Kinnvika is a project within the International Polar Year 2007–2008 that focuses on Arctic warming and impact research. It’s a multinational and multidisciplinary initiative to enhance the understanding of the Arctic climate systems, to monitor environmental change due to global climate warming and to study effects of human activity in the Arctic. Kinnvika is also a logistic platform for scientists to manage research, with a base at the old Kinnvika station in Svalbard.
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Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears is an online magazine integrating science, literacy, and the polar regions.
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National Geographic has contributed a wide range of content to Ocean in Google Earth, which has just launched. Tapping into the knowledge of its explorers and experts and its huge array of multimedia assets, the Society has provided this new version of Google Earth with some of the most comprehensive content from a single source.
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The new Norwegian radiation monitoring system includes 11 locations in northern Norway and Svalbard. Radiation-levels are updated every hour and easily available for everyone on the Radnett web.
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The existing infrastructure for responding to maritime accidents in the Arctic is limited and more needs to be done to enhance emergency response capacity as Arctic sea ice declines and ship traffic in the region increases, according to new report released today by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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There will be many IPY Celebrations and announcements occurring around the world between January - April 2009. Indeed, the observational period of IPY is just the beginning: now starts the hard work of data analysis and the development of fresh scientific understanding about the polar regions. Early results from IPY will be presented in June 2010 in Norway, and then developed further in Canada in 2012.
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International Polar Year event, Geneva, 24-25 February 2009. A milestone in our understanding of the Earth system is the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, a joint initiative of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Council for Science (ICSU). Thousands of scientists from over 60 countries have carried out over 160 research and outreach projects, which advance our understanding in many areas, including global climate change. New insights in polar knowledge resulting from this historical undertaking will be made public at a ceremony at WMO headquarters on 25 February 2009, where the “State of Polar Research”, a succinct report with preliminary findings of IPY will be released. This will be preceded by a press conference at the Palais des Nations.
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The new Russian Maritime Strategy, which is to be adopted this year, will highlight the Arctic, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov confirms. Among the strategy priorities will be enhanced coordination between the Navy and commercial sea transporters.
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While we were preoccupied elsewhere, a certain pugnacious bear awoke and we don't seem to be doing a particularly good - or proactive - job of dealing with him.
Russia's resurgence is in large measure a response to national loss of face - embarrassment and shame at having lost the Cold War - at having been a player like no other and then suddenly finding itself just another medium power.
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The shipyard Zvezdochka in Arkhangelsk Oblast is building a new barge for the Russian coal company Arktikugol on Svalbard. The barge will be a 24 meters long and 5,5 meters wide propelled cargo boat, and is due to be delivered in July 2009.
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University of Toronto and Oregon State University geophysicists have shown that should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse and melt in a warming world – as many scientists are concerned it will – it is the coastlines of North America and of nations in the southern Indian Ocean that will face the greatest threats from rising sea levels.
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The five Nordic countries should strengthen security cooperation in the Arctic, former Norwegian foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg concludes in his report on Nordic defence cooperation handed over to the countries’ foreign ministers today. With a frontpage design displaying a map of the great waters of the North Atlantic and the Arctic, there is hardly any doubt that the report on Nordic defence cooperation includes a high focus on marine issues, as well as a view towards Arctic challenges.
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Climate change is about to cause a major upheaval in the shallow marine waters of Antarctica. Predatory crabs are poised to return to warming Antarctic waters and disrupt the primeval marine communities.
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Four Scandinavian countries together with Iceland could form a Nordic military alliance to protect their interests in Arctic, says a report presented by Norway at a special meeting of the countries’ foreign ministers.
The report presented by a veteran Norwegian politician Thorvald Stoltenberg proposes co-operation not limited to a joint military force, but also includes potential joint efforts in international security, air surveillance, air patrols, maritime monitoring and medical services. The report also calls for an independent polar orbit satellite system by 2020.
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About half a year before the robotic arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander began digging into soil and subsurface ice of an arctic plain of Mars, six scientists traveled to one of the coldest, driest places on Earth for soil-and-ice studies that would end up aiding analysis of the Mars data.
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Since the early 1970s, Norway and Russia have negotiated over the delineation of the 175,000 square kilometer disputed zone in the Barents Sea. Now, it is time to send the dispute to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, a Norwegian expert says.
