The Novatek company plans to complete the construction of a LNG plant in the Yamal Peninsula in year 2018. That might result in a shipping boom along the Northern Sea Route.
Company representatives last week presented the project in Salekhard, Sever Press reports. The plant, which is planned constructed near the Yuzhno-Tambeyskoe field, will be completed in 2018, the company informed. The capacity of the plant will be 15-16 million tons of LNG per year.
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Over the last decades, global warming has been accompanied by an increase in the taxonomic biodiversity of phytoplankton and zooplankton in the North Atlantic Ocean and a reduction in the average size of these organisms, according to researchers.
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How rapidly can large-scale, regional change from an ice age to an interglacial climate take place? Are such extreme events only the province of American disaster movies, or are they founded on fact? New analytical methods have made it possible to build up a far more detailed picture of the past than before – and the picture is indeed beginning to resemble an American movie.
A hundred years ago, the general opinion was that climate change was a gradual process, and that the most rapid processes of major change took tens of thousands of years. In the post-war period, some researchers began to be convinced that major shifts in climate could perhaps occur within only a few thousand years. But it was not until detailed data from ice cores drilled in Greenland were published in the 1990s that researchers began to understand that climate change could occur abruptly and with disastrous effects, in the course of a single century or perhaps even within a decade. The most recent new techniques and high-resolution analyses now indicate that rapid climate change at regional scale could happen from one year to the next.
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Latest data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, shows that Arctic sea ice is set to recede to a record low this year. Based on the center’s satellite information, ice coverage this year is equal to the record-low 2007 level.
The average extent of Arctic sea ice was 14.69 million square kilometers in April, which is just 310,000 sq. km. below the 1979 to 2000 average. The rate of decline in ice coverage for the same months was 41,000 sq. km. (16,000 square miles) daily.
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Polyps of the new gorgonea have been found in Antarctica, according to two different studies published in the journals Polar Biology and Scientia Marina.
Two of them, Tauroprimnoa austasensis and Digitogorgia kuekenthali, were found in the Eastern Weddell Sea and to the Southeast of the Falkland Islands respectively. They stand out by the number, shape and layout of the scales of calcium carbonate that cover them. The Tauroprimnoa grows in colonies shaped like a brush and their polyps have whorls; the the Digitoprgia are similar to previously known species except that the newly discovered variety has digitations at the ends of the scales of the polyps and there are no spines on the eight marginal scales and the eight rows of scales covering the polyp.
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Several Russian oil companies have applied for drilling licenses in the Barents-, Kara- and Pechora Seas.
There are currently no operational offshore oil- and gas fields in the Russian Arctic Oceans, but the interest to start exploring the northern offshore fields appear to increase. Less ice due to the on-going rapid climate changes makes it more attractive for oil companies to enter the Arctic Oceans.
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The first new projections of future aircraft emissions in 10 years predicts that carbon dioxide and other gases from air traffic will become a significant source of global warming as they double or triple by 2050.
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The Obama Administration is expected to announce today that it is suspending exploratory drilling in the Arctic Ocean until next year as BP faces a defining day in its oil spill disaster with an attempt to plug the leak in the Gulf of Mexico with mud.
In a report to be delivered to the White House today Ken Salazar, the Interior Secretary, is expected to say that he will not consider applications for permits to drill in the Arctic for at least seven months.
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This past winter's teeth-chattering cold and holiday travel-wrecking blizzards packed quite a punch, but that wintery black eye faded unusually quickly in April, a new report says. Yet still in some places, showcasing the fickleness of climate and weather, winter has made some record-breaking last gasps.
By the end of April, snow cover over North America had melted to its lowest extent for that time of year since satellite measurements began in 1967, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's April 2010 State of the Climate report, released this week. A NASA satellite image for April 2010 shows large swaths of southern Canada with no snow on the ground.
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Climate change is about more than just polar bears. That is the message from Dr Kate Manzo whose research into climate change communication has been published in Meteorological Applications. The research, which reviews the efforts of journalists, campaigners and politicians to engage the British public with climate change, explores how new 'visual strategies' can communicate climate change messages against a backdrop of increased climate skepticism.
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Strict compliance with ecological norms must become a must in Russia’s everyday life, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. As he addressed the presidium of the country’s State Council, which gathered to discuss the ecological situation, Medvedev pointed out that the situation required clear and adequate measures.
