The temperatures of North Atlantic Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland -- the warmest water in at least 2,000 years -- are likely related to the amplification of global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder.
Led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, the study showed that water from the Fram Strait that runs between Greenland and Svalbard -- an archipelago constituting the northernmost part of Norway -- has warmed roughly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century. The Fram Strait water temperatures today are about 2.5 degrees F warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period, which heated the North Atlantic from roughly 900 to 1300 and affected the climate in Northern Europe and northern North America.
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Warmer climate will give more extraction of oil and gas in the Arctic.
Warmer weather will lead to longer seasons for exploration and production of oil and gas in Arctic areas. As the ice cap shrinks, the area and period where it’s possible to search for resources will double, said Oisten Harsem, researcher at the University of Tromso, at the Arctic Frontiers conference.
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By adding information about the subsoil to an existing sedimentation and erosion model, researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft, The Netherlands) have obtained a clearer picture of how rivers and deltas develop over time. A better understanding of the interaction between the subsoil and flow processes in a river-delta system can play a key role in civil engineering (delta management), but also in geology (especially in the work of reservoir geologists).
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Polar bears walk into the future on thin ice. It has never in living memory been as hot in Arctic Oceans as it is now, a new study concludes.
Arctic is responding more rapidly to global warming than most other areas on our planet.
- There is no obvious natural reason that can explain this temperature increase, says Morten Hald, Professor at the University of Tromsø and author of the research article published in today’s edition of the journal Science.
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The Arctic is one of the main aspects of the development of Norway’s economy in future, Erik Lahnstein, the state secretary of Norway’s Foreign Ministry, told a business seminar here on Wednesday, held in the framework of the Fifth International Arctic Frontiers Conference.
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As Arctic shipping is boosting, a newly adopted report from European Parliament stresses a need for ban on viscous oil onboard vessels to reduce risk to the environment.
Heavy fuel oil is considered more environmentally hazardous than other marine fuel oils because it is slow to break down in the environment, particularly in icy Arctic waters and coastal areas.
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On 21 February 2008, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6,0 on the Richter scale hit the Storfjorden area on Svalbard. Seismologists could measure more than 250 earth quakes exceeding 2,0 on the Richter scale during the following months.
The earthquake in Storfjorden was the strongest quake that has been measured on Norwegian Territory since the National Seismic Survey started. Storfjorden is one of the seismological most active regions in Svalbard. According to the Norwegian National Seismic Network, the epicenter of the Storfjorden earthquake in February 2008 was located at a depth of about 15 km. On shore, several larger north-south going fault zones have been mapped in the area and it is likely that those zones continue also on the oceanfloor.
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Ice: an important and shrinking component of the Earth's climate system.
Less than two percent of our planet's water is found in the form of ice or snow -- with most found on land (in the form of ice sheets and glaciers) and the rest as sea ice. Two percent is a small amount, but ice's role in the climate is huge.
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Last September, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg met in Murmansk, Russia, to sign a treaty that puts to rest a 40-year boundary dispute. The agreement divides into two equal parts the 175,000 square kilometre area and stipulates that all oil and gas deposits found along its border can only be developed jointly by both nations.
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The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs in cooperation with the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation released on tuesday public opinion research report on global perceptions of Arctic security titled: Rethinking the Top of the World: Arctic Security Public Opinion Survey.
The research concentrated on finding out how publics from the eight member states of the Arctic Council understand and frame Arctic issues and how they comprehend the issue of Arctic security. The research found out that the concept of Arctic security is no longer understood in terms of traditional definition of security, namely guarding against international threats, but is rather comprehended in terms of environmental protection and healthy, educated population.
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Whilst the water temperature in this area, situated along the 24.5º north parallel, from the African coast to the Caribbean, rose by 0.27ºC between 1957 and 1998, researchers have recorded a drop of 0.15ºC in the same area between 1998 and 2006.
