New ways to depict the ongoing sea ice retreat happening at the North Pole are always appreciated. Both of these info-graphics - designed by Rupert Burton and published at the BBC Earth Life Is blog - nicely contain the Arctic Circle as thematic motif.
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This year’s season on the Northern Sea Route was special in many ways. Not only was the route accessible about one month longer than usual, but is also had the highest number ever of vessels in transit from Murmansk to another country.
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Iceland’s Minister of the Interior, Ögmundur Jónasson, rejected Chinese businessman Huang Nubo’s bid to purchase a large tract of territory in the northeastern region of the country. Huang had sought an exemption from an Icelandic law which prohibits nationals from outside the European Economic Association from purchasing large amounts of land. Huang wanted to purchase and develop a 115 square mile parcel of land in Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum, which would have equalled 0.3% of the country’s territory. He had planned to spend $200 million acquiring the land and turning it into an ecoresort, an investment that could have been beneficial to Iceland’s economy as it recovers from the financial crisis.
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Edinburgh explorer Cairn Energy has failed to make a commercial discovery of oil or gas in its Greenland campaign.
The Scottish group said that two wells which it hoped would yield oil were to be plugged and abandoned.
Cairn said it was now reviewing its two-year campaign and is thought to be in talks with potential partners to share the risk of future drilling.
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Alaska Native and conservation groups are again taking aim at a federal permit needed by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell to drill for petroleum in Arctic Ocean waters off Alaska's northern shore.
Nine groups on Monday challenged an air permit granted to Shell Offshore Inc. by the Environmental Protection Agency for the drilling ship Kulluk, which Shell hopes to use next year in the Beaufort Sea. The groups last month appealed an air permit for the Discoverer and its support vessels, which Shell hopes to use next year in the Chukchi Sea.
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If climate change continues along the business-as-usual path, the 24th century’s new world will be in some ways more like the world of Ancient Greece – with what’s left of the world’s inhabitants trading around a single sea.
For the Ancient Greeks, it was the Mediterranean Sea. For those of our descendants that survive, it will be what is now the Arctic circle.
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Bubbles of air trapped in ice long ago are helping paint a clearer picture of what may happen to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the future if climate change melts the northern hemisphere's permafrost, scientists say.
An international team set out to answer a long-standing question about why carbon dioxide levels have changed so much as the Earth has cycled between cooler and warmer intervals in the distant past.
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There are still available student places at BSc and MSc level within the technology and geology department in spring 2012. The extended admission will be on a first come, first serve basis so apply today!
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Two new geological map sheets of the 1:100 000 series of Svalbard were issued in November 2011. Both map sheets cover mainly areas in Ny-Friesland in northeastern Spitsbergen.
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People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
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New Norwegian coal mining on Svalbard is a hot potato for the government. Ministry of Environment is likely not to take a decision before next year.
Norway’s current coal mine in Svea Nord will run out of resources within the next few years. The state own company Store Norske adopted in September 2010 a business plan for opening a new coal mine in Lunckefjell, just north of the current mine.
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The work on writing a management plan for Eastern Svalbard Nature reserves is still ongoing. Now the reports from the working groups Research/Education and Tourism are available in English.
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A new study suggests that the rate of global warming from doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be less than the most dire estimates of some previous studies -- and, in fact, may be less severe than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.
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Attached you will find the updated policy program for the 6th Arctic Frontiers conference. Learn more about confirmed speakers for the conference policy and science sections. Arctic Frontiers evening program will include, to name a few, Reindans, bacalao fest at DRIV, PolArt Exhibition 2012, Hålogaland Teater and the memorable Mentor Speed Dating. Since our last update, Arctic Frontiers has visited Arkhangelsk for the 2nd anniversary celebration of Lomonosov and Nansen. During the visit Arctic Frontiers Chair and Troms County Governor were both celebrated for their international efforts. Read more about the anniversary events in Arkhangelsk.
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One of the main objectives of the rector of North Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk, Russia, Dr. Evgenia Isaevna Mikhailova, is to expand and strengthen international cooperation. To improve the academic quality of education, research and development work, this is a necessary move. The University of the Arctic gives many opportunities for that, for instance the thematic networks established to implement the policies of the UArctic and the member institutions.
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The Russian Ministry of Defence refuses to give oil company Rosneft access to fields in the Barents Sea.
A source in the Russian Mineral Extraction Agency (Rosnedra) confirms that Rosneft has got three bids for field licenses turned down because of objections from the Ministry of Defence.
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Arctic countries have no problems, which should be solved by military means, ambassador at large Anatoly Vasilyev said on Thursday.