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Norway will benefit from the other Nordic countries’ closer integration in maritime and air space issues in the High North, newspaper Nordlys writes in an editorial. The Svalbard archipelago can become the core in a future Nordic cooperation in the Arctic, the newspaper maintains. Nordlys positively assesses the recommendations in the report on Nordic Foreign Policy and Defence Policy, presented by former foreign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg this week.
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A Russian lawmaker and presidential envoy on Arctic and Antarctic international cooperation said on Thursday that NATO lacked the technical capability to enhance its military presence in the Arctic. "Only our country has the unique technical equipment capable of solving the problems of extreme Arctic conditions, and nothing can be compared with our fleet of icebreakers in terms of mobility and effectiveness," polar explorer Artur Chilingarov said.
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Approximately five million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up after it was sealed off from the Atlantic Ocean. According to earth scientist Rob Govers of Utrecht University, a reduction in the weight on the Earth’s crust led to the Straits of Gibraltar moving upwards. Govers will publish his conclusions in the February issue of the earth sciences journal Geology.
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An IPY initiative extending field event helicopter support from February into April allowed scientists to find out what happens to aquatic ecosystems during the summer-winter transition. Antarctica is a continent with plenty of “water” but precious little in the liquid state that most life requires. Where liquid water does exist, microbial ecosystems develop that are oases of biological diversity in otherwise barren landscapes. One of the commonest type of liquid water habitat are small ponds that freeze solid in winter but melt out to varying degrees in summer. These systems are widespread and typically have prolific microbial communities dominated by cyanobacterial mats that frequently cover the floor of the ponds.
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A federal law on the Northern Sea Route is under elaboration by the Russian State Duma, the Russian presidential Aide on Arctic and Antarctic issues Artur Chilingarov said this week. The new law will help regulate shipping along the route, which is believed to become a possible commercial shipping route between Europe and Asia as Arctic sea ice melts.
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Scientific Deep Drilling for Past Climate Change at Lake E’lgygytgyn, NE Russia Lake El’gygytgyn was created 3.6 million years ago when a meteor hit the earth creating a 18 km wide basin in the remote mountains of Chukotka. The lake is now the focus of a challenging interdisciplinary multi-national scientific drilling campaign as part of the International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP). With drilling initiated in Nov. 2008, the goal is to collect the longest time-continuous record of past climate change in the terrestrial Arctic and to compare this record with oceanic and land based records from the lower latitudes to better understand hemispheric global climate change and polar amplification.
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Without decisive action, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted, according to a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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Earth's unique, forbidding ice oceans of the Arctic and Antarctic have revealed a trove of secrets to Census of Marine Life explorers, who were especially surprised to find at least 235 species live in both polar seas despite a distance of more than 13,000-kilometer distance in between.
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Last week the SAO's, the Permanent Participants Head of Delegations and representatives from the observer states and organizations met in Copenhagen for one of the briefest SAO Meetings ever. The meeting gathered almost 90 participants. On the agenda there were a few matters demanding the assembly's endorsement. At the meeting a row of reports for the upcoming Ministerial Meeting was presented by the Arctic Council Working Groups.
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Temperature change in the Arctic is happening at a greater rate than other places in the Northern Hemisphere, and this is expected to continue in the future. As a result, glacier and ice-sheet melting, sea-ice retreat, coastal erosion and sea level rise can be expected to continue.
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The UK Polar Network is proud to present the Atmospheric Sciences Workshop, to be held at the British Antarctic Survey from April 29 to May 1, 2009. This workshop is aimed at early career polar researchers with an interest in atmospheric chemistry or climate modelling.
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March 18, 2009 – International Polar Day – “Oceans and Marine Life” “Oceans and Marine Life Polar Day”, an International Polar Year (IPY) webcast event, is taking place live on March 18, 2009, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.,m., originating from the theatre of the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec.
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Throughout the week of March 17th - 26th, the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-8 will be celebrating its eighth polar day, this time focussing on ’Polar Oceans‘. This includes physical oceanography and marine biodiversity. These Days are designed as a way for the general public, teachers, and their classes to learn more about the Polar Regions and connect directly to polar researchers through simple, fun, and accessible activities.
