The AMSA project urges the Arctic Countries and the International Marine Organization to advance the safety of shipping in the Arctic waters
"In some areas, we are living on borrowed time. I just hope it doesn't take a major cruise ship or tanker disaster in the Arctic to get our attention", says Ben Ellis, managing director in Institute of the North to the institutes weekly newsletter, Top of the World Telegraph.
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A new webpage has been launched which allows you to follow the movements of eight Svalbard Rock ptarmigans equipped with satellite transmitters. This service is part of a project from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and the University of Tromsø.
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An updated and upgraded Information Centre opened today its doors for scientists, inhabitants and visitors in Ny-Alesund.
Thanks to considerable funding from the Svalbard Environmental Protection Fund, Kings Bay AS and the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), a long existing plan to upgrade the old information centre into a modern and up-to date exhibition could be put into action this winter.
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In more ways than one, things are heating up in the Arctic. Several large military exercises undertaken by the United States and members of the US-led military alliance NATO are proof of growing tensions between the major powers.
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Some of the folks here at Polaris headquarters are betting on the minimum extent of arctic sea ice in 2009. We did this last year and then wrote about it again this year. We are not alone. Look here, here, and here. All Polaris folks are welcome to compete for the grand prize – being toted about during next year’s field course in a sedan chair (legal disclaimer – there is no prize except undying glory).
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The Damocles consortium and the DG Research of the European Commission invite all Arctic experts interested in participating to a Symposium in Brussels November 10-12 2009.
This symposium is intended to describe near future scientific and technological challenges for a better understanding of the Climate system at a time of human-induced rapid environmental changes.
This description will be based on current results from Damocles and other IPY projects.
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Bremerhaven, June 25th. Diatoms play a key role in the photosynthesis of the oceans and are therefore intensively studied. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association together with international collaborators have made a new discovery regarding the diatoms’ photosynthesis. It has so far been believed that diatoms have inherited their photosynthetic capabilities exclusively from red algae. The molecular biologists have now shown that a significant part of the diatoms’ genes originates from green algae. The photosynthetic cellular structure of the diatoms, the plastids, therefore combine features both from their green and red algae predecessors which could explain their enormous success in the oceans.
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The three Scandinavian heirs to the thrones are writing a book about their experiences from Svalbard and Greenland.
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Emergency plans to counteract global warming by artificially shading the Earth from incoming sunlight might lower the planet's temperature a few degrees, but such "geoengineering" solutions would do little to stop the acidification of the world oceans that threatens coral reefs and other marine life, report the authors of a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The culprit is atmospheric carbon dioxide, which even in a cooler globe will continue to be absorbed by seawater, creating acidic conditions.
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The extensive use of snowmobiles in the town of Longyearbyen on the Arctic archipelago Svalbard causes air pollution that approaches levels seen in larger European towns.
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A memorial in the Northern Fleet base Polyarny has been restored to show the original inscription that hails Josef Stalin as founder of the Northern Fleet.
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The dangerous parasite Toxoplasma gondii needs cats to reproduce. Is is therefore a surprise to find it in Svalbard as cats are banned here. Where is the parasite found and how has it come here?
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The State of the Arctic Conference, to be held 16-19 March 2010 in Miami, Florida, will be an international meeting to present, exchange, and discuss the latest knowledge on the state of the Arctic and future directions of arctic science and policy.
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For a long time, it seemed that Antarctica was immune to global warming. Most of the icy southern continent, where temperatures can plummet to minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit), seemed to be holding steady or even cooling as the rest of the planet warmed. But a new analysis of satellite and weather station data has shown that Antarctica has warmed at a rate of about 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees F) per decade since 1957, for a total average temperature rise of 0.5 degrees Celsius (1 degree F).
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To promote some of the good work carried out by the various IPY projects Educators and Scientists are offered the chance to submit material to a Polar Resource Book being created. This is an opportunity for individuals or groups who have adopted a new polar science activity or program for students or community during the IPY that were successful, and are interested in share these activities with a broader audience.
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Norwegian risk management company Det Norske Veritas (DNV) has carried out a feasibility study to evaluate the possible advantages of utilizing the shorter trans-Arctic route between Asia and Europe and benchmarked it against the traditional Suez route.
