News from the polar regions during May included an interesting safe haven for viruses, continuation of the legislation regarding polar bear protection, and new uses of technology to monitor ice sheets and glaciers.
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The Calotte Academy 2009 will take place in May 28 - June 1, 2009 in three locations in Finland, Norway and Russia. Public sessions with expert presentations and open discussions will take place in Inari, Finland in May 28th, in Kirkenes, Norway in May 29th and 30th and in Murmansk, Russia in May 31st and June 1st. The Kolari-Pajala session was cancelled.
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The Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment working group of the Arctic Council has released a new Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment report for the year 2009. The AMSA working group, led by Canada, Finland and the United States has produced a extensive and well-illustrated document that represents a four-year effort to consider and review all aspects of Arctic shipping. It includes documentation of shipping activities from a baseline year (2004) and future projections in key areas such as environmental protection, marine infrastructure, human dimensions, and governance. The report also contains series of very useful maps and charts.
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Go ahead. Last year we had a Polaris Project bet going to see who could guess the minimum sea ice extent in 2008.
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Scientists from around the world will convene at the University of New Hampshire June 2-5, 2009, to discuss key findings from the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to measure "short-lived" airborne pollutants in the Arctic and determine how they contribute in the near term to the dramatic changes underway in the vast, climate-sensitive region.
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Mathieu Tacq is a 6th grade student at the Petite Ecole Libre de Gentinnes. For his end-of-year classroom project, Mathieu has chosen to introduce his classmates to the wonders of the Princess Elisabeth Station. Turning to the International Polar Foundation for documentation and illustrations of the Station, Mathieu has chosen to pursue his dream all the way through and to build a scaled mock-up of the Station to illustrate his talk.
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A new study suggests that scientists struggling to understand how Earth's climate will change in the next few decades could find useful information in sediments deposited in the ocean by major Arctic rivers. Arctic river deltas have been neglected as records of past climate because the far north is a challenging and expensive environment to work in and it only came to be seen as a bellwether for climate change in the last decade or so.
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Melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
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The office of Artur Chilingarov, the bearded polar explorer and anointed Hero of the Russian Federation, is at the end of a long hall in the Duma, Russia's parliament, where he is deputy speaker. Its entrance is guarded by a poster of a nuclear icebreaker, the Yamal, a 492-foot monster with rows of painted-on fangs, and inside is a knee-high wooden penguin and two chicks, a pair of carved walrus tusks, and eight miniature porcelain polar bears—an iconography of the Arctic and Antarctic.
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This year promises to be a busy one for Arctic science, even though International Polar Year is officially over.
Thousands of researchers from more than 60 countries studied the Arctic and Antarctic regions as part of International Polar Year, a two-year research event that ended March 31.
But organizations that support scientific work in Canada's North say they're receiving even more applications now from research and other groups that want to head north.
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As the frozen soil in the Arctic thaws, bacteria will break down organic matter, releasing long-stored carbon into the warming atmosphere.
At the same time, plants will proliferate, nurtured by balmier temperatures, more nutrients from decomposing soil and the increasing abundance of the greenhouse gas they depend on for growth.
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Canadian scientists said they have been able to trace a solar substorm behind the northern lights back to its origin in space, a development that could provide a new tool in predicting space weather.
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9th ACUNS International Student Conference
The Communities of Change – Building an IPY Legacy Conference will highlight research occurring at both poles, including interactions between the cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere and society.
Inter-disciplinary sessions will be arranged based on the number and breadth of Abstracts submitted.
Abstract Submission Deadline: May 31, 2009
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Documentary filmmaker Mark Terry, president of Polar Cap Productions, Inc., took a team to Antarctica last December and January to document the recent findings made by the world’s scientific community during International Polar Year.
The documentary will focus on new discoveries made related to the ozone hole, the diminishing populations of penguins and other marine life, the greening of the world’s largest desert, warming temperatures, glacial melting and increased world sea level. Featuring interviews from polar scientists from Canada, the US, the UK, Ukraine and Russia, a global cross-section of research on climate change will be presented.
