An international Arctic forum, delayed when the eruption of a volcano in Iceland froze air travel in much of northern Europe, will be held in Moscow on September 22-23, forum organizers said on Monday.
The forum, entitled "The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue," was initially scheduled for April 2010, but had to be postponed following the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which prevented many international participants from coming to Moscow.
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The Norwegian high-tech intelligence in the north, directed towards what the Russians are doing, is still the most important part of Norwegian espionage, according to the Norwegian daily Aftenposten.
Although the Norwegian military intelligence today is characterized by more active espionage in war-zones where Norwegian soldiers are involved, the activity in the north is still of high priority.
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Canada, which has a disputed sovereignty claim to the Northwest Passage, will require all larger ships plying the Arctic sea route to register starting on July 1, the government said on Tuesday.
Officials said the requirement will help the government better protect the region's fragile environment, but the move is also designed to back Ottawa's view that Canada has sole legal authority over the fabled sea link across the top of North America, between the Atlantic and Pacific.
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Satellite tracking has shown that the Pine Island Glacier, one of Antarctica's largest ice streams, is accelerating and thus contributing a growing share of the melt water raising sea levels worldwide.
A team of scientists visiting the region last year discovered one reason for the speed-up: warm ocean water eating away at the glacier’s base has lifted the ice off a rocky underwater ridge that once slowed the glacier’s advance into the sea.
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The University of Tromsø has become the first in Norway to mount a study of what its researchers are doing, and intends to hold them accountable. University officials want to see a sharp increase in the amount of their material that gets published.
The old saying “publish or perish” may be taking on new meaning at the university in northern Norway. Fully 20 percent of its researchers haven’t published anything in the past four years, while another 20 percent have published very little.
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As the BP oil spill continues to destroy marine life and ruin livelihoods along the Gulf Coast, conservationists, energy companies and diplomats are preparing for the next big showdown over drilling -- this time in the Arctic.
A Russian icebreaker set sail recently on a scientific voyage to chart its northern underwater boundary, part of its stated plan to claim large hunks of the Arctic for oil, gas and minerals.
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Finland’s Foreign Minister invites all Arctic nations to hold an Arctic Council Summit in Rovaniemi. The Summit could focus on the strategic and military significance following the climate changes. According to Stubb, Finland is especially interested in cooperation in the Barents Sea.
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While Arctic sea ice continues to shrink as the world warms, the ice around Antarctica is actually growing, thanks to the influence of the ozone hole over the southernmost continent, scientists have reported.
But the south polar growth won't be permanent, they warn.
Though they are headed in opposite directions, the current conditions at both poles are affected by human impacts on the climate, said John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey, who presented these findings to the International Polar Year (IPY) conference held last week in Oslo, Norway.
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Oceanographers Call for More Ocean Observing in Antarctica
This mountainous arm of the continent stretches north toward South America. In their review paper, the co-authors, who have done research in the Antarctic, often together, argue that research in this region is imperative because the WAP's climate is changing faster than the climate in the rest of the continent, and the Antarctic climate is changing faster than anywhere else on the planet.
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The first comprehensive synthesis on the effects of climate change on the world's oceans has found they are now changing at a rate not seen for several million years.
In an article published June 18 in Science magazine, scientists reveal the growing atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases are driving irreversible and dramatic changes to the way the ocean functions, with potentially dire impacts for hundreds of millions of people across the planet.
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250 delegates from 27 countries discussed the current state of permafrost during the biggest scientific conference The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) has ever hosted.
The Third European Conference on Permafrost (EUCOP III) was held 13-17 June 2010 and had a focus on the results of IPY studies on the thermal state of frozen ground in a changing climate.
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By examining 800,000-year-old polar ice, scientists increasingly are learning how the climate has changed since the last ice melt and that carbon dioxide has become more abundant in Earth's atmosphere.
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In a report published in Science, a team of oceanographers, including MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory) Ecosystems Center director Hugh Ducklow, outline a polar ocean observation strategy they say will revolutionize scientists' understanding of marine ecosystem response to climate change. The approach, which calls for the use of a suite of automated technologies that complement traditional data collection, could serve as a model for marine ecosystems worldwide and help form the foundation for a comprehensive polar ocean observation system.
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Geological samples collected at Novaya Zemlya by the early 20th centrury explorer Olaf Holtedahl could provide valuable information about the hydrocarbon potential of the Barents Sea.
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Franz Josef Land and the Northern Sea route clean-up program, which is to start in 2011, will require 1.2 billion rubles ($40 million), the Russian minister of natural resources and ecology said on Wednesday.
"The cost of the project is estimated at 1.2 billion rubles, front-end engineering demands 110 million [rubles]," Yuri Trutnev said.