"In the ocean there are very pronounced cycles of change, and therefore, changes like those which took place in the coordinates analysed can reoccur in any location and at any time," Pedro Joaquín Vélez Belchí, main author and researcher for the IEO's Canarian Oceanography Centre, said.
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Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research.
A letter published in Nature on 27 January explains how increased melting in warmer years causes the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to 'adapt' and accommodate more melt-water, without speeding up the flow of ice toward the oceans. The findings have important implications for future assessments of global sea level rise.
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Commercial ships could be sailing across an ice-free North Pole as soon as 2035, according to US Navy estimates, slashing the time and cost of ocean transportation between Europe and Asia.
As the ice-free period gradually increased, the Bering Strait between the US and Russia would begin to rival the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia as one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
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he 5th Annual Arctic Frontiers Conference opens in Norway’s Tromso, north of the Arctic Circle, on Monday.
The event is timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Russia’s famous author and scientist Mikhail Lomonosov and the 150th anniversary of Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen.
This year’s conference explores the concept of tipping points as it applies to social, economic and ecological systems.
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Last summer, scientists working on the project "The invertebrate fauna of Edgeoya: Mapping Terra Incognita" successfully commenced field work on the island. They aim to improve knowledge about the ecology of invertebrates in the Eastern areas of Svalbard.
The invertebrate fauna of Svalbard is only poorly understood. Most of the invertebrate records arise from western locations close to Longyearbyen, Ny-Alesund and Hornsund, whereas studies of the invertebrate fauna in Eastern areas of the archipelago are extremely rare. In particular, there have been no published records of the invertebrate fauna of Edgeoya.
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University of British Columbia researchers have produced the first map of the world outlining the ease of fluid flow through the planet's porous surface rocks and sediments.
The maps and data, published January 21 in Geophysical Research Letters, could help improve water resource management and climate modelling, and eventually lead to new insights into a range of geological processes.
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The Arctic Ocean needs tough new shipping rules as a rapid thaw opens the remote, icy region and brings risks of disasters on the scale of the Titanic, politicians and experts said on Monday.
"We need to agree on a new binding polar code" for shipping, Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told Reuters during a conference on "Arctic Frontiers" in Tromsoe, a city north of the Arctic Circle in Norway.
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The European Parliament newly adopted a Report on Sustainable EU Policy for the High North - The Gahler report. The report is the Parliaments response to the accelerating activities in the Arctic and demonstrates the European Unions increased interest in the region.
The Report emphasizes the European Unions role in the Arctic through its Arctic member states; Denmark, Sweden and Finland, but also recognizes the ongoing work in several other partnerships through the EU Northern Dimension, a common policy of the EU with Russia, Norway and Iceland, all of which are Arctic Council member states.
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From the hurricane that smashed into New York in 1938 to the impact of the Krakatoa eruption of 1883, the late 19th and 20th centuries are rich with examples of extreme weather. Now an international team of climatologists have created a comprehensive reanalysis of all global weather events from 1871 to the present day, and from the earth's surface to the jet stream level.
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New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.
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The idea of a mini-NATO was one subject discussed at a summit of Northern European countries in London on January 19-20, 2011. This is the name given to a military bloc of Nordic countries which many describe as the "response to Russian efforts in the north." According to WikiLeaks' revelations, the former U.S. ambassador to Norway has even coined a popular phrase to the effect that the bloc will "keep an eye on polar bears and Russians."
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Last year tied for the hottest year on record, confirming a long-term warming trend which will continue unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The first 10 years of the millennium proved to be the hottest decade since records began in the 19th century, it said.
"The main signal is that the warming trend continues and is being strengthened year after year," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud told a news conference.
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NASA's newest Earth-observing research mission is nearing launch. The Glory mission will improve our understanding of how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth's climate. Glory also will extend a legacy of long-term solar measurements needed to address key uncertainties about climate change.