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President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Congress to pass "historic legislation" to fight global warming, prompting his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives to aim for a vote on Friday on the bill to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.
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Researchers are investigating climate change in the Arctic onboard a Greenpeace ship as part of a project to better inform politicians ahead of December’s UN climate conference
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Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.
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Several relatively strong earthquakes have been recently registered by seismic monitoring instruments near the shorelines of Svalbard. Are the earthquakes unusual in the Arctic? Are they becoming stronger and more frequent or are instruments more sensitive to capture them?
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Through the times, the island today called Greenland has hosted many different peoples over varying periods. It has been estimated that first peoples came to the remote North-Atlantic island around 2500 BC and that the ancestors of the contemporary Inuit populations came from Alaska, Siberia and Canada, the Arctic thus having one Inuit population over a vast area of northern hemisphere.
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Bremerhaven, June 18th. The German research vessel Polarstern, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, will begin its 24th Arctic expedition on Saturday, June 20th. 119 scientists from seven different nations will research the whole spectrum of current Arctic topics in three journey stages: climate history and current climate development, effects on the ecosystem ranging from bacteria to marine mammals, and also geoscientific questions regarding sediment structure and tectonics of the Arctic. Polarstern is expected back in Bremerhaven September 25th.
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released reports documenting the status of polar bears and Pacific walrus in Alaska. The reports confirm that polar bears in Alaska are declining and that Pacific walrus are under threat. Both species are imperiled due to the loss of their sea-ice habitat due to global warming, oil and gas development, and unsustainable harvest.
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The Norwegian Polar Institute has carried out fieldwork in the west part of Kongsøya. This part of Svalbard has always been an important dens area for female polar bears.
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Researchers have reconstructed atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 2.1 million years in the sharpest detail yet, shedding new light on its role in the earth's cycles of cooling and warming.
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Glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus) is the one among sea birds that suffers the results of accumulating high amounts of POPs most. Black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) and Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) have lower level of POPs and they do not show signs of weaken immune system yet.
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Key climate indicators such as global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise and extreme climatic events are already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which contemporary society and economy have developed. This is one of the key messages of a report presented by leading scientists in Brussels June 18 in preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.
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A new approach to tracking polar bears, developed by Queen's University researchers, will shed more light on the potentially endangered Arctic animal and help boost the economy of Canada's north.
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Geologists at the University of Leicester have shown that an ancient Ice Age, once regarded as a brief 'blip', in fact lasted for 30 million years.
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Russia’s Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya was by a governmental decree on Monday transformed into a nature reserve. A total of 132 nuclear bombs were detonated at the islands from 1955 to 1990.
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University of Alberta researchers conducting a water study in the Mackenzie River Delta have found a dramatically higher delivery of mercury from the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean than determined in previous studies.
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Can the North Sea basin hold all of the carbon dioxide in Europe? Norway certainly hopes so.
At a high-level conference in Bergen last month, the oil-rich Nordic nation announced that it will work with Britain to study how the base of the North Sea could be used for carbon dioxide storage for European countries. It will also allocate nearly $200 million toward carbon capture and storage projects in the European Union.
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If we’re going to avoid climate disaster, we’re going to have start getting a lot more direct. We’re going to have to think about cooling the planet.
The concept is called geoengineering, and in the past few years, it has gone from being dismissed as a fringe idea to the subject of intense debates in the halls of power. Many of us who have been watching this subject closely have gone from being skeptics to advocates. Very reluctant advocates, to be sure, but advocates nonetheless.
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Officials from the Obama administration have been beating a steady path to China’s door to talk about climate change.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was there in February. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional leaders visited last month, followed by experts from the Energy Department and the White House. There also has been regular contact at a series of “major economies” meetings that began during the Bush administration and include the 17 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
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...he Arctic is said to outrank many of the globe’s current exploration hot spots, including Brazil and West Africa. But don’t expect companies to flock to the Far North anytime soon, especially at a time when the world economy is in the tank and oil and gas prices are well below their record highs of last summer.
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Russia, Norway, Greenland, Canada, and the U.S. are scrambling to claim the North Pole's rich natural resources. So far, Russia is way ahead...