Speaking at a round-table meeting devoted to transport problems in the Arctic region, Vasilyev said, “There are no problems that should be solved by force. There is no need to create any military-political alliances. All mutual pretensions can be settled by civilised means in compliance with the norms of international law. We’ll do so.”
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Industrial development of the Arctic has been accompanied by waste accumulation, especially in the vicinity of indigenous villages. This represents a growing threat to safety and health of the Arctic people who – due to traditional living conditions – are exposed to higher levels of contamination in the air, water, soil and their food supply.
To address contaminant issues in indigenous peoples’ communities in remote areas of the Arctic, the Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council proposed the elaboration of the Indigenous Peoples Community Action Initiative. This initiative was approved by the Arctic Council at the Ministerial Meetings in Salekhard and Tromsø (under ACAP).
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ESA Earth Observation Summer School on "Earth System Monitoring & Modelling" (30 Jul -10 Aug 2012, Frascati, Italy)
The European Space Agency (ESA) organizes a series of summer schools on Monitoring of the Earth System to promote the exploitation of Earth Observation EO data across disciplines, with a specific focus on their assimilation into Earth System models.
The two-week course, held in ESA/ESRIN (near Rome, Italy) during August (typically every two years) aims to provide students with an integrated end-to-end perspective going from measurement techniques to end-user applications.
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During the coming year, Russia will add another, sixth, nuclear icebreaker to serve the Northern Sea Route, Head of Atomflot’s office in Moscow Stanislav Golovinsky said on Thursday.
“With the growing cargo flow in the Arctic, in 2012 we shall start using a nuclear icebreaker which has been in reserve until now,” he said. “It will be the sixth vessel of the class, which will serve the Northern Sea Route.”
The icebreaker which will resume working is called the Soviet Union, and it will keep the name while working in the Arctic, Golovinsky said at the round table, which topic was The Arctic Transport System as Fundamental Factor of the Region’s Development.
“No, we are not changing its name,” he said.
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Politicians, scientists and public figures from Russia and Canada have discussed prospects for developing the Arctic and its problems at their meeting in Krasnoyarsk. Over 180 experts took part in the forum.
About 80 percent of the Krasnoyarsk region’s territory is located in the northern latitudes. The northern-most point in Eurasia, Cape Chelyushkin, is located there and the Dickson and Khatanga settlements are known as the gateways to the Arctic. The shortest path to the North Pole starts from here. Consequently, it’s no surprise that the Krasnoyarsk region was chosen as the venue to discuss the future of the Arctic.
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Research published in a top scientific journal says Arctic sea ice has declined more in the last half-century than it has any time over the last 1,450 years.
The study, which gives the most detailed picture ever of the northern oceans over the previous millennium-and-a-half, also concludes the current decline has already lasted longer than any previous one in that period.
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Russia and Canada are talking about a revival of the Arctic Bridge – a sea route connecting Murmansk and Churchill.
The Arctic Bridge is a seasonal sea route linking Murmansk in Northern Russia with Churchill in Hudson Bay, Canada. Now, the route is only easily navigable about four months of the year, but it will become more and more viable as the climate warms.
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Last month, US researchers took a 4,000-tonne gamble when they steered the Marcus G. Langseth through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean. The 72-metre research vessel was not built to plow through ice, so it had never ventured that far poleward before.
But the rules are changing quickly in the new north. Managers at the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the ship, decided to send the Langseth into the Arctic after reviewing satellite images that showed that the intended survey area in the Chukchi Sea had been largely clear of ice for four of the past five summers.
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Record ozone depletion over the Arctic early this year rivals what was observed in the Antarctic when holes in the protective atmospheric layer first appeared there during the 1980s.
The observation raises concerns that portions of the Northern Hemisphere might periodically begin experiencing potentially harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation during early spring, an international team of scientists reports online October 2 in Nature.
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The National Science Foundation awarded $16.3 million to the University of Alaska Fairbanks in support of the Toolik Field Station, a major site for national and international research in the North American Arctic since 1975.
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New research shows that humans can unwittingly bring alien plant species to Svalbard. Increased travel activity and expected temperature increases over the next decades, may make the establishment of new plant species in the archipelago's vulnerable ecosystem possible. This calls for a closer look at the management policy for travelling to Svalbard.
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On a Renaissance map of the world, there is a small white elephant standing near the Arctic coast of Russia. How it got there is a mystery. Is it a mammoth, or does it symbolize something else? The solution is like a jigsaw puzzle. We have many pieces of evidence, in different colors and shapes. But it’s not clear that all of the pieces belong to the same puzzle and, in any case, too few pieces have survived for us to be able to construct a clear image of the thinking that led the artist to place that elephant in the frozen north. Perhaps the most important clue that we have to work with is that the elephant occupies a position that mapmakers had previously reserved for a monster that we now call the walrus.