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The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Working Group (AMAP) have released a handout showing key scientific findings from their 2011 Mercury Assessment report. The hand-out describes why mercury is a concern in the region and key scientific findings from the 2011 Mercury Assessment report are listed, showcasing the Arctic region as a major area of impact.
The hand-out describes why mercury is a concern in the region, how and why mercury continues to present risks to the health of Arctic peoples and wildlife; where mercury in the Arctic environment comes from, how it gets there, and what controls mercury levels in the Arctic. A particular concern is the fact that—despite reductions in emissions from human activities—in large areas of the Arctic, mercury levels continue to rise in some Arctic wildlife.
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As the ice and snow cover in the Arctic retreats, it reflects significantly less sunlight back into space. And it is reflecting significantly less sunlight than scientists previously estimated, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience. The newly exposed darker ocean and land surface have absorbed more heat, which creates a positive feedback loop, leading to more warming.
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In the Arctic Ocean as elsewhere, the full, destructive power of global warming appears unmistakable. Regional sea ice is retreating fast, threatening to raise global sea levels, destroy traditional habitats and ways of life, and accelerate the rate at which the planet as a whole is warming up.
Yet there is one silver lining to this depressing and disturbing picture. For when last week representatives of the Russian oil company Rosneft signed a "historic" new deal with BP, it was an indication that, in the years ahead, climate change will present a more complex picture than the darker image that is often drawn.
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Rosneft’s vice president Peter O`Brien says first stage of the planned Kara Sea exploration could start soon. The cooperation between BP and Rosneft could also be expanded to other areas in the Arctic.
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The seasonal cooling effect of light-reflecting snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere may be weakening at twice the rate predicted by climate models, a new study shows, accelerating the impact of global warming.
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During field work in the Triassic of Edgeoya in 2007, geologists from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, with aid from SINTEF Petroleum Research and Polish scientists, discovered a well preserved fossil ichthyosaur. Here, you can read a report about the further work with this specimen.
Fragments of ichthyosaur skeletons have been found in different parts of Svalbard, but the Edgeoya specimen is of special scientific value as both the skull and other skeletal parts are present. Paleontologist Hans Arne Nakrem from the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo (NHM) was invited to take part in the project and help to collect the fossil during subsequent field work in august 2008.
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A French-American team, including researchers from CNRS, IRD, the Université Paul Sabatier and the Université de Pau (1), has recently highlighted a new role that sea-ice plays in the mercury cycle in the Arctic. By blocking sunlight, sea-ice could influence the breakdown and transfer into the atmosphere of toxic forms of mercury present in the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean. These results, which suggest that climate plays a key role in the mercury cycle and that the release of mercury into the atmosphere could be accentuated by the melting of Arctic sea-ice, are published in the journal Nature Geoscience (February issue).
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British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will support a team of scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Aberystwyth as they embark on an ambitious three-month Antarctic expedition. Their fieldwork aims to uncover information about how the glaciers and ice sheets of the north-eastern Antarctic Peninsula behaved in past climates, and what we can expect in the future.
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A new analysis of the Northern Hemisphere's "albedo feedback" over a 30-year period concludes that the region's loss of reflectivity due to snow and sea ice decline is more than double what state-of-the-art climate models estimate.
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Scientists have taken a major step toward accurately determining the amount of energy that the sun provides to Earth, and how variations in that energy may contribute to climate change.
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An arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) that attacked dogs at the meteorological station on Hopen has been tested positive for rabies. This is the first registered occurrence of rabies in Svalbard since 1999.
Rabies is an acute infection caused by a virus that attacks the central nervous system in mammals, including humans. Rabies is spread throughout most parts of the Arctic, where the virus occurs as an arctic variant. In this region, the arctic fox is the main host for the virus strain. Rabies appears to be seasonal in character and is mainly observed during the period from November to April. For arctic foxes the incubation time, which is the time from infection to break out of the disease, varies from 8 days to 6 months.
