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Just now, scientists involved in the Rocket Experiment for Neutral Upwelling (RENU) are awaiting optimal launch conditions to unravel what happens during neutral upwelling in the atmosphere. The campaign is lead by Dr. Marc Lessard (University of New Hampshire) and involves scientists from UNIS, the Andøya Rocket Range and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
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Observations have shown differences in altitude and brightness between polar mesospheric clouds (clouds made of ice crystals in the upper mesosphere) in the Northern Hemisphere and those in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Planet Earth should have been named planet Water. This popular joke among geographers contains more than a grain of truth: the world ocean covers two-thirds of the surface of our planet. Its increasingly erratic behavior is one of the topics being discussed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun (Mexico), which will run from November 29 through December 10. The question at the heart of the discussion sounds like an idea for a disaster film: what cities will be flooded first if the world ocean rises one meter by the end of the 21st century?
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Wild horses have returned to northern Siberia. So have musk oxen, hairy beasts that once shared this icy land with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Moose and reindeer are here, and may one day be joined by Canadian bison and deer.
Later, the predators will come – Siberian tigers, wolves and maybe leopards.
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The book contains more than 20 papers about the physics, biology and, in particular, about geological processes and palaeo-environments in fjords. Nine of these papers are dealing with fjords on Svalbard.
A new book in the series of the "Geological Society Special Publication" called "Fjord Systems and Archives" has been recently published.
This book contains more than 20 papers about the physics, biology and, in particular, about geological processes and palaeo-environments in fjords. Nine of the papers in the book mentioned are dealing with fjords on Svalbard.
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Southampton researchers have estimated that sea-level rose by an average of about 1 metre per century at the end of the last Ice Age, interrupted by rapid 'jumps' during which it rose by up to 2.5 metres per century. The findings, published in Global and Planetary Change, will help unravel the responses of ocean circulation and climate to large inputs of ice-sheet meltwater to the world ocean.
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This year is set to be among the three warmest since records began in 1850 and caps a record-warm decade that is a new indication of man-made climate change, the United Nations said on Thursday.
"The trend is of very significant warming," Michel Jarraud, head of the World Meteorological Organization, told a news conference on the sidelines of a meeting of almost 200 nations in the Caribbean resort of Cancun trying to curb global warming.
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Five years of social science research in Canada's arctic has taught one University of Guelph geography professor a thing or two about climate change's "human face."
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For more than a decade, Dr. Joseph Ortiz, associate professor of geology at Kent State University and part of an international team of National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers, has been studying long-term climate variability associated with El Niño. The researchers' goal is to help climatologists better understand this global climate phenomenon that happens every two to eight years, impacting much of the world.
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When the future history of the Arctic will be written, 2010 will be marked off as the breakthrough year for commercial shipping along the Northern Sea Route.
The ice is melting and the shipping is entering. The Northern Sea Route will be the new sea highway between Europe and Asia.
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Climate change is a key factor shaping the contours of international security and policy-making. This is particularly the case in the High North, where the retreating ice cap is likely to create a wide range of new opportunities and challenges.
Melting ice cover facilitates the exploitation of mineral resources and opens up access to fish stocks and new shipping routes in particular, which promise shorter distances for trade between Europe and East Asia.
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Oxford scientists have contributed to a series of research papers about the impacts of global warming to coincide with the opening of the Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.
One study, led by Niel Bowerman of the Oxford University's Department of Physics, warns that the conference will fail to meet its objectives unless it addresses not just how much the planet warms, but also how fast it warms.
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The resource estimates for the oil field Medynskoe-more in the Pechora Sea have been increased by 75 percent to a total of 133,9 million tons. That makes the field almost twice as big as Gazprom’s nearby Prirazlomnoye field.
The Murmansk-based oil company Arktikshelfneftegaz has reported the upgraded field estimates for Medynskoe-more to the Russian State Commission on Natural Resources.
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