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Scientists are, for the first time, objectively evaluating ways to help species adapt to rapid climate change and other environmental threats via strategies that were considered too radical for serious consideration as recently as five or 10 years ago. Among these radical strategies currently being considered is so-called "managed relocation." Managed relocation, which is also known as "assisted migration," involves manually moving species into more accommodating habitats where they are not currently found.
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Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre told the NATO Parliamentary Assembly that the alliance should increase its role in the High North. Deputy Minister of Defence Espen Barth Eide believes this should be done in cooperation with Russia.
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Studies of climate evolution and the ecology of past-times are often hampered by lost information – lost variables needed to complete the picture have been long thought untraceable but scientists have created a formula which will fill in the gaps of our knowledge and will help predict the future.
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The Canadian Coast Guard needs better ships, renewed personnel, and a clearer vision for protecting Canada’s interests in the changing Arctic.
Rising oil, gas and mineral activity in the North, increasing vessel traffic, and the need to project marine sovereignty all make an effective coast guard more important than ever.
An extensive study by the standing Senate committee on fisheries and oceans, including visits to Inuit communities and the testimony of many experts, showed the coast guard to be a capable agency, but one that requires attention on several fronts.
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Ahead of the next round of talks on a post-Kyoto climate agreement, the United Nations has released the first draft of a negotiating text stuffed with options for rich and poor countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists blame for warming the planet.
"This document marks an important point on our road," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
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Christian Koeberl, head of the Department of Lithospheric Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria), has recently returned from an expedition to Arctic Siberia. He is one of the principal investigators of a drilling project at the El’gygytgyn meteorite impact crater that is coordinated by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) and that was recently concluded.
The main goals of the project are to obtain, from analyses of the drill cores, new information the formation of the impact crater, as well as to derive a climate history of the Arctic. The investigation of the impact breccia drill cores will be coordinated by Christian Koeberl, and studies in Vienna will be funded by the Austrian Science Foundation FWF.
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Early in the 21st century, the maritime Arctic is undergoing extraordinary changes and is rapidly becoming a more complex operating environment.
Globalization, climate change, and geopolitical concerns have become interwoven at the top of the world in ways unanticipated at the end of the Cold War. Even though the Arctic is a relatively small area on the planet, the entire region is becoming integrated with the rest of the global economy, primarily through exploration and development of a large, untapped storehouse of natural resources.
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Sediments released by many of the world's largest river deltas to the global oceans have been changed drastically in the last 50 years, largely as a result of human activity, says a Texas A&M University researcher who emphasizes that the historical information that can be gathered from sediment cores collected in and around these large deltaic regions is critical for a better understanding of environmental changes in the 21st century.
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There is serious progress, serious achievements and good perspectives in Russian-Norwegian cooperation, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin highlighted after yesterday’s meeting with Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg.
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The Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment working group of the Arctic Council has released the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report. This extensive and well-illustrated document, supported by Canada, Finland and the United States and recently approved by the Arctic Council, represents a four-year effort to consider and review all aspects of Arctic shipping. It includes extensive documentation of shipping activities from a baseline year (2004) and future projections in key areas such as environmental protection, marine infrastructure, human dimensions, and governance. It contains a series of very useful maps and charts. I like this quote: “less ice does not mean less danger”. I highly recommend the report as a thorough summary of issues related to future commercial activities in the Arctic.
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Experts say that more than half of the world's coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. But now Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming.
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As the oil wells run dry, the planet's last great energy reserves lie miles beneath the North Pole. And as the U.S. and Russia race to grab them at any cost, the stage is set for a devastating new cold war
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The Arctic is not an issue Russia-EU relations, Russian Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov told Euractiv.com
In an interview about the upcoming EU-Russian meeting in Khabarovsk, Russia’s EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov made it clear that the Arctic is not an issue in EU-Russia relations.