“The law on environmental protection must be codified, the lengthy process of perfecting legislation completed, and ecological nihilism put an end to once and for all,” Medvedev said. “This is a mental problem. Defiance of law, including ecological law, is one our ills.”
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Studying whole microbial communities rather than individual micro-organisms could help scientists answer fundamental questions such as how ecosystems respond to climate change or pollution, says Dr Jack Gilbert writing in the May issue of Microbiology Today.
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A collaborative research team led by Queen’s University biologists has found that potent metals like mercury and lead, ingested by Arctic seabirds feeding in the ocean, end up in the sediment of polar ponds.
“Birds feeding on different diets will funnel different ‘cocktails’ of metal contaminants from the ocean back to terrestrial ecosystems, which can then affect other living organisms,” says lead author Neal Michelutti, a research scientist at Queen’s Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL).
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Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a new study has concluded.
The research is the first to directly model how changing climate will affect polar bear reproduction and survival.
Based on what is known of polar bear physiology, behaviour and ecology, it predicts pregnancy rates will fall and fewer bears will survive fasting during longer ice-free seasons.
These changes will happen suddenly as bears pass a 'tipping point'. Details of the research are published in the journal Biological Conservation.
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“Three UNESCO departments on ecology will be established during a month in the Russian regions”, - informed Valery Neronov, Vice-president of International Coordination Board on UNESCO program “A man and biosphere”.
“The certificates were already obtained, and during the nearest month these chairs will be officially included to a list of Russian UNESCO departments implementing the program “A man and biosphere”, - he noted. One chair will be established in Kazan’ on the base of Institute of Ecology and Soils Problems, the second – in Puschino on the base of Puschino University and Scientific Center RAS, the third – in Postov-on-Don, which will be the first chair “UNESCO-Kusto” in Russia.
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Leading Russian and Britain climatologists presented a view of official science concerning climate changes and gave comments of “climate gate” (hacker’s scandal with University of the Eastern England) and error in the IPCC report connected with wrong date of ice melting in Himalayas. Wrong date of ice melting in Himalayas (2035 instead of 2350) was presented in the report because it had been taken from an article in popular science journal.
Seminar “What happens with climate?” was held at A.I. Voeikov Main Geophysical observatory of Roshydromet (MGO) (located in St.Petersburg, Russia) and organized jointly with Embassy of Great Britain in the Russian Federation. As it was informed in announcement of seminar it was devoted to “questions connected with climate changes and actively discussed in mass media”. Vladimir Kattsov (MGO Director), Valentin Meleshko (principal scientist of MGO), Petr Sporushev (leading scientist of MGO) and their Britain colleagues Prof. Simon Tett (Edinburgh University) and Dr Rachel Worren (Tindall Center, University of Eastern England) participated in this seminar.
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The upper layer of the world's ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new study. The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.
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Shipping major Sovcomflot’s announced sailing on the Northern Sea Route will take place in September.
As previously reported, Sovcomflot is currently preparing for sailing on the Northern Sea Route. Now the Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin confirms that the sailing will take place in September, RIA Novosti reports.
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NASA, which pioneered the technology used for the satellite-aided search and rescue capability that has saved more than 27,000 lives worldwide since its inception nearly three decades ago, has developed new technology that will more quickly identify the locations of people in distress and reduce the risk of rescuers.
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Primitive humans, clad in animal skins, trekking across vast expanses of ice in a desperate search to find food. That's the image that comes to mind when most of us think about an ice age.
But in fact there have been many ice ages, most of them long before humans made their first appearance. And the familiar picture of an ice age is of a comparatively mild one: others were so severe that the entire Earth froze over, for tens or even hundreds of millions of years.
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Kings Bay asks all visitors to check if there is any accommodation available in Ny-Alesund before planning the dates for travel. Certain periods are fully booked!
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Billed as the largest polar science gathering ever, the June 8-12 Oslo Science Conference will bring researchers from 160 International Polar Year (IPY) projects together for the first time. In some 40 sessions with more than 1,000 oral presentations, researchers will discuss their work supported by the IPY in the Arctic and Antarctic.
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A NSF-funded research team, led by scientists from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment is at sea off Antarctica to measure the underwater movements and behaviors of endangered humpback and minke whales.
The researchers apply suction-cup tags to the animals to follow their movements.
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Antarctica is just about as far away from Louisiana State University (LSU)’s hot and humid home state as you can get. But despite the extreme temperatures and frozen landscape, that's just where Ph.D. student and Louisiana native Shawn Doyle, along with his adviser Brent Christner, spend a great deal of time doing fieldwork.