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The wind plays a much more important role in climate change than previously thought, say Danish researchers, who have mapped the summer ice in the Arctic Ocean going back thousands of years
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An episode of the BBC's Frozen Planet documentary series that looks at climate change has been scrapped in the U.S., where many are hostile to the idea of global warming.
British viewers will see all seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature series throughout the Autumn.
But U.S. audiences will not be shown the last episode, which looks at the threat posed by man to the natural world.
It is feared a show that preaches global warming could upset viewers in the U.S., where around half of people do not believe in climate change.
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People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
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At most times of year, you have to be prepared for very low temperatures when staying in Norway’s Arctic archipelago, Svalbard. But the weather is in fact much milder there today than it was in the 1800s. Ice cores drilled from Svalbard’s glaciers are providing important information on the history of its climate.
During the past thousand years, the average winter temperature in Svalbard’s “capital” Longyearbyen has varied from minus 5 degrees Celsius around 1000 AD to minus 25 degrees around 1850.
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A new model developed by scientists of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) allows the potential presence of bluefin tuna to be tracked through daily updated maps, helping to protect endangered stocks and fight illegal fishing. The model, based on satellite remote sensing data, provides for the first time an overall view of the preferred bluefin tuna habitats in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as their changes over time. Satellite-based habitat mapping can help identify more precisely areas to be inspected or to be closed for fisheries and it can also help refine estimates of fish stocks, thus contributing to a more effective fisheries management.
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Norway unveiled a 20-year plan to unlock offshore Arctic oil and gas resources and channel them to worldwide markets, a project the foreign minister said may cost billions of dollars and bring rivalries over Arctic resources to a head.
"It is the project of a generation," Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in an interview. "As the ice melts, new transport routes are opening up, resources are becoming accessible and human activity is drawn to this region."
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The University Centre on Svalbard (UNIS) is a state-owned limited company and has about 350 students annually.
There are about 40 persons on the scientific staff and 25 persons on the technical/administrative staff. In addition there are 24 adjunct professors and about 160 guest lecturers annually. UNIS has four main disciplines: Arctic Biology, Arctic Geology, Arctic Geophysics and Arctic Technology.
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March 19 – 23, 2011, Abisko Scientific Research Station, Sweden. Course will cover the long-term environmental changes and ecological studies of plants and animals, but also the relations between land use and people and changes in people’s health and wellbeing and security due to changes in climate (e.g. changes in snow and ice conditions). Case studies of climate and environmental changes, especially on snow will form the basis for evaluating the interactions between ecosystems and people.
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The fifth Polar Law Symposium will be held in Rovaniemi, Finland 6-8 September, 2012. Following the great symposium in Nuuk, which included 48 presentations and was attended by both the Icelandic President and Greenlandic Premier, the organizers are aiming high for the symposium in Finland.
This year's symposium will be a cooperative effort between two UArctic Thematic Networks (Arctic Law; Geopolitics and Security) and the Northern Research Forum. More details will be announced soon.
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Russian authorities have allocated 910 billion rubles (€21.8 million) to the creation of ten centers for search and rescue along the Northern Sea Route.
The centers will be located in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Naryan-Mar, Vorkuta, Nadym, Tiksi, Pevek, Provideniya and Anadyr. A total of 980 persons will be working at the centers, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations’ web site reads.
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When biomass is combusted the carbon that once was bound in the growing tree is released into the atmosphere. For this reason, bioenergy is often considered carbon dioxide neutral. Research at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, however, shows that this is a simplification. The use of bioenergy may affect ecosystem carbon stocks, and it can take anything from 2 to 100 years for different biofuels to achieve carbon dioxide neutrality.
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When the oil-tanker “Perseverance” sailed through the Bering Strait this morning it marked the end of the longest Northern Sea Route season ever.
Sailing season along the entire Arctic coast of Siberia became one month longer than the 2010 season. Shipping companies take advantage of the shrinking ice cap as global warming speeds up.
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At some point in the coming two weeks a rocket aimed at the northern lights over Svalbard will be launched from Ny-Alesund.
The ICI-3 rocket is a two-stage sounding rocket with a trajectory designed to intercept the aurora over the archipelago. It will fly for up to 10 minutes and have a maximum altitude of 350 km. The aim of the mission is to look at atmospheric instabilities and waves associated with the daytime northern lights. These disturbances can affect, amongst other things, the accuracy of GPS measurements.
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In order to separate human-caused global warming from the "noise" of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists.
To address criticism of the reliability of thermometer records of surface warming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists analyzed satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere.