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The Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than expected, according to a new study led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher and published in the journal Hydrological Processes.
Study results indicate that the ice sheet may be responsible for nearly 25 percent of global sea rise in the past 13 years. The study also shows that seas now are rising by more than 3 millimeters a year--more than 50 percent faster than the average for the 20th century.
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President Barack Obama announced the creation of a high-level Ocean Policy Task Force on Friday that will craft a national policy for sustainably managing the oceans. Such a policy would be a first for the U.S., and the move received widespread praise from environmentalists who called it long overdue.
"We are taking a more integrated and comprehensive approach to developing a national ocean policy that will guide us well into the future," said Obama in an announcement declaring June "National Oceans Month."
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Using a system of underwater hydrophones that can record sounds from hundreds of miles away, a team of scientists from Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has documented the presence of endangered North Atlantic right whales in an area they were thought to be locally extinct.
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New networking mechanism, promoting cooperation between science, youth associations, non-profit organizations, business and authorities, has been established for the benefit of development of northern regions in Russia. The cooperation called “Center for Problems of the North, Arctic and Cross-border Cooperation”, “North-Centre”, was established by Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Science and International Public Youth Movement “Association AWARD”. The project is intended to unite the efforts of science in the area.
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Bremerhaven/Hamburg, June 10th 2009. Climate researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and KlimaCampus of the University of Hamburg participate for the second time in an international scientific competition. Some of the most renowned climate research institutes worldwide fathom possibilities for seasonal prognoses of Arctic sea ice cover by means of different methods and climate models. The declared aim of all participants is to find the best method for reliable prognoses. The German researchers agree upon a continuing negative trend. Another critical minimum of Arctic sea ice is to be expected in the late summer of 2009.
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Since joining NSIDC in 1994, Parsons has worked to improve the flow of Earth science information and raise public awareness of the importance of the Earth's polar regions and cryosphere. Parsons leads multiple data management projects at NSIDC and is active in many national and international data committees. He has been a tireless and outspoken advocate of robust data stewardship as a vital component of Earth system science and as an important profession in its own right.
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Expedition research were carried out on the Russian-German project “Global change in the seas of Eurasian Arctic shelf: frontal zones and polynyas in the Laptev Sea” in the framework of program “Laptev Sea System” on the program International Polar Year (IPY).
From the Russian side participated: Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of Roshydromet, State Lena Delta Reserve, Moscow State University.
From the German side participated: Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research, IFM-GEOMAR, University of Trir.
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Crew will sail through the Arctic to document phenomenon's toll on northern residents.
The blizzard of research on imperilled polar bears and melting ice caps now sweeping down from the Arctic may be obscuring one critical element of climate change in the region: the toll it is taking on the humans who live there.
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NOAA's Fisheries Service scientists and their partners have launched an unmanned aircraft to mount the vehicle’s first search for ice seals at the southern edge of the Bering Sea pack ice during the Arctic spring, in an effort to learn more about these remotely located species.
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A new survey conducted by the Polar Research Institute of China suggests that the Gamburtsev Mountains were the original starting point of the East Antarctic ice sheet, which formed 14 million years ago.
Buried under ice at Dome A, the Gamburtsev Mountains have maintained a lot of mystery concerning their topography ever since they were discovered. Conducted during the International Polar Year 2007-2008, the Chinese used a radar with high resolution imagery to determine the shape and features of the mountains.
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Scientists studying the impact of climate change on the Arctic need to consider ways to reduce their own carbon footprints, says a researcher who regularly flies north to study the health of caribou.
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NOAA's Fisheries Service scientists and their partners have launched an unmanned aircraft to mount the vehicle’s first search for ice seals at the southern edge of the Bering Sea pack ice during the Arctic spring, in an effort to learn more about these remotely located species.
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An environmental advocacy group says it plans to file a lawsuit against the federal government in an attempt to force legislators to put in place additional protective measures for Arctic seals.
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to visit the Svalbard archipelago to study the climate changes’ influence on ice masses in Polar Areas.
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Representatives of the five countries with Arctic Ocean shorelines say existing international laws and treaties provide a sufficient framework to address political, environmental and commercial issues relating to the fast-melting polar sea.
