January, 10 2008
Tara Soon to be released from the Ice
Six months ahead of schedule, the schooner Tara, that has been deliberatly trapped in the Arctic Sea Ice to monitor conditions in the winter, is about to enter the Fram Strait between Greenland and Spitsbergen.
Etienne Bourgois, director of Tara Expeditions, says, "Tara has fulfilled her mission. These long-term scientific observations accomplished by the Damocles programme could only take place aboard a drifting boat on pack ice."
For more information, please visit the Tara Website.
January, 10 2008
Climate change adds urgency to collecting oceanic data
Like so much human endeavour, hydrographic survey has become a routine, matter-of-fact technology and slipped into the background. There is an inevitability about that and it should not surprise. Jeremy Cresswell reports.
Hydrographic survey is one of those disciplines that gives the impression of having been around forever. Wind the clock back to the days of William Bligh, Captain Cook and Fitzroy and the survey work carried out by the UK's Royal Navy was headline-grabbing stuff, likewise early expeditions carried out around Antarctica and in waters to the north of Canada.
Ships got on with quartering the oceans and teams onshore handled and published the data; with new technologies being brought to bear as appropriate, such as GPS since the mid 1980s as coverage was progressively introduced by the US.
Today, hydrographic survey has assumed a fresh relevance and the primary driver is the impact of climate change on the oceans. Retreating icecaps coupled with the tropics expanding north and south are perceived as having a profound impact.
January, 30 2008
In August 1896, Fridjof Nansen and his crew completed the first trans-polar drift and came back to Tromso after more than three years in the Arctic Ocean. Now, on Thursday 24 January 2008 at 7:30 pm, the schooner “Tara” came to the pier in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, after a modern but still adventurous drift over the Arctic Ocean.
With the arrival of Tara in Longyearbyen, also a major field work program within the EU project DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) and the RCN project iAOOS Norway was successfully completed. During its over 500 day-long expedition, scientists and crew members performed various scientific measurements, to observe the Arctic Climate System. While Tara was frozen into the sea ice, scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and other institutions observed the state of the Arctic sea ice, ocean and atmosphere. The observations stand out for one of the very few possibilities to sample and observe the same ice floes over 16 months and to measure seasonal variations to the highest detail and accuracy.
read the full text
January, 29 2008
Warmer Arctic needs shipping rules
The Arctic Ocean has until recently received about as much attention from politicians, economists and foreign policy experts as the back of the moon. But before long, thanks to global warming, the ocean may turn into a new economic frontier. About 20-30 per cent of the world’s likely but undiscovered oil reserves lie beneath it. High energy prices and advances in ship design, drilling equipment and remote sensing combine to open up opportunities to exploit these reserves and ship freight between the Pacific and the North Atlantic via the Arctic. The five Arctic Ocean states (the US, Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia) are boosting military capacity to assert competing territorial claims.
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January, 28 2008
IPY needs full archive system to continue ‘extraordinarily success
International Polar Year (IPY), the largest and most ambitious scientific effort for half a century, has been an “extraordinarily international success” since its launch in March 2007 but the initiative could be in danger of losing its momentum and purpose if a comprehensive data storage facility is not in place after its conclusion in March 2009, according to Director of the IPY International Programme Office Dr. David Carlson.
Carlson’s comment came after the global initiative that involves 63 countries has reportedly raked in $400 million in new research money into polar science research. Carlson said he predicts the amount of new fund could reach $800 million by the end of its run in March 2009 which brings the total sum of fund for IPY-related science to a staggering $1.2 billion.
read the full text
January, 25 2008
IPY workshop for students
March 1st 2008 is soon approaching, indicating that we have still one more year to go of the 4th International Polar Year (IPY).
In order to increase the knowledge of the IPY and to inspire and help the UNIS undergraduate students see the opportunities that exist in the IPY-research projects and in Polar research, IPY Norway and UNIS are arranging a small workshop for undergraduate students and others interested (as a part of the 200-level courses run at UNIS this spring).
The organizers, Hanne Christiansen, Eystein Markusson and Elise Stromseng, hope many of the undergraduate students see the value of an IPY-experience and meet in auditorium Moysalen on Friday afternoon.
read the full text
January, 25 2008
North3 Goes Live on the Internet
To mark the International Polar Year, Canada’s circumpolar embassies have launched an internet outreach project to engage northern youth.
Canadian embassies in COPENHAGEN, HELSINKI, MOSCOW, OSLO, REYKJAVIK and STOCKHOLM are pleased to announce that North3 is now on the internet (www.ookpik.org/north3). These missions have collaborated to produce a website, in eight languages, where young northern residents can record their opinions and ideas about the circumpolar world. On the occasion of the International Polar Year, this website will support an outreach program by the missions, including speaking events and school visits, designed to engage youth in the Government’s priorities for the Arctic and North. Selected submissions to the website from around the circumpolar world will eventually be published, in print and electronic form, to serve as an additional outreach tool.
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January, 24 2008
Tara is sailing again. She got free of the ice pack early afternoon January 15 on the west side of the Greenland sea, about 300 km north of Jan Mayen Island. She is now en route to Longyearbyen where she is expected to arrive thursday January 24 during the afternoon (ETA at Isfjord around 3pm next
thursday). We will fly tomorrow from Paris to Longyearbyen (arriving thursday at 2pm). The crew is welcomed after a 500 days drift across the entire
Arctic Ocean after traversing more than 5000km since her initial drift on September 3, 2006 north of the Laptev Sea at about 80°N and 143°E. All the Damocles scientists contributing to the scientific work on board Tara released some information in a recent Eos article published on January 15, 2008.