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The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for May, March-May (Northern Hemisphere spring-Southern Hemisphere autumn), and the period January-May according to NOAA. Worldwide average land surface temperature for May and March-May was the warmest on record while the global ocean surface temperatures for both May and March-May were second warmest on record, behind 1998.
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The science plan for Kongsfjorden International Research Base (KIRB) has been revised and is now available on the web.
In 2006, the first science plan for the Kongsfjorden International Research Base (KIRB) has been developed by the Norwegian Polar Institute upon request by the Research Council of Norway in a transparent process involving all international research partners in Ny-Ålesund. It was valid until 2010 and now a revised version has been made effective since 12 June 2010. The current version is valid for the period 2010-2013 and was endorsed by the Ny-Ålesund Science Managers Committee and adopted by Svalbard Science Forum
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The Second Northern Dimension Parliamentary Forum will take place in Tromsø, Northern Norway on February 22nd 2011.
The Forum was established in 2009 by the initiative of the European Parliament. The Forum has the aim to link the various parliamentary bodies working in the Northern Dimension region.
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In July Russian Polar scientists will conduct a larger study of the Arctic continental shelf as part of the program “Boundaries of the Russian continental shelf”. The program is aimed at securing Russia’s right to the natural resources in the Arctic, RIA Novosti reports.
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France’s Prime Minister François Fillon ended his two-day visit to Norway yesterday, hinting at increased French investment, especially in future projects in the Barents Sea.
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Research by microbiologists is revealing how marine microbes live in a mysterious area of the Earth: the realm just beneath the deep ocean floor. The ocean crust may be the largest biological reservoir on our planet.
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Last month was the warmest May on record, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Tuesday.
It was also the 303rd consecutive month that was hotter than the 20th century global average for that month, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
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A warmer Arctic climate is influencing the air pressure at the North Pole and shifting wind patterns on our planet. We can expect more cold and snowy winters in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America.
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The Canadian government denounced it as a land-grabbing stunt when Russia planted its flag on the sea floor under the North Pole in 2007.
But when federal Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl met the man who piloted the flag-bearing sub, the first thing Arthur Chilingarov did was invite him to a conference.
"He was keen to work with us," Strahl said Wednesday from Oslo, Norway, where he met Chilingarov this week. "I said, ’Give me some more details.’"
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“Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception,” according to a study presented by the American climate researcher Dr. James Overland at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference on Friday.
"The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic," Overland told the audience at the Oslo conference that gather some 2.000 polar and climate scientists from 60 nations this week.
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Imtech N.V. (technical services provider in Europe) acquirers Spitsbergen VVS AS, Norway's 'greenest' provider of technical services. The company record annualised revenues in excess of 4 million euro and is based at Longyearbyen in the north of the Arctic Circle. This area is entirely self-supporting as regards energy and will be energy-neutral in 2025. The company that Imtech is acquiring plays an important role in this setting. The acquisition contributes directly to earnings per share.
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Since the early 1990s, glaciers in Greenland have been shrinking at an unprecedented and ever-faster pace. The well-studied mountain glaciers of Europe typically move about 50 meters a year; some of the glaciers in southeast Greenland are now moving at a rate of 38 meters (124 feet) a day.
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Ever since "The Silent World" hit movie screens around the world in 1956, Jacques Cousteau (1910 – 1997) and his red cap have been synonymous with ocean exploration.
Sailing around the world on his iconic ship Calypso, Cousteau captivated audiences with the unknown ocean and inspired future generations of ocean explorers. Friday marks the 100th birthday of Jacques Cousteau, whose legacy still lives on in the quest to unravel the ocean's mysteries.
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Climate change is a phenomenon that extends far beyond science, with fundamental implications for economics, politics, sociology and environmental ethics. It is a phenomenon that changes how people understand the world around them and their own futures. This understanding epitomises the multi-disciplinary approach of WIREs Climate Change, the latest interdisciplinary review project from Wiley-Blackwell.
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Earth’s northern polar cap is disappearing at unprecedented rates. To understand why, re­-searchers are getting up close and personal with ice.
Using satellites, scientists get a broad perspective on how the skin of sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean shrinks, on average, just a little bit more every summer. But zooming down to within a few meters of the surface brings some important little things into view. In particular, “microphysical” properties of the ice, such as how salty water percolates through it, turn out to play a surprising role in ice behavior.
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The first detailed pictures of one of the planet's last unexplored frontiers — a vast mountain range that rivals the Alps in majesty buried underneath the ice of Antarctica — were revealed by scientists this week.
The rugged peaks soar to more than 8,000 feet (2,400 meters). They are buried beneath solid ice more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, deep within Antarctica's eastern interior.
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A NASA mission is about to go boldly into the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean in the space agency's first oceanographic research voyage to the top of the world.
NASA researchers are preparing for the voyage, known as the Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment mission, or ICESCAPE, and which will leave later this month, Paula Bontempi, ocean biology and biogeochemistry program manager at NASA, said today.