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Data are presented from a survey by airborne scanning laser profilometer and an AUV-mounted, upward looking swath sonar in the spring Beaufort Sea. The air-snow (surface elevation) and water-ice (draft) surfaces were mapped at 1 × 1 m resolution over a 300 × 300 m area. Data were separated into level and deformed ice fractions using the surface roughness of the sonar data. The relation (R = d/f) between draft, d, and surface elevation, f, was then examined. Correlation between top and bottom surfaces was essentially zero at full resolution, requiring averaging over patches of at least 11 m diameter to constrain the relation largely because of the significant error of the laser instrument. Level ice points were concentrated in two core regions, corresponding to level FY ice and refrozen leads, with variations in R attributed primarily to positive snow thickness variability.
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We use Superconducting Gravimeter (SG) and Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, to infer changes in ice mass loss between September 1999 and September 2010. We find that during this period, the gravity rate and vertical crustal velocities are changing with time, adding to evidence about varying rates of ice mass loss. The gravity rate varies through 10 years of observation; -0.23 µGal/yr in 2000–2002, -3.22 µGal/yr in 2002–2005 and -1.10 µGal/yr in 2005–2010. The gravity changes agree well with the observed uplift rates measured by GPS, which are 4.4, 11.3 and 7.4 mm/yr, over the same periods. In addition, we generate model predictions which account for past and present-day ice mass variation. We find that the models under predict both the observed uplift rates and gravity changes.
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Forests at the edge of Alaska’s tundra have put on a growth spurt in the past hundred years, and especially since about 1950, according to researchers with Columbia University’s LaMont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The scientists recently completed a detailed tree-ring study dating back to 1067. The results suggest that at least some forests may be adapting the rapidly warming climate in the Arctic. Global temperatures have climbed about 1.6 degrees since the 1950s, but some parts of northern latitudes have climbed about 4 to 5 degrees during that same span.
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Recent dramatic changes in the Arctic will have a significant effect on our weather in Utah. That's the conclusion of a top scientist studying Arctic sea ice.
Arctic sea ice is disappearing in summer much faster than scientists expected. That's not just evidence of climate change; the ice itself is changing the climate, and it may be affecting weather as far away as Utah.
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The INTERACT project under EU FP7 has Transnational Access program that offers access to 20 research stations in Northernmost Europe and Russian Federation including:
* Free access for user groups/users to research facilities and field sites, including support for travel and logistic costs
* Free access to information and data in the public domain held at the infrastructures
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Shrub expansion is a global phenomenon that is gaining increased attention in the Arctic. Recent work employing the use of oblique aerial photographs suggested a consistent pattern of positive change in shrub cover across the North Slope of Alaska. The greatest amounts of change occurred in valley slopes and floodplains. We studied the association between shrub cover change and topographically derived hydrologic characteristics in five areas in northern Alaska between the 1970s and 2000s. Change in total shrub cover ranged from - 0.65% to 46.56%. Change in floodplain shrub cover ranged from 3.38% to 76.22%. Shrubs are preferentially expanding into areas of higher topographic wetness index (TWI) values where the potential for moisture accumulation or drainage is greater. In addition, we found that floodplain shrub development was strongly associated with high TWI values and a decreasing average distance between shrubs and the river bank.
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A new report from a 2011 Arctic Field Grant recipient investigates life-history strategies of Svalbard Reindeer.
Researcher Vebjørn Veiberg from NINA (The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research) has looked into the life of Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus). The study examines winter survival of females and fetuses as well as the effect of internal parasites.
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The ocean is teeming with tiny, exquisite creatures that have concealed themselves in certain ways from scientists. Now, 200 years after the organisms were discovered, Norwegian researchers have started to clear up mysteries from the DNA of radiolarians.
The world is teeming with unknown life forms. In the seas, in the soil – yes even in a shovel full of earth from your garden –innumerable organisms thrive that haven’t been scientifically analyzed and described.
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Buried below more than a mile of ice, Antarctica's Gamburtsev Mountains have baffled scientists since their discovery in 1958. How did the mountains get there, and what role did they play in the spread of glaciers over the continent 30 million years ago? In the latest study on the mountains, scientists in the journal Nature say they have pieced together the puzzle of the origins and evolution of this mysterious mountain chain.
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The first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions has found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet.
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It was the sea temperature, rather than the air temperature, that determined how fast Greenland’s ice cap melted at the end of the last ice age. This discovery is important for today's research into ice melt.
There was a significant concurrence of high marine temperatures and periods when the Greenlandic ice cap melted at a high rate during the last ice age, a climate history study shows.
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Under a new program by WWF Russia, Russian individuals and companies can become a polar bear foster parent for a one-time contribution of 30,000 rubles (about $1,000).
The money will be directed to conservation, protection and research of wild polar bears in the Russian Arctic, home to about 5,000-6,000 white bears or about a quarter of the worldwide polar bear population. Foster parents will receive a certificate and a polar bear statuette.