"Shawn's project focuses on providing evidence that metabolically active microbes exist in ice," said Christner, assistant professor of biology at LSU. "So traveling to Antarctica is really just part of the job description."
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The Arctic has profound significance for climate and functioning of ecosystems around the globe. Because the region is particularly vulnerable and prone to rapid change, NOAA must position itself to respond with quality products, services, and scientific research. To guide that effort, NOAA has developed an Arctic strategic plan and vision that will be available for public comment through June 10.
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This year is shaping up to be one of the warmest years on record so far, temperature measurements indicate.
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for both April and for the period from January through April, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has records going back to 1880.
The data suggests that 2010 will be in keeping with the recent trend of warmer-than-average years that have been linked to the heating caused by global climate change. Reports at the beginning of this year put the decade 2000 through 2009 as the warmest decade since 1880.
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An article in the current issue of Global Change Biology Bioenergy reveals that Miscanthus x giganteus, a perennial grass, could effectively reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, while lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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The season of migration has come again to the warm blue waters off the coast of Mexico. Mother gray whales are nursing their newborn calves, plumping them up for the 6,000-mile trip next month to summer feeding grounds in the Arctic.
This migration, one of the longest of any of the world's wild mammals, has gone on for thousands of years. Increasingly, the watery voyage raises questions about how the changing climate is affecting species that live in the Arctic, the part of the world transforming most dramatically from humanity's greenhouse gas emissions.
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Developments concerning the Arctic region have been a recurrent theme in politics this April. Russian President D. Medvedev and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg reached a breakthrough agreement on the demarcation of the long-contested maritime border between Russia and Norway in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean, and Russian Prime Minister V. Putin visited Franz Josef Land where he stated that geopolitically Russia's deepest interests are linked to the Arctic. Russian First Deputy Prime Minister V. Zubkov stressed Russia's commitment to further energizing its two transit projects implemented jointly with Canada - the Arctic Bridge and the Polar Air Routes – and praised the Canadian expertise in creating industrial clusters in the north-eastern regions.
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In a recent study released in Nature Geoscience, scientists have found a new explanation for the very low gravity levels along the Antarctic coast to the south of New Zealand.
Geophysicist Michael Gurnis and his colleagues from Caltech explained that the anomaly, which also occurs in parts of south of Asia, the northeastern Pacific and in the western Atlantic, is due to giant country-sized slabs of rock they refer to as “slab graveyards” buried deep near the planet's core. The rock, buried long ago, released water that reduced the density of overlying rock. Less dense rock in these areas leads to less gravitational pull.
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Scientists investigating deep sea life in the Southern Ocean near eastern Antarctica have found evidence of what they believe could be illegal fishing. Using an experimental “benthic trawl” modified to carry a camera, they found a series of long straight furrows, which could be marks left by bottom longlines set to catch patagonian toothfish.
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The Earth's oceans are among the most mysterious places on the planet, but scientists now have at least figured out how deep the oceans are and just how much water they hold.
A group of scientists used satellite measurements to get new estimates of these values, which turned out to be 0.3 billion cubic miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers) for the volume of the oceans and 12,080.7 feet (3,682.2 meters) for the average ocean depth.
Both of these numbers are less than many previous estimates of the ocean's volume and depth.
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The Barents Sea is particularly vulnerable to lowering pH levels and increasing acidification, say some scientists. Its cold water temperatures allow it to absorb greater amounts of CO2 than warm waters, meaning, the Barents Sea could acidify quicker than other water systems in the world, threatening biodiversity.
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British arctic explorers take the first ever samples of ocean water.
A group of British explorers have taken the first ever samples of ocean water from the North Pole according to a report by the UK’s Guardian newspaper.
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How high is the sky? Scientists have a pretty good handle on that one, what with their knowledge of the troposphere, stratosphere an the other "o-spheres." Now, thanks to new work headed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they are closing in on the other half of that age-old query: How deep is the ocean?
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The ice is melting so fast in Greenland that the giant island is rising noticeably as the weight is lifted. In some spots, the land is rising 1 inch per year.
A vast ice cap covers much of Greenland, in some places up to 1.2 miles (2 km) thick. The ice, in place for eons, presses down the land, making the elevation at any given point lower than it would be sans ice.