During the grueling mission, scientists will seek to unlock clues about the changing Arctic climate and the shifting ice conditions that affect ocean ecosystems.
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Unique Arctic habitats for flora and fauna, including sea ice, tundra, lakes, and peatlands have been disappearing over recent decades, and some characteristic Arctic species have shown a decline. The changes in Arctic Biodiversity have global repercussions and are further creating challenges for people living in the Arctic.
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Sea levels may rise by as much as one metre before the end of this century, according to new predictions. Melting glaciers may contribute more to the rise in sea levels than scientists have previously realised.
Sea levels can be expected to rise by between 0.5 and 1.5 metres before the next century, according to the report Melting Snow and Ice: A Call for Action, published by the Norwegian Polar Institute, which attracted a lot of attention at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December last year.
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In Hammerfest, a Norwegian town on Europe's northernmost tip where reindeer often roam the streets, many feel the petroleum-fueled boom they are experiencing outweighs the risks of offshore exploration.
Norway, Europe's second-largest energy supplier, is not so sure and this week announced a freeze on drilling in new deepwater areas until it knows what caused BP's huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April.
If extended, the freeze will hinder the development of northern towns like Hammerfest, which are eager to reap the wealth from an expected oil and gas boom after Norway and Russia resolved an Arctic border dispute in April.
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Nearly 2,500 scientists, educators, and others are in Norway’s capital this week (June 8-12) to discuss the work they did during the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08. The Oslo Science Conference is the first gathering of people who had led projects in the polar regions and is the largest polar sciences meeting in history.
IPY involved about 60 countries and more than 10,000 scientists in research. Some 2,600 abstracts were received for the conference and 40 sessions scheduled.
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Vegetation around the world is on the move, and climate change is the culprit, according to a new analysis of global vegetation shifts led by a University of California, Berkeley, ecologist in collaboration with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
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10 rescue centers will be built in Russia’s Arctic coastal regions with the aim to monitor and prevent emerging incidents.
The search and rescue centers will be under the responsibility of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Each rescue center is estimated to cost around €4 million. The rescue centers will be located near territorial waters and the Northern Sea route. The shipping along the Northern Sea route is expected to increase in the years since the sea-ice withdraw from the northern coast of Siberia due to global warming.
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The Finnish Cabinet Committee on EU Affairs has adopted the proposal for Finland’s Arctic Strategy with focus on issues relating to security, the environment, economy, infrastructure and the indigenous peoples in the Arctic.
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NASA's first dedicated oceanographic field campaign goes to sea June 15 to take an up-close look at how changing conditions in the Arctic are affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems that play a critical role in global climate change.
The "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment" mission, or ICESCAPE, will investigate the impacts of climate change on the ecology and biogeochemistry of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. A key focus is how changes in the Arctic may be altering the ocean's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
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The report "Arctic Biodiversity Assessment – Arctic Biodiversity Trends 2010: Selected indicators of change" is being launched at the IPY Oslo Science Conference.
Unique Arctic habitats for flora and fauna, including sea ice, tundra, lakes, and peatlands have been disappearing over recent decades, and some characteristic Arctic species have shown a decline. The changes in Arctic Biodiversity have global repercussions and are further creating challenges for people living in the Arctic.
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The ocean covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface, but on this World Oceans Day (June 8, 2010) scientists say they still know shockingly little about the mysterious deep blue sea.
With 95 percent of the ocean unmapped, more is known about the moon's surface than the ocean depths, said aquatic filmmaker Fabien Cousteau, grandson of ocean diving pioneer Jacque Cousteau. In fact,12 men have stepped foot on the moon, but only two have been to the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean at roughly 7 miles (11 kilometers) deep.
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2400 polar scientists and friends of polar science was touched by a children's gospel choir and mysterious music played on instruments made out of pure ice, when HRH Crown Prince Haakon officially opened the IPY Oslo Science conference this morning.
- If you want to fight poverty, it makes sense to go to the Arctic, HRH Crown Prince Haakon said in his opening speech in Oslo today.
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The plague of pirates preying on Asia’s sea links to Europe and the prospects of opportunities presented by global warming have prompted Russia to dust off some old plans that have been lying in filing cabinets since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The shortest route by some 3,000 nautical miles between the throbbing workshops of the Far East and Southeast Asia and the hypermarkets of Europe is not the current course through the traffic jams of the Malacca Straits and the high-risk transit past the Horn of Africa to the Suez Canal.
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What can minuscule soil-dwellers teach us about nature's adaptation to climate change? Researchers in Norway and South Africa are using springtails as model systems in order to study how different species respond when the climate changes.