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Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev pledges to boost Arctic research and exploration amid tough competition from other nations to the region’s natural resources.
We are simply committed to continue research of the Arctic Ocean and the Arctic in general, because if we fail to do this, other countries will take control, Medvedev said on Friday
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A new web site presenting news on research in the Nordic countries has recently been launched.
ScienceNordic is an English language news site for scientific news from the Nordic countries Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.
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Map and diagrams detailing borders and claims to the Arctic shelf.
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The programme of the development of mineral deposits of the Arctic shelf is being analysed by the Russian government, and, according to the plan, is going to be approved at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers in December, this year, Denis Khramov, deputy minister of natural resources and ecology, said at the conference, entitled “Gas of Russia – 2011,” on Tuesday.
According to his information, several ways of the development of the Arctic shelf were analysed during the drafting of the document, and eventually the innovation way was chosen.
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Russia will protect its interests in the Arctic and will make investments in regional exploration, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with workers of the Amurkabel enterprise here on Friday.
“All decisions to this effect are not just prepared, they are taken,” he noted. “If we do not do it, other countries will act there,” Medvedev pointed out. “The Arctic, a region of the Arctic Ocean, is our neighbouring seas, this is our territory, our expanses,” the president remarked. “If we do not invest in this, the countries from other regions will come there,” he warned. Several countries from other regions already stated about their interests in the Arctic, Medvedev noted. “So they are going to come there, and we are not going to,” the president stressed ironically. “We will obligatorily make investments in this research and will protect our interests in the region,” Medvedev underlined.
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Sea ice coverage in the Arctic shrank this summer to the second-lowest level ever measured, and an energy and mineral rush is gathering steam in pursuit of nearly a quarter of the world's oil and gas. Meanwhile, a tanker ship has just set the speed record for crossing the Arctic sea in 6.5 days.
At the same time, Vladimir Putin, prime minister of the country with the most Arctic territory, has proclaimed that the Arctic Ocean is going to rival the Suez Canal as a trade route, and that we are upon an era of Arctic industrialization. Even China -- with no Arctic land of its own -- is making significant investments to explore the region, which has a vast expanse of international waters that is for the first time becoming navigable.
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On October 20, President Barack Obama and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg met at the White House in Washington, D.C. They discussed issues such as Norway's involvement in the campaigns in Libya and Afghanistan, and the domestic terrorist attacks in July. One other issue they also discussed was the High North.
In their joint remarks in the Oval Office after their 45-minute meeting, Stoltenberg said:
"I appreciate also very much that we had the opportunity to focus on the High North. The High North is a area where we are seeing new possibilities, new challenges, but also new dangers.
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A monumental struggle for the Arctic is taking place almost unnoticed amid the on-going geo-political upheavals in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
The world was used to the fact that major intrigues are invariably related to the Arctic Council, which was set up back in 1996 to settle territorial disputes between the northern countries, namely Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the United States and Iceland.
Things have changed other countries now seem to resent this approach, for they would also like to take part in the division of the Arctic pie. Following in the footsteps of the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Poland are India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Brazil and China, which are knocking at the Council door, insisting that the Arctic should belong to everyone.
The Chinese proved the quickest in taking action. They launched several polar expeditions, set up a polar station on Spitsbergen Island and got an icebreaker of their own.
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Maybe not ninety nine percent, but most of us can’t help but support those demonstrating on Wall Street and elsewhere around the world. Never before has humankind seen greed so out of control. Copious availability of fossil fuels has loosened energy restraints and democratic movements have loosened social constraints. I’ve argued elsewhere that the OWS movement is likely to fail because of our modern civilization’s dependence upon fossil fuels and other natural resources that become economically available thanks to fossil fuels. These resources are only sufficiently cheap if they are harvested and utilized under vast economies of scale, which requires capital and naturally results in wealth accumulation. I conclude that OWS should be targeting the root of our problems, our lifestyles, if it has any hopes of being successful. If we insist in living in a fossil fuel based economy, we can expect to pay. But inequality and wealth accumulation aren’t the only consequences, nor even the major ones; fossil fuel usage-caused global warming is...
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Arctic Sea ice is shrinking so rapidly that by the summer in as little as four years’ time it could vanish altogether at the top of the globe. The International Energy Agency warns that climate change is irreversible by 2017.
Polar bears could be robbed of their hunting ground in the summer period and will hardly survive as the rising global temperature puts the Arctic sea ice in a death spiral. Polar bears totally depend on the sea ice when hunting seals.
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Arktikugol has suggested that fishers from Murmansk should deliver fresh fish to the Russian settlement on Svalbard.
The fisheries sector in Murmansk is looking forward to the possibility of delivering fish to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, something they have not been able to do since the Soviet times...