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Computer simulations show that both ocean dynamics, such as the Gulf Stream, and mountain ranges influence the pattern of storm tracks on Earth. This also explains why Earth's storm tracks are so different from those on the gas giant Jupiter.
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Snuggled safely on its mother's feet, a newborn penguin chick peers out at the camera.
A photographer braved sub-zero temperatures to capture these tender moments between adult penguins and their young.
Linda Drake travelled onboard an icebreaker ship to get to Snow Hill Island, which lies off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.
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The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for both April and for the period from January-April, according to NOAA. Additionally, last month's average ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for any April, and the global land surface temperature was the third warmest on record.
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A group of British explorers just back from a 60-day trip to the North Pole said on Monday they had encountered unusual conditions, including ice sheets that drifted far faster than they had expected.
The three-member team walked across the frozen Arctic Ocean to study the impact of increased carbon dioxide absorption by the sea, which could make the water more acidic and put crucial food chains under pressure.
Expedition leader Ann Daniels said the ice drifted so much that they eventually covered 500 nautical miles (576 miles) rather than the 268 nautical miles initially envisaged.
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Trout and salmon are among the world's most familiar freshwater fishes, but numbers have fallen over recent decades -- in some areas, dramatically.
Pollution, habitat loss and over-fishing have all been blamed in the past, but new evidence from Cardiff University shows that climate change could be a major factor, putting both species at risk.
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Since Papanin’s time Russia is alone among other countries which lands its researches on drifting ice floes. Last days of “North Pole -36” (07.09.2008-31.08.2009) drifting station operating, the first reconstruction of historical monument in the Arctic, curious meet with polar bears and submarines were filmed by Anton Borisov.
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A program on the Arctic cleaning , about which Vladimir Putin have declared, will start by enumeration of forgotten dumpsites and search of methods to utilize of dangerous waste products.
Vladimir Putin, the Prime-Minister of Russia was imposed on area of dumpsites on Franz Josef archipelago during his visit there and declared on Thursday that this gigantic rubbish damp in the Arctic is to liquidate in near future.
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“Pilotage of the ship convoys along the Northern Sea Route in the Arctic round the white-coat seal rookeries (young Greenland seals of up to 1 month age) may be performed from space”- informed Vladimir Gershenzon, the Director General of ITZ “SKANEKS” the RIA News.
According to his information the location of white-coat seal rookeries are observed from satellites.
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Final Samples Captured Through ‘Hole at the Pole'
Described as three of 'the world's toughest' explorers, Ann Daniels, Charlie Paton and Martin Hartley reached the Geographic North Pole at on 12th May, ending a grueling 60-day trek across the floating sea ice of the Arctic Ocean.
The Catlin Arctic Survey expedition's headquarters in London were contacted at 20:05 hours (BST) to confirm the team had completed their final scientific data capture on the very top of the world.
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The Rossiya nuclear-powered icebreaker has left the port of Murmansk in northern Russia on a mission to rescue the personnel of a Russian drifting research station in the Arctic.
The North Pole 37 station was set up in the Arctic Ocean at the beginning of September 2009. It is manned with 15 researchers, who must be evacuated due to the threat of shifting ice floe.
"The polar explorers were supposed to continue work at the station until September, but a powerful ice stream has being steadily moving toward the station posing an imminent threat," said Vladimir Blinov, a spokesman for Atomflot, which operates Russia's fleet of nuclear icebreakers.
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Researchers at Durham University have drawn up new maps to show the competing claims of Argentina and the UK for resources in the South Atlantic and Southern Oceans.
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Conventional wisdom has it that grey whales have been extinct in the Atlantic Ocean for more than 200 years, and the species survives only in the north Pacific. That was the case until last weekend, when a 13-metre-long grey whale was spotted cruising off the coast of Israel.
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Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled beginning 4.568 billion years ago. The new study, published in the journal Science, indicates that water and other key volatiles may have been present in at least some of Earth's original building blocks, rather than acquired later from comets, as some scientists have suggested.
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Exasperated Canadian legislators grilled the head of BP Plc Canadian unit on Thursday, concerned about the risks of the company's plans to drill in Arctic waters after the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
But Anne Drinkwater, president of BP Canada, offered few answers at a hearing at Parliament's Standing Committee on Natural Resources on the safety of drilling in the Far North.
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The Barents agreement between Norway and Russia has brought attention to Canada's strained relations with Russia over the arctic region.
With the recent historic agreement between Norway and Russia over the boundaries of the Barents Sea as a guideline, attention has begun to turn to how other Arctic nations can learn to work with their largest regional neighbour.