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The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) has just published a new version of a map series covering Svalbard in the scale 1:250 000 (S250).
The map format has been halved and the new series now consists of 5 instead of 3 maps. Additionally, updated maps in the scale 1:100 000 covering the areas Krossfjorden (A6) and Hopen (G14) have been produced.
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The Russian Arctic is savage. I travelled across it to research my book on the Arctic Circle. My nostrils froze, one of my teeth exploded, and my exhaled breath fell in a tinkle of crystals. The region is so isolated that reindeer-herding residents refer to the rest of Russia as "the mainland". But the landscape is the most powerful I have ever seen: dazzling, pristine, a kind of biological haiku. I love the pared-down existence of polar lands and the grace of their peoples under pressure.
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hrinking ice and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is reflecting ever less sunshine back into space in a previously underestimated mechanism that could add to global warming, a study showed.
Satellite data indicated that Arctic sea ice, glaciers, winter snow and Greenland's ice were bouncing less energy back to space from 1979 to 2008. The dwindling white sunshade exposes ground or water, both of which are darker and absorb more heat.
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Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Jan. 12, 2011 by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
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The unusually cold weather this winter has been caused by a change in the winds. Instead of the typical westerly winds warmed by Atlantic surface ocean currents, cold northerly Arctic winds are influencing much of Europe.
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Russia's oil major Rosneft and British oil giant British Petroleum agreed to form a joint center on Arctic Technologies in Russia's second largest city of St. Petersburg, a Russian deputy premier said.
"The exploration of the [Arctic] shelf will be definitely conducted in line with all norms of the environment protection," Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said.
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A Russian minister said BP's experience in cleaning up the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill was one of the reasons Russia chose the British oil firm to help develop its fragile Arctic shelf oil fields.
BP and Russia's state-controlled Rosneft on Friday agreed to a multi-billion-dollar share swap, under which they will jointly explore for offshore oil in a deal that gives BP access to areas of the Arctic previously reserved for Russian firms.
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UNIS offers two graduate/Ph.D. courses in marine biology this spring. The “Biotelemetric Methods” and the “Ecosystems in Ice Covered Waters” are open for applications. Application deadline: February 15, 2011.
Two graduate/Ph.D.-courses (10 ECTS) in Arctic marine biology will be offered this spring. Both courses have field work elements in addition to lectures.
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From summer 2011, Spitsbergen Sailing AS will rent out their Yacht "Aleiga" for transportation purposes or research cruises.
The sailing boat has 8 beds and can host groups of up to 7 passengers. With a strong hull of aluminium, a center-board and rodder that can be pullled up and a resulting draft of only 1 meter, the yacht can reach a wide range of landing sites.
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The Russian government will develop by 2012 a state program for prospecting and extracting mineral resources on Russia's Arctic shelf, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said.
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SSF has received a field report for 2010 from the Czech research team working in Petuniabukta. The scientist have been working with biological and climatological research in the region for several years.
Research was conducted under the auspices of the project “Biological and climate diversity of the central part of the Svalbard Arctic archipelago” - the Czech contribution to the Network for ARCtic Climate and Biological DIVersity Studies (ARCDIV), an international multidisciplinary IPY initiative.
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Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismisses suggestions that world powers could fight a war over valuable Arctic natural resources as a “provocation”.
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Norway's government may decide in March whether to do an impact assessment study on allowing oil and gas activities in the pristine Lofoten archipelago in the Arctic, a senior official said on Thursday.
"The management plan (of Lofoten will be presented) at the end of the first quarter this year. So by the end of March it should be put forward by the ministry of environment," Per Rune Henriksen, deputy oil and energy minister, told Reuters.
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The Svalbard rock ptarmigan is an endemic subspecies on Svalbard and little has been known about its biology. Now, a pilot study undertaken by the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and financed by the Svalbard Environmental Protection Fund, sheds light on the seasonal migration of these birds within Svalbard.