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February 17, 2009 — FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The Greening of the Arctic (GOA) IPY initiative is comprised of four projects each contributing to documenting, mapping and understanding the rapid and dramatic changes to terrestrial vegetation expected across the circumpolar Arctic as a result of a changing climate.
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Recent observations of Arctic Ocean outflow in the Fram Strait suggest that freshwater is piling up in the Arctic Ocean. A change in wind direction could release the largest amount of freshwater through Fram Strait ever recorded. The freshwater transport from the Arctic to lower latitudes is one of the main ways of the Arctic to interact with the global climate system. The effect of such a release of freshwater depends on the final magnitude and nature of the release.
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New host to IASC
"I am pleased to inform that the IASC Secretariat has completed its move from Stockholm to Potsdam," says executive secretary of the IASC, Dr. Volker Rachold.
During the last three years, the IASC Secretariat was hosted by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat in Stockholm with the support of the Swedish Research Council.
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As predicted by all IPCC models, Arctic sea ice will most likely disappear during summers in the near future. However, it seems like this is going to happen much sooner than models predicted, as pointed out by recent observations and data reanalysis undertaken during IPY and the Damocles Integrated Project. On February 25, 2009, there will be a celebration in Geneva, Switzerland to officially close the 4th IPY that started on March 1st 2007 in Paris, France. It is not a surprise that one of the main topics of this 4th IPY was climate change, since the polar regions play a very important role in Earth’s climate.
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Climate change will have significant negative consequences for the Russian population as well as the country's social and economic activities, a new Russian climate report reads. Russia must now increase energy saving and turn more towards alternative energy sources, the researchers argue.
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Norway’s Troms will host a ministerial conference of the Arctic Council in April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.
“Countries of our region face non-military challenges. Challenges that emerge in the Arctic are climate change and ice cap melting,” he said.
Lavrov expressed the hope that “Russia’s initiative to create security systems for the implementation of economic and infrastructure projects in the Arctic will be approved at the ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Troms in April.”
He stressed that all claims of Arctic coastal states should be considered on the basis of “the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.”
Russia urges strict compliance with agreements reached by Arctic coastal states in Greenland last May, the minister said.
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Russia said on Monday it was watching the extent of militarization in the Arctic as global warming makes potentially valuable resources in the polar region more accessible and would plan its strategy accordingly. Russia has already staked its claim to a majority of the Arctic waters, which it shares with four NATO countries and planted a Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole 18 months ago to reinforce its position.
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The Norwegian Polar Institute wants cruise-vessels to stay away from the untouched areas in the North-East Svalbard and South-East Svalbard nature reserves. - The areas on eastern Svalbard are unique pearls for the world. We hope they can remain as much untouched as possible, says director of the Norwegian Polar Institute Jan-Gunnar Winter to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.
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A team of polar explorers has travelled to the Arctic in a bid to discover how quickly the ice cap is melting and how long it be before the Arctic summer becomes ice free.
Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley will be using a mobile radar unit to record an accurate measurement of ice thickness as they trek more than 1,000km to the North Pole.
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Only one nuclear ice breaker will be conducting trips with tourists to the North Pole this summer.
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Norway renews the search for its polar hero Roald Amundsen. The plane with Amundsen is believed to have crash somewhere near the Bear Island in the Barents Sea 81 years ago.
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Winnipeg, Canada — 18 February 2009 — The University of Manitoba-led project that gained worldwide appeal and interest will be one of the highlights of a conference in Europe Feb. 25, 2009 as International Polar Year (IPY) wraps. An IPY committee will release its State of Polar Research report at that time to summarize all the IPY studies, one of the largest of which was led by a climate change expert at the University of Manitoba.
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Norway has invited the countries behind the 1973 polar bear Agreement to a meeting of the parties in Tromsø 17 - 19 March 2009. The meeting will be the first of its kind since 1981 where the countries decided that the agreement should be maintained indefinitely.
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev intends to raise issues of energy and of the Arctic when he meets with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in May.
-We are interested in strengthening relations with Norway on several levels, among them the development of cooperation within energy and the problems of the Arctic, the president said when meeting with Norwegian embassador Knut Hauge today, a press release from the president website reads. Mr. Hauge was one of several new ambassadors meeting with the president.
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A new map of the Earth’s gravitational force based on satellite measurements makes it much less resource intensive to find new oil deposits. The map will be particularly useful as the ice melts in the oil-rich Arctic regions.
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