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A Norwegian TV program looks into a little known predator, the Greenland shark, which hunts the Svalbard waters for fish and even seals.
But how does a slow moving shark, swimming at a just a few km/h catch the swift and agile seals?
The TV program from the series Ut i nature (Out into nature) follows researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute during a recent field campaign in Svalbard. The aim was to look into the lives and behavior of the little known Greenland shark. Thsee huge sharks are in most of the literature described as being scavengers living at great depths, but is that really the case? And just how abundant are these predators in Svalbard?
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The World Wildlife Fund launched a new tool to help Arctic governments and communities plan for climate change Nov. 9 at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Lulea, Sweden.
“We must plan for a world of change if we wish to conserve Arctic ecological systems, including the services they provide to people,” said Dr. Martin Sommerkorn from WWF’s global Arctic program. “In these times of rapid change, effective stewardship of Arctic natural resources requires a new way of thinking.”
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Greenland recently incurred record high temperatures and ice loss by melting, adding to concerns that anthropogenic warming is impacting the Greenland ice sheet and in turn accelerating global sea-level rise. Yet, it remains imprecisely known for Greenland how much warming is caused by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases versus natural variability. To address this need, we reconstruct Greenland surface snow temperature variability over the past 4000 years at the GISP2 site (near the Summit of the Greenland ice sheet; hereafter referred to as Greenland temperature) with a new method that utilises argon and nitrogen isotopic ratios from occluded air bubbles. The estimated average Greenland snow temperature over the past 4000 years was -30.7°C with a standard deviation of 1.0°C and exhibited a long-term decrease of roughly 1.5°C, which is consistent with earlier studies.
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The release of massive amounts of carbon from methane hydrate frozen under the seafloor 56 million years ago has been linked to the greatest change in global climate since a dinosaur-killing asteroid presumably hit Earth 9 million years earlier. New calculations by researchers at Rice University show that this long-controversial scenario is quite possible.
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An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.
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The Chinese-Norwegian research project “Advancing Modeling and Observing Solar Radiation of Arctic Sea Ice” (AMORA) aims to develop measuring devices which will contribute to a better understanding of the Sun’s impact on global warming. As part of this cooperation, the nations are also exchanging scientists.
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NOAA's updated Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the direct climate influence of many greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, shows a continued steady upward trend that began with the Industrial Revolution of the 1880s.
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A consortium of scientists are in the early stages of preparation for a multi-year airborne science campaign to study the humidity and chemical composition of air entering the tropical tropopause layer of the atmosphere between eight and 11 miles (13 to 18 km) high. NASA's Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment, or ATTREX, will conduct this research over the Pacific Ocean from three locations in 2013 and 2014.
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Shallow, persistent cloud layers that contain both liquid droplets and ice crystals are common in the Arctic. With cloud tops warmer than -38 degrees Celsius, ice formation depends on aerosols that preferentially freeze at warm temperatures, referred to as ice nuclei. However, past studies of such Arctic mixed-phase clouds have been unable to explain the measured abundance of ice crystals larger than 100 micrometers in maximum dimension (the size range where measurements are available), given observed environmental conditions and the measured concentrations of ice nuclei that could be entrained into the observed shallow cloud layers from aloft. Several studies were able to roughly reproduce the observed ice distributions, but only by invoking novel mechanisms for ice formation or by including sources of ice nuclei not confirmed by the measurements.
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It is found that the energy density of electromagnetic fields at the surface of the Earth follow a scaling law that extends over ~16 orders of magnitude from ~10-9 Hz to ~107 Hz. The temporal variability of the field can be described with an ~1/f2, or Brownian, noise power spectrum which reflects the superposition of numerous transient source processes. To the best of our knowledge, the spectral extent of this straightforward scaling law is unparalleled and outperforms any other scaling law in physics which describes a time dependent observable.
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Deaths and health problems from floods, drought and other U.S. disasters related to climate change cost an estimated $14 billion over the last decade.
"When extreme weather hits, we hear about the property damage and insurance costs," said Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist at Natural Resources Defense Council and a co-author of the study. "The healthcare costs never end up on the tab."
The study in the journal Health Affairs looked at the cost of human suffering and loss of life due to six disasters from 2000-2009.
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Russia will increase its submarine task force in the area around the Northern Sea Route, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
"We will, of course, be building up our [submarine] task force, ensuring the country's security in the northern region," he said.
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NASA's airborne expedition over Antarctica this October and November has measured the change in glaciers vital to sea level rise projections and mapped others rarely traversed by humans.
Operation IceBridge, nearing completion of its third year, is the largest airborne campaign ever flown over the world's polar regions. Bridging a gap between two ice elevation mapping satellites, and breaking new scientific ground on its own, IceBridge this fall has charted the continued rapid acceleration and mass loss of Pine Island Glacier.