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Bolstered by geological and geophysical data:Total area of Norway expandedKnowledge acquired from a ten-year-old basic research project on geologic conditions of the oceanic crust proved invaluable in ultimately successful negotiations between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in 2009.
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Northern Norway should start preparing for a warmer, wilder and wetter climate, researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute say.
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The Norwegian settlement in Ny-Alesund on the northwestern part of Spitzbergen will soon have the world’s northernmost fiber-optic data connection. A project which will provide the world with easier access to important data from the observatories in Ny-Alesund.
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Scientists from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center placed 61 satellite tags on fur seals, leopard seals, Weddell seals, chinstrap penguins and gentoo penguins that will allow researchers and the public to track the movements of these animals over the austral winter, which takes place during our summer.
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Beijing - The Arctic will be the focus of stepped-up research and expedition efforts to deal with challenges and opportunities arising from melting ice cover, the country's top administrator on polar research has said.
Climate and environmental changes in the Arctic have a direct impact on China, Qu Tanzhou, director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA) affiliated to the State Oceanic Administration, told China Daily.
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A federal government proposal to conduct seismic tests for oil and gas resources in Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, could support other government plans to create a marine conservation area there, according to the tests' proponents.
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Once, offshore islands were a safe place to breed for a number of bird species. However, times are changing. Researchers from BResearch, Groningen report a dramatical increase of summer predation by polar bears.
The small offshore islands along the western coastline of Svalbard are a remarkable habitat hosting an array of bird species that seek a safe place to breed. However, times are changing. During a long-term population study on barnacle geese between Isfjorden and Bellsund, the researchers witnessed developments that might severely impair the attractiveness of these islands.
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Coastal nations have quietly taken over areas of seabed totaling almost the size of Australia since 2002 and far more is up for grabs in one of the biggest redrawings of the world map in history, experts said.
A year after a May 13, 2009, deadline for states to outline the outer limit of their continental shelves, a U.N. commission is struggling with a vast backlog of claims to regions such as the Arctic that may contain oil or minerals.
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Since many years, the Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden-Institute, Kola Science Centre, Russian Academy of Science (KSC RAS), Apatity, Russia has conducted intensive studies on vegetation taxonomy, ecophysiology, soil and landscape ecogeochemistry. Here is a glimpse of their studies.
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When an ice cube melts in a glass, the overall water level does not change as the ice melts into the rest of the liquid. Doesn't that mean that melting icebergs shouldn't contribute to sea-level rise? Not quite.
Most sea-level rise comes from water and ice moving from land into the ocean, but the melting of floating ice causes a small amount of sea-level rise, too.
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Content:
1) Preparations and Promotions for Oslo Science Conference
2) Polar Information Commons
3) IPY Lessons Learned
4) APECS Update
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At the annual General Assembly of the European Geological Union in Vienna, Dr. Olaf Eisen from the German Alfred Wegener Institute is presenting results from an environmentally friendly measurement method that he and his colleagues used on an Antarctic ice-shelf for the first time in early 2010. The method supplies data that are input to models for the ice mass balance and thus permit better forecasting of future changes in the sea level.
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Monitoring changes in permafrost is difficult using current methods. Fortunately, researchers from the University of Michigan have developed a new approach based on the use of chemical tracers in stream water.
Their results, published recently in the journal Chemical Geology, gives various assessments through physical measurements and models, which suggest that the active layer thickness of the permafrost (the part that unfreezes and urfreezes every year) has increased over the 20th century, with a further possible increase of up to 40% by the end of the 21st century.
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During ice ages, ice sheets move over fast-flowing ice streams that leave distinct geological signatures on the ocean floor.
he relationship between ice streams and climate change forms the basis of the article "Stemming the flow of climate change," published in the journal International Innovation by Angelo Camerlenghi, an ICREA research professor with the Department of Stratigraphy, Paleontology and Marine Geosciences at the University of Barcelona, and Michele Rebesco, from the National Institute of Oceanography and Geophysics in Trieste.
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Russian and Norwegian warships and military aircrafts will be conducting a joint exercise in the Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea in June. Along with ordinary military drills, the exercise will include joint efforts in releasing an oil platform from armed extremists.
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The Arctic Council wants to play a greater role in developing joint international policies for its eight member nations, said Else Berit Eikeland, Norway's ambassador to Canada.