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Close and coordinated cooperation between Russia and Norway will have major importance for the development of the Arctic, President Medvedev highlighted ahead of today’s meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
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Days after a Russian government report raised the spectre of military conflict over Arctic oil, Canadian scientists have accomplished a key mission to help secure this country's claim to a vast section of the polar sea floor -- and its potential petroleum riches.
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Based on recent research which was published in the journal Science, the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would not raise global sea levels as high as previously believed. These findings also reveal regional variations in sea level rise, mostly affecting the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards of the United States.
It has been estimated for more than 30 years now that the WAIS is unstable and that it could rapidly collapse. Until now, calculations estimated that global sea level would rise as much as 6 meters if the WAIS were to collapse completely.
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Endangered blue whales are making a comeback in Alaskan waters after nearly being wiped out by commercial hunters decades ago.
Before they were nearly killed off, blue whales frequently traveled between Mexico and Alaska in search of food during the summer. But since the massive hunting season of 1931, during which more than 29,000 of the species were killed, researchers have found blue whale sightings to be sparse, until recently.
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Global warming conjures images of rising seas that threaten coastal areas. But in Juneau, as almost nowhere else in the world, climate change is having the opposite effect: As the glaciers here melt, the land is rising, causing the sea to retreat.
Morgan DeBoer, a property owner, opened a nine-hole golf course at the mouth of Glacier Bay in 1998, on land that was underwater when his family first settled here 50 years ago.
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The mechanical behavior of the Arctic sea ice cover appears to favor its rapid decline. Scientists from INSU-CNRS, Université J. Fourier and Université de Savoie have analyzed the trajectories of drifting buoys anchored in the ice and found that the mean drift rate and deformation rate of Arctic sea ice has strongly increased over the last three decades. These effects, related to the mechanical properties of the cover, contribute to the faster-than-expected decline of Arctic sea ice.
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The biggest land grab since colonial times is accelerating as nations scramble to claim writ over hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean floor, much of it believed to be rich in natural resources.
Yesterday marked the 10-year deadline for most countries filing claims over extended seabeds with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), a panel created under the U.N. Law of the Sea treaty to review and certify the legitimacy of claims.
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For the first time ever, the sixth Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Tromsø, Norway was streamed to the world on the internet. This was a success. Approximately 1.000 viewers followed the meeting while it happened.
As a special service we now offer our many readers the possibility to view or review the Ministerial Meeting. The recordings cover the open parts of the meeting and the following press meeting.
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The familiar model of Atlantic ocean currents that shows a discrete "conveyor belt" of deep, cold water flowing southward from the Labrador Sea is probably all wet.
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The Joint International Conference on Cryospheric Changes and Influences—Cryospheric Issues in Regional Sustainable Development will be held in Lijiang, China during August 12-14, 2010. The aim of the conference is to promote our understanding of changes in all components of the cryosphere and their interdependence and causes, our current capabilities to model and assess these changes, and mitigation and adaptability strategy for the changing global climate and cryosphere.
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When the headlines announce a new finding about the state of our planet’s well-being, chances are good that the National Science Foundation (NSF) will be mentioned in the story as a funding source for some or all of the research. The extent of NSF’s involvement in climate research is reported in a new publication titled Climate Change.
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The National Academy of Sciences together with the National Science Foundation held a celebration on 6 April 2009 to recognize the achievements of the International Polar Year 2007-2008 (IPY). The meeting included highlights of IPY projects, including such topics as climate change, sea ice stability, Antarctic ecosystems, and people in the Arctic.
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The Russian government has adopted a climate doctrine, which is likely to commit the country to a number of climate-friendly measures. Climate change will affect Russia more than other countries, head of the Russian Hydrometeorological Service says.
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Changes in the climate can affect shrimp, due to their sensitivity to water temperature change. Scientists believe that this can help them to see the affects of climate change before it affects other species.
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A research team from the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, both in Bergen, Norway, has studied observed anomalies in ocean climate, and identified the anomalies’ progression with the circulation of the Nordic Seas, and the Norwegian Sea in particular.