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This paper compares land surface temperature (LST) products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). With both sources, the LST data are derived from infrared measurements. For ISCCP, LST is a secondary product in support of the primary cloud analyses, but the LST data have been used for several other purposes. The MODIS measurements from the Aqua spacecraft are taken at about 01:30 and 13:30 local time, and the ISCCP three-hourly data, based on several geostationary and polar orbiting satellites, were interpolated to the MODIS measurement times.
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Predicting ice sheet mass balance is challenging because of the complex flow of ice streams. To address this issue, we have coupled a three-dimensional higher-order ice sheet model to a basal processes model where subglacial till has a plastic rheology and evolving yield stress. The model was tested for its sensitivity to regional water availability. First, with an assumed undrained bed, the ice stream oscillates between active and stagnant phases, solely as a result of thermodynamic feedbacks occurring at the ice-till interface. However, the velocity amplitude decreases over time, as insufficient basal meltwater causes the ice stream to gradually thicken and enter a slow flowing “ice sheet mode.” Second, we assume that the till is able to assimilate water from a hypothetical regional hydrological system. This leads to significantly different long-term behavior, as a continuously oscillating “ice stream mode” is maintained.
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Rising temperatures will force many species of animals and plants to move to other regions and could leave some marine species with nowhere to go, according to new research just published in the journal Science.
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We were pleased to hear from the University of Arizona’s Jeff Kargel that the Times Atlas folks are now updating their atlas of Greenland. As we reported earlier, the first edition was completely in error, and led to some rather bizarre claims about the amount of ice loss in Greenland. Kargel reports that HarperCollins (publisher of the Times Atlas) has now fully retracted their error and has produced a new map of Greenland that will be made available as a large-format, 2-side map insert for the Atlas and will also be available free online. Meanwhile, Kargel and colleagues have produced their own updated small-scale map and have written a paper that includes both their new map and a description of the incident that led up to it.
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Following the increasing international focus on the maritime areas surrounding Svalbard, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published comprehensive back-ground material.
The publication is produced in cooperation with the Norwegian Polar Institute, the University Centre in Svalbard, SINTEF, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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As China's new icebreaker readies to set sail in 2014, the country might conduct expeditions to the North Pole every year in the near future, a senior official said.
The new icebreaker will improve China's capability in polar research, joining the older icebreaker, Xuelong, on China's Arctic and Antarctic research vessel, Li Yuansheng, deputy director of the Polar Research Institute of China and leader of the 28th Antarctic research expedition, told China Daily.
Li and his team started China's 28th Antarctic research expedition from Tianjin on Thursday.
Having only one icebreaker has always been a disadvantage in conducting the country's polar expeditions, especially when it comes to exploring the Arctic.
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With support from the Arctic Field Grant, master Student Anja Johansen Haugerud from the spent two summer weeks on Svalbard taking samples from Glaucous gulls.
In connection with the Fram Center flagship "Environmental toxins - effects on ecosystems and health", master student Anja Johansen Haugerud from the Norwegian Polar Institute and Norwegian University of Science and Technology took blood samples from and attached loggers to Glaucous gulls in the Kongsfjorden area. The goal; to measure the amount of environmental toxins that accumulate in the gulls and subsequently their eggs.
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Scientific tools have come a long way from the simple, leather-bound journals 18th century naturalists were toting on expeditions into uncharted lands. But hundreds of years later, we are still asking many of the same questions about the natural world: what’s out there and how does it work?
A handful of adventurous researchers have been probing the northern frontiers of the Arctic Circle for decades, and last week, I was fortunate enough listen in as they offered their knowledge of this region to the experts at NOAA who specialize in marine oil spill preparedness and response.
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The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has jumped by a record amount, according to the US department of energy, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, the co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
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The experience from the joint work of the crew of the nuclear-powered icebreaker Rossia and scientists aboard the research vessel Akademik Fyodorov during the high-latitude Shelf-2011 expedition, to study the high-latitude boundaries of the Arctic continental shelf, should be considered unique, said Captain Alexander Spirin of the nuclear-powered icebreaker Rossia serving with nuclear fleet operator Rosatomflot.
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The exclusion of Norwegian salmon exporters from the Russian market has nothing to do with the recent detention of Russian trawlers in the waters around Spitsbergen, leaders of Russian fishery unions underline.
Speaking at a seminar organized by the Russian Fish Union in Oslo yesterday, union leaders categorically rebuffed speculations about an alleged link between the detention of Russian trawlers in the Spitsbergen waters and the expulsion from the Russian market of Norwegian fish exporters.