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Thousands of barrels of oil are leaking out of the Deepwater Horizon site each day. The oil ascends from depths of approximately 1502 m. (4928 ft.), but not all of it reaches the sea surface. The stratified seawater of the Gulf of Mexico captures or slows the ascent of the oil, and the addition of dispersants near the oil source produces tiny droplets that float for a considerable time in the water column and may never reach the surface.
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Russia’s “High-Latitude Arctic” expedition is heading for the northern port of Murmansk.
Russian polar explorers, members of the “High-Latitude Arctic-2010” expedition and the crew of the icebreaker ‘Rossia’ officially closed the North Pole – 37 drifting station in the Arctic on Saturday.
“Over the past nine months fifteen polar explorers represented the interests of Russia and the whole mankind in the extremely harsh conditions of the Arctic,” Vladimir Sokolov, the head of the high-latitude expedition, said.
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Scientists have located the ideal drill site for the first ever exploration of an Antarctic sub-glacial lake, a development that is likely to facilitate a revolution in climate-change research and which may lead to the discovery of life-forms cut off from the main line of evolution for millions of years.
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The shrinking amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean today is the smallest it has been in the last few thousand years, a new study suggests.
The sea ice that normally covers huge swaths of the Arctic Ocean has been retreating and thinning over the last few decades, due to the amplified warming at the North Pole, which is a consequence of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere.
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions not only lead to global warming, but also cause another, less well-known but equally disconcerting environmental change: ocean acidification. A group of 35 researchers of the EU-funded EPOCA project have just started the first major CO2 perturbation experiment in the Arctic Ocean. Their goal is to determine the response of Arctic marine life to the rapid change in ocean chemistry.
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Scientists have located the ideal drill site for the first ever exploration of an Antarctic sub-glacial lake, a development that is likely to facilitate a revolution in climate-change research and which may lead to the discovery of life-forms cut off from the main line of evolution for millions of years.
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Less ice covers the Arctic today than at any time in recent geologic history.
That's the conclusion of an international group of researchers, who have compiled the first comprehensive history of Arctic ice.
For decades, scientists have strived to collect sediment cores from the difficult-to-access Arctic Ocean floor, to discover what the Arctic was like in the past. Their most recent goal: to bring a long-term perspective to the ice loss we see today.
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The IPY Oslo Science conference, the 'largest gathering of polar scientists ever' officially opens on Tuesday June 6 th, just days away. This will be a major milestone in the EALAT project and will see the largest gathering of EALAT researchers and partners since the EALAT consortium meeting in January 2009. A full and packed EALAT event list will continue over the full conference.
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A new study shows that emission from forest, straw and stubble fires on the northern hemisphere causes very high concentrations of toxic PCB over Svalbard. PCB and other harmful pollution coming to the Arctic are jeopardizing the survival of Polar bears.
The content of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) in the soil is high many places in Eastern Europe and North America due to pollutions in earlier periods. Today, there is a ban on PCB in both Europe and North-America.
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Russia has the world’s strictest regulations on offshore oil production, but lags seriously behind with regard to emergency preparedness, a leading official in the country's main environmental watchdog says.
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Scientists have long believed that a warmer climate will increase river runoff to the Baltic Sea, thus making the inland sea less salty. However, a new extensive study from the University of Gothenburg reveals that the effect will probably be the opposite: climate change will reduce river runoff and increase salinity in the Baltic Sea.
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Revelations come as Gulf of Mexico spill presses Ottawa to put its Arctic environmental rules under more scrutiny.
Millions of litres of harmful contaminants – including sewage and jet fuel – have been spilled across great swaths of Canada’s pristine Arctic in recent years, an analysis has found.
A classified government database reveals the alarming extent to which Canada's North has been an accidental dumping ground for dangerous liquids. And it shows one of the most frequent offenders is the federal government.
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Danish foreign minister apologises for travelling on holiday with her family rather than attending a meeting for Arctic coastal states.
Foreign minister and leader of the Conservative Party, Lene Espersen, told Politiken newspaper that she was sorry she went on a family holiday instead of attending an Arctic coastal states meeting with high-ranking US, Russian, Canadian and Norwegian representatives.
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The results of a recent study, published in the journal Science, suggest that carbon dioxide (CO2) was probably efficiently locked away in the deep ocean during the last ice age. Working on a marine sediment core recovered from the Southern Ocean seabed, the researchers radiocarbon-dated shells left behind by foraminifera (small marine creatures). By comparing the carbon-14 (14C) levels found in the shells with those contained in the atmosphere at the time, they found out how long the CO2 had been locked in the ocean.
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Russia is studying the situation regarding the detention of the Russian fishing vessel, the Izumrud, by Norway’s coast guards, the Foreign Ministry’s press department reported on Monday.
“We hope that the situation will be thoroughly studied by taking into account all circumstances of the incident. We maintain a constructive dialogue with Norway in the field of fisheries,” the press department said.
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