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What was once a large source of coal in the Arctic mountains of Norway is now home to international climate scientists. Operated by Kings Bay, the Ny-Aalesund Arctic Research Infrastructure facility brings in scientists from around the globe to gauge the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
The facility was once a mining site for fossil fuels, but mining operations were ended after a firedamp explosion killed 21 men on the site in 1962. Now the settlement is inhabited by only a few dozen researchers.
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Spring is continuing here, but the unusual warmth of last week has faded. In recent days temperatures have dropped into the teens and twenties (Fahrenheit) and two nights ago even dipped to six degrees below zero. For several days we have had light snowfall and ice fog off and on, which has prevented us from flying much of the time. Our crew has changed, including the arrival of my second graduate advisor from the University of Wyoming.
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Oceanographers Jim Bishop and Todd Wood of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have measured the fate of carbon particles originating in plankton blooms in the Southern Ocean, using data that deep-diving Carbon Explorer floats collected around the clock for well over a year. Their study reveals that most of the carbon from lush plankton blooms never reaches the deep ocean.
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Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) is crafting a strategy to ratify the long-stalled Law of the Sea Treaty this year -- a move that ocean and foreign policy experts say is increasingly important as climate change reshapes the Arctic.
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EU’s proposed ban on sales of seal product could constitute a dangerous precedent and affect trade in animal products that are harvested in a sustainable and ethical way, says the Norwegian government.
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Research aircraft Polar 5 finishes Arctic expedition. Unique measurement flights in the central Arctic completed.
The Arctic campaign PAM-ARCMIP (Pan-Arctic Measurements and Arctic Climate Model Intercomparison Project) ended yesterday in Ottawa with the participation of the research aircraft Polar 5. The campaign which lasted four weeks yielded unique measurement data on sea ice thickness, trace gases, aerosols and meteorological parameters thanks to the great range of the aircraft and modern measurement equipment.
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Chemical conditions beneath glaciers are difficult to observe and are usually studied by sampling meltwaters emerging from glacial oulets or drill holes. These waters average chemical signals over a large area and cannot record small-scale spatial and temporal variability.
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Researchers in Canada are reporting for the first time that high mercury levels in certain Arctic seals appear to be linked to vanishing sea ice caused by global warming. Their study provides new insight into the impact of climate change on Arctic marine life.
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The historical nuclear icebreaker “Lenin” was today towed from the Atomflot base to the sea terminal in downtown Murmansk. There, the icebreaker – the world’s first nuclear-powered vessel of its kind – will serve as museum, hotel, conference centre and sport complex.
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If CO2 emissions are halved by 2050 compared to 1990, global warming can be stabilised below two degrees. This is shown by two studies by a co-operation of German, Swiss and British researchers in the journal Nature.
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This spring (or autumn for those in the Southern Hemisphere), again is a very active time for APECS, and we have to admit that the coming weeks are going to be very busy, too. A couple days ago, I’ve was in Svalbard, where everyone is waiting for our summer school. Compared to the last few years, thick snow cover and stable sea ice foreshadow a long skidoo season and interesting field observations during spring/summer investigations. To all of you in the brightness of the polar day (North) and the darkness of the polar night (South), good luck with fieldwork and all other duties.
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Spring has arrived in this part of the Arctic. In the last ten days, temperatures have risen from -20 to +45 Fahrenheit – unusually warm for the spring, or summer for that matter. The deep snow and ice that blankets Deadhorse has begun to melt, turning dirt and gravel roads and parking lots into lakes of slush. Even 40 miles north of the coast on the sea ice I have been taking my parka off at captures. The sea ice has been breaking up and shifting considerably.
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Content:
1. IPO Update
2. ATCM declaration
3. Update from EGU
4. Upcoming meetings
5. Update from APECS
6. Call for stories and blogs for ipy.org
7. Archiving IPY materials
8. Toward a Polar Information Commons

Report no. 25, May 2009
From: IPY International Programme Office

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