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The current La Niña in the Pacific Ocean, one of the strongest in the past 50 years, continues to exert a powerful influence on weather around the world, affecting rainfall and temperatures in varying ways in different locations.
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The Russian-Norwegian agreement on delineation of the Barents Sea is necessary for Russia’s bid to the UN , but a consequence will be that Russian gas will become less competitive on the world market, a Russian scientist believes.
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Melt off from small mountain glaciers and ice caps will contribute about 12 centimetres to world sea-level increases by 2100, according to UBC research published this week in Nature Geoscience.
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As of 1 February 2011, the identity of all travellers between Svalbard and the Norwegian mainland will be checked both upon arrival and departure.
Until now, the Immigration Regulations have only permitted identity verification of foreign nationals upon entry from Svalbard. Pursuant to the Schengen Regulations, the identity of all travellers crossing any Schengen external border must be checked.
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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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Store Norske Gull started drilling this summer in the St. Johnsfjord on the western coast of the island Spitsbergen, after successful geological surveys in 2209. Analysis made in Canada and Sweden show that there is gold in the area, but it is too early to say if the deposits are big enough to be profitable.
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- Worst case scenario is no resources in the area, says Professor Jan Inge Faleide at the Institute of Geology at the University of Oslo.
Interviewed by the Oslo University’s research magazine Apollon, Jan Inge Faleide says his research group has studied how the last Ice Age has influenced on the sediments of the area of the Barents Sea where Norway and Russia now have agreed on the border delimitation.
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New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in Earth's atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four metres.
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What quite recently seemed like a whim born of Nordic exceptionalism and egotism has started to take shape. Scandinavian nations, including Denmark’s Faroe Islands, Finland’s Aland Islands and Greenland, are seriously contemplating whether to become a single entity within the European Union. What do the Scandinavian countries stand to gain from this alliance within an alliance?
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A delegation from Russia’s Arctic Yamal Peninsula is in Finland this week to discuss the plans for active tourism cooperation.
The plan is to create an Arctic tourism centre in the city of Salekhard, the capital of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region.
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Eight Arctic countries are poised to sign a multilateral treaty to coordinate search and rescue operations in the region, a Canadian official said Wednesday.
The draft agreement will also divide the Arctic into specific search and rescue areas, with each nation legally responsible for its own territory, according to Icelandic officials.
The deal was drawn up by foreign ministers from Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark, Greenland, Finland, Sweden and Norway -- the eight members of the Arctic Council.
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If the house seems dustier than it used to be, it may not be a reflection on your housekeeping skills. The amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere has doubled over the last century, according to a new study; and the dramatic increase is influencing climate and ecology around the world.
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In the vast ocean where an essential nutrient -- iron -- is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by using a remarkable biochemical trick: It recycles iron.
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Examination of deep sea corals reveals that there have been drastic changes to oceanic currents in the western North Atlantic since the 1970s. The influence of the cold water Labrador Current, which is in periodic interchange with the warm Gulf Stream, has been decreasing continually since the 1970s. Occurring at the same time as Global Warming this phenomenon is unique in the past 2000 years.
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The European Parliament in a new report calls for the establishment of a permanent EU inter-service structure for Arctic affairs. It also wants an Arctic unit to be established within the European External Action Service (EEAS).
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It's hard to believe that, in this day and age, we don't have a way to measure sea-level air pressure during hurricanes. NASA researchers, however, are working on a system that will improve forecasting of severe ocean weather by doing just that. The device measures sea-level air pressure, a critical component of hurricane formation -- and one that has been extremely difficult to capture.
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Canada had its warmest year on record in 2010, according to the country's environmental agency, with the biggest impact seen in the Arctic region.
The national average temperature for the year was 3 degrees Celsius above normal, based on preliminary data, according to a report put on Environment Canada's website on Monday. That made it the warmest year since nationwide records began in 1948.
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