But seven ambassadors among more than a dozen credentialed diplomats also acknowledged there are continuing disagreements over increasing ship traffic, and noted the lack of infrastructure and the inability to respond to human safety or environmental emergencies in a timely manner.
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Bremerhaven/Cologne June 2nd 2009. An international team of researchers from Russia, Germany, the USA and Austria has conducted a deep drilling programme in the utmost northeast of Russia during the last six months to retrieve several hundred metres of marine sediments, impact breccias and permanently frozen soil. These make new insights into the climate history of the Arctic, crater formation of the Elgygytgyn Lake and permafrost dynamics possible. A milestone has been reached at the beginning of May with the first results of the drilling campaign. The cores gained will help to answer crucial open questions of Arctic geology.
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More and more, scientists are getting a better grip on the nitrogen cycle. They are learning about sources of nitrogen and how this element changes as it loops from the nonliving, such as the atmosphere, soil or water, to the living, whether plants or animals. Scientists have determined that humans are disrupting the nitrogen cycle by altering the amount of nitrogen that is stored in the biosphere.
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Scientific academies have joined forces to warn world leaders about the dangers of ocean acidification. The InterAcademy Panel on International Issues, with members representing 69 countries, issued a statement this week recommending that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change take up the issue before the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. The oceans are absorbing a quarter of industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, increasing their acidity and harming marine life.
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Polar research refers to research on phenomena in the polar areas (the Arctic and the Antarctic) as well as to research for application in these areas. Polar research encompasses a variety of scientific disciplines, primarily in the natural sciences, technology, the social sciences and the humanities.
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New research by scientists in Britain and China reveals evidence of how the East Antarctic ice sheet initially formed.
The work provides a snapshot of terrain that has lain hidden miles beneath the ice for millions of years, when rivers ran through mountain valleys that were oddly similar to the modern European Alps.
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For one international community – the 165,000 strong Inuit community dispersed across the Arctic coastline in small, remote coastal settlements in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia – it is already too late to prevent some of the negative effects of climate change.
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NSIDC has transitioned from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F13 satellite, to the DMSP F17 satellite. Switching to the new satellite will allow us to continue our consistent long-term record of sea ice extent.
The DMSP F13 satellite that has been central to our Arctic sea ice analysis for the past several years is nearing the end of its mission and is no longer a reliable resource for our sea ice products.
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Students on Ice Expeditions is proud to announce the launch of our third and final International Polar Year Arctic Expedition, a student expedition focused on scientific and environmental education. The goal of the upcoming IPY Arctic Expedition 2009 is to engage youth in global scientific and social polar research. The ship-based journey will involve 75 students from around the world, ages 14 to 19, accompanied by world-renowned scientists, environmentalists and polar educators.
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SRI International, an independent nonprofit research institute, has announced that early scientific results are now available from the Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar (AMISR), a modular, transportable radar system funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that has recently completed the first two years of operation.
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It's too late to persuade the world's countries to agree formally to keep their hands off the Arctic, according to a leading polar researcher. But thanks to an ignored piece of international law, a large chunk of the Arctic is already effectively beyond the reach of any individual nation – and that might be the starting point in ensuring that the North Pole remains a "pole of peace".
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On behalf of the IPY- International Programme Office, Canada will be hosting the International IPY Data Management Meeting from September 29 to October 1, 2009. This represents a great opportunity for data managers / coordinators to take stock of what has been achieved over the last two years and discuss the challenges and opportunities regarding the stewardship of data collected during the International Polar Year.
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Arrival Heights is 8km away from Scott Base. A few people on the Base go there all the time for work, but I’ve never heard of anyone going up the Heights for a walk and that makes me curious about the place.
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Report no. 26, June 2009
From: IPY International Programme Office
To: IPY Project Coordinators
cc: IPY Community Google Groups
Content:
1. IPO Update
2. Political Impacts of IPY
3. Polar Weeks
4. Upcoming meetings
5. Update from APECS
6. Update from Oslo 2010 Planning Process
7. Call for new stories and blogs for ipy.org
8. Archiving IPY materials
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Ocean acidification, a direct result of increased CO2 emission, is set to change the Earth's marine ecosystems forever and may have a direct impact on our economy, resulting in substantial revenue declines and job losses.
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