Since 1996, the Arctic Council — which includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and the United States — has served mainly as a high-level forum to advance circumpolar co-operation, to protect the Arctic environment, and to promote the economic, social and cultural health of its members.
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China will increase Arctic research and expedition efforts, the country’s top administrator on Polar research says. The undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Arctic are global resources, not regional, he claims.
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The delineation deal on the Barents Sea makes the construction of a new ice-breaking research vessel more relevant, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre admits.
Norwegian polar researchers have long been stressing the need for a new advanced research vessel adjusted to Arctic conditions. Among them has been Jan-Gunnar Winther, leader of the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso.
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The Canadian government has taken a major step to create a new national park in the High Arctic and simultaneously ensured almost no tourists will ever want to go there.
In announcing a breakthrough deal with nearby Inuit communities to eventually set aside a 5,700-square-kilometre conservation zone around the north end of uninhabited Bathurst Island, Parks Canada described the proposed park — among other uninviting ways — as "a rock-strewn, mostly barren, polar desert."
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Study of modern processes operating in a glacier-river-lake system helps reconstruct past climate from lake sediments. U.S: and UNIS students and researchers work together in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programme. Since 2003, undergraduate students from the United States have come to Svalbard as part of a program funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation called “Research Experiences for Undergraduates” (REU). U.S. students and researchers team up with collaborators from UNIS to learn how climate influences the modern glacial, fluvial, lacustrine system in Linnédalen, near Kapp Linné at the mouth of Isfjord.
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Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.
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The Norwegian satellite, AISSat-1 will be launched from India on 9 May. The satellite will be used by maritime authorities as an additional means of ensuring safety at sea in the High North. The satellite is equipped with technology developed in a joint effort by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), Kongsberg Seatex AS, the Norwegian Coastal Administration and the Norwegian Space Centre. The project is funded by the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
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Russia’s new space monitoring system, “Arktika” will help to reveal secrets of the Arctic. Four satellites will study the hard-to-reach regions around the North Pole. The first satellite of this system will be launched in three years.
The development of such a system will guarantee the implementation of Russia’s key tasks in the Arctic, said the head of the Russian Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov.
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To climate scientists, positive feedbacks can be a bête noire.
An Unsettling Wild Card of Climate Science: How Strong Is the Feedback?
The biggest uncertainty in climate scientists' ability to predict how much something will cool or warm the climate (including greenhouse gases) is our poor understanding of the strength of additional processes that act to amplify or dampen that cooling or warming. We call those processes feedbacks -- positive feedbacks for those that amplify and negative feedbacks for those that dampen.
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Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn at the European Parliament has launched a soil atlas of the world's northernmost regions, where more than half the carbon present in Earth's soils is stored.
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A new study recently published in the journal Science suggests that an episode known as “snowball earth”, which occurred some 720 million years ago, may have produced a dramatic change in the carbon cycle. This change could have in turn triggered future ice ages.
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University of Tromso – Teorifagbygget
Policy section: 24–25 January 2011
Arctic Tipping Points
Research as a driver for business and resource management in the High North
Science section: 26–28 January 2011
The Arctic in the Earth System perspective: the role of tipping points
The science sessions will focus upon the changing Arctic, and on the challenge of handling tipping points, in science and in the advisory role toward business and management.
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The EALAT team will be making a full series of presentations at the IPY Oslo Science Conference which will be held in early June, which will signal the end of the International Polar Year in Norway. So far, nearly 30 EALAT researchers, reindeer herders, partners and project leaders are scheduled to be present. All the Phd students will be present and will make presentations, and several posters will also be presented - a total of 22 EALAT oral and poster presentations will be made.
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The Norwegian Government has established a group of experts on High North issues in a bid to develop new national strategies for the region.
The new expert group was formalized during Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre’s visit to the Arctic city of Tromsø last week. The trip was held immediately after the historical meetings with Russian President Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Oslo last week.
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A new NASA study of Earth's polar ozone layer reinforces scientists' understanding of how human-produced chlorine chemicals involved in the destruction of ozone interact with each other.
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While the ice cover has consistently receded in recent years, climate change might not be the only one to blame, Norwegian researchers say. Although there have been significant changes, the researchers believe that changes in air circulation patterns create winds that might push away the ice.
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The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the globe thanks in part to melting sea ice, a new study finds.
Melting sea ice has accelerated warming in the Arctic, which in recent decades has warmed twice as quickly as the global average, according to a new study.
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