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The genetic history of six large herbivores -- the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison, and musk ox -- has shown that both climate change and humans were responsible for the extinction or near extinction of large mammal populations within the last 10,000 years. The study, which is the first to use genetic, archeological, and climatic data together to infer the population history of large-bodied Ice Age mammals, will be published in the journal Nature.
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The retreat of Antarctica's fast-flowing Thwaites Glacier is expected to speed up within 20 years, once the glacier detaches from an underwater ridge that is currently holding it back.
Thwaites Glacier, which drains into west Antarctica's Amundsen Sea, is being closely watched for its potential to raise global sea levels as the planet warms. Neighboring glaciers in the Amundsen region are also thinning rapidly, including Pine Island Glacier and the much larger Getz Ice Shelf.
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After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress.
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Martin Visbeck regards interdisciplinary research as the key to a better understanding of the oceans and, ultimately, to their protection. He also believes in knowledge transfer – because the world’s oceans can only be preserved if humans change their behaviour.
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China has legitimate economic interests in the Arctic, Denmark's ambassador said on Friday, welcoming partnership with Beijing in the rapidly thawing polar region but adding that a possible resource rush would come with obligations.
With climate change linked to melting ice caps in the Arctic, the prospect of untapped hydrocarbons, fishing grounds and new summer shipping lanes has whetted China's appetite for polar research and exploration capabilities.
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With the prospect of new raw materials and trade routes, the geopolitical significance of the North Pole is growing. International cooperation is becoming increasingly important in the region.
Climate change in the Arctic is a catastrophe waiting to happen. This 20 million square kilometre area of land and sea that stretches around the geographic North Pole is warming twice as fast as the global average. The complexity of the impacts on global climate, rising sea levels and ocean currents are still barely foreseeable.
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Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), is the lead primary investigator of a grant for $477,787 to develop an improved understanding of the distributions and decadal trends of aerosols and ozone in the Arctic and study the implications for Arctic climate change during 1980-2010.
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Russia’s Mikhail Somov diesel-powered research vessel has returned to Arkhangelsk after a three-month voyage in the Arctic Ocean.
It supplied some 2,000 tons of fuel, 300 tons of food, 250 tons of construction materials and 100 tons of other cargo to Arctic research stations and took part in industrial waste collection in Franz Josef Land and the Wrangel Island.
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(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres press release via Eurekalert, 28 October 2011) -- Bremerhaven -- Today the new polar research aircraft Polar 6 will be presented in Bremerhaven, Germany, at the beginning of next week the Basler BT-67 will take off to the Antarctic. Its first job there will be to carry out measurements of the ice crust, which is up to several kilometres thick. The measurement flights will contribute to answering one of the major open questions in climate research: To what degree is the sea level rising due to changes in the ice cover in Antarctica? "The polar regions play a key role in the worldwide development of the climate. Research there thus has high priority for us. We provide modern and reliable research equipment that scientists need for their important work," states Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, German Federal Minister of Education and Research. The ministry is funding the purchase and equipping of the Polar 6 with a total of 9.78 million euros.
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Russia’s Arctic territories will become a separate object of state policy. A federal law on this subject is expected to be prepared in 2012.
- The place and role of the northern territories in the country’s socio-economic development pre-determine the need to single out the Arctic zone as a separate object of state policy, a draft concept of the law reads.
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Anatoly Sinitsyn has studied the mechanical behaviours of saline frozen soils in order to define the main factors influencing technologies of pile installation and the bearing capacity of piles afterwards. His PhD thesis was defended successfully in September at the B. E. Vedeneev All-Russia Research institute of hydraulic engineering (VNIIG) in Saint Petersburg.
Press release from St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University and UNIS
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NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite soared into space early Oct. 28, 2011 aboard a Delta II rocket after liftoff at 5:48 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
NASA's National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, successfully separated from the Delta II 58 minutes after launch, and the first signal was acquired by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. NPP's solar array deployed 67 minutes after launch to provide the satellite with electrical power. NPP is on course to reach its sun-synchronous polar orbit 512 miles (824 km) above Earth.
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The importance of Arctic sea-ice in Northern Hemisphere atmospheric circulation is well established. The driving force of the circulation of the atmosphere is the pole to equator temperature gradient, flows being modified by geography and the spin of the Earth. However the impacts of the radical reduction in Arctic sea-ice that have been seen in the last decade are only now being fully appreciated, with ongoing research details are becoming more clear. Amongst these impacts there is the prospect for a contribution of reduced sea-ice to colder winters in the Northern Hemisphere.
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Wintertime droughts are increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, and human-caused climate change is partly responsible, according to a new analysis by NOAA scientists and colleagues at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). In the last 20 years, 10 of the driest 12 winters have taken place in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
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