News from the polar regions in October 2009 included a NASA air campaign to monitor the Antarctic ice sheets and coastal sea ice, continued concerns over the high levels of global carbon dioxide and climate change, and engineering technology to fight erosion. Missed these stories the first time around?
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Mainbody flights started arriving 3 October (local McMurdo time) and will continue throughout the antarctic summer. The term "mainbody" refers to the summer migration of National Science Foundation support and research personnel to McMurdo Station on Ross Island. Compared to McMurdo's winter population of 153 and the Winfly jump to 476 that arrived in August, mainbody exponentially increases the population and pumps up the pace of station life.
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Russia is planning extensive research to support its claim to a broad swath of energy-rich territory beneath the Arctic Sea, a top official of the nation's icebreaker fleet said Friday.
Icebreakers will lead research vessels into the Arctic in a series of missions over the next three years to conduct a detailed geological analysis of the seabed, said Andrei Smirnov, deputy director for operations at state-run Atomflot.
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The EU is an Arctic entity, EU Commission representative Fernando Garces highlighted in a seminar last week. He also reiterated the Commission’s desire for permanent observer status in the Arctic Council.
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A new European Earth observation satellite will be launched in the early hours of Monday morning (2 November 2009) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
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The 26th Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE), which left Shanghai on October 11th, is expected to complete the first land-cover map of Antarctica by the end of this year. The new map will be the most precise map of Antarctica to date, with a precision of about 15 metres, about 20 times more precise than current maps of Antarctica. For the first time it will be possible to show key features of Antarctica such as sea ice, snow, blue ice, rocks, soil marshes, lakes and ice crevasses.
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The Arctic Report Cards are a timely source of clear, reliable and concise information on the state of the Arctic.
The 2009 Arctic Report Cards was released last week. The yearly report shows the state of the Arctic right now. Some of the main findings are that the high arctic fauna is impacted by the loss of sea ice. It is observed that there are reduced survival rates for some Polar Bears populations and Walruses are seen on land in new areas and in unusually large numbers. It is also observed that many wild Caribou herds are in decline.
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This October, two outstanding researchers working in Svalbard were rewarded for their achievements in science: Geir Wing Gabrielsen (Norwegian Polar Institute) received the Nansen Award and Jorn Hurum (Natural History Museum, University of Oslo) received the Award for Excellence in Communication of Science.
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A poll by the Science Museum designed to convince the nation of the perils posed by climate change has backfired after being hijacked by sceptics.
The museum’s Prove It! website, which is designed to influence politicians at the Copenhagen climate summit in December, allows members of the public to pledge their support, or lack of it, to the environmentalist cause.
But so far those backing the campaign are out-numbered nearly six-to-one by opponents.
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As a respons to the Arctic Council Tromso Declaration, the SAON process has now begun a second phase. The continuing process is lead by a steering group (SAON SG) consisting of representatives of the eight Arctic countries, permanent participants in the Arctic Council, and Arctic Council working groups. With the inclusion of representatives from IASC and WMO, the SAON SG is also connected to the Arctic science, observing and data management activities and interests of the non-Arctic countries, as well as to global observing systems.
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Britain faces rising sea levels, floods and drought unless more is done to stop global warming, according to a new map produced by the Government.
The apocalyptic map was launched by Government ministers at the opening of a new exhibition at the Science Museum.
'Prove it – everything you need to know to believe in climate change' is aimed at educating the public about the dangers of uncontrollable global warming.
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New research has uncovered a significant clue in solving one of the lingering mysteries in climate change: what is causing the significant increase in Arctic tundra productivity detected by satellites since the early 1980s?
Groundbreaking research has been able to pinpoint what has long been suspected but never quantified. By studying the annual growth rings of a common and widespread willow species, an international team of researchers has determined that deciduous, or leafy, tundra shrubs closely track Russian Arctic warming and ’greening’. A regional increase in shrub cover has important implications for future climate due to feedbacks between the ground surface and earth’s atmosphere.
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Europe’s southern-most skeletal remains of Mammuthus primigenius were unearthed in a moor on the 37°N latitude. This is considerably south of the inhospitable habitat than one usually imagines for mammoths, and for the characteristically dry and cold climate that prevailed during the ice ages in the north of Eurasia.
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Research recently published in Nature Geoscience indicates that palmtrees flourished in the Arctic during an unusual "Hothouse" period some 50 million years ago. Scientists involved in an international studyled by Appy Sluijs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands foundpollen from palms, conifers, oaks, pecans and other species of treesfrom more temperate zones on a ridge that was close to the North Polesome 50 million years ago.
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Shipping major Sovcomflot will next year start shipping of oil along the Northern Sea Route, the company’s deputy General Director said last week.
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The United States must move forward with science research to make good decisions about how to manage human activities in the Arctic Ocean, the ambassador for oceans and fisheries.
"The Arctic is certainly the least well understood ocean on the planet, and in particular the area of the western Arctic nearest the United States, the Chukchi and Beaufort seas," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David A. Balton.
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As temperatures and sea levels rise, federal agencies are working to establish a national climate service to help communities, regions and nations respond to a changing planet.
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The possibility that climate change might simply be a natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time is dimming, according to evidence in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published October 19.
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After spending the past few days setting up our labs and helping the new team members become acquainted with Palmer Station, we finally took our last boating class today. Upon completing the class we are cleared to take out the zodiacs and begin collecting water samples to study bacteria, phytoplankton, and nutrients in the ocean at the Palmer LTER site.
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A vast swath of icy sea, barrier islands and coastal land on Alaska's oil-rich North Slope will be granted special protection because of its importance to the threatened polar bear, under a proposal released Thursday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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These days towns on both sides of the Norwegian-Russian border mark the 65th anniversary of Soviet troops’ defeat over the Wehrmacht's forces in the Arctic.
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The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed designating some 200,000 square miles of lands and waters along the north coast of Alaska as "critical habitat" for endangered polar bears (Ursus maritimus). In May 2008 the bears received limited protected status as a "threatened species" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). A proposed habitat designation normally would have been made after the original ESA listing, but a lawsuit by several conservation groups was required in this case.
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Despite the fact that summer 2009 had more sea ice than in 2007 or 2008, scientists are seeing drastic changes in the region from just five years ago and at rates faster than anticipated. The findings were presented today in the annual update of the Arctic Report Card, a collaborative effort of 71 national and international scientists.
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New research has uncovered a significant clue in solving one of the lingering mysteries in climate change: what is causing the significant increase in Arctic tundra productivity detected by satellites since the early 1980s?
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The White House yesterday completed its review of proposed habitat protections for the polar bear, clearing the Interior Department to introduce the regulations.
The White House Office of Management and Budget determined the rule was not economically significant or a "major rule," putting it on a potentially faster track for completion. OMB sent the rule back to the Interior Department yesterday, two weeks after receiving the proposal -- a relatively quick turnaround for the agency.
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The first Young Earth Scientist conference will be conducted in Beijing China 25-28 October. The Arctic Portal will monitor this event closely and repost videos within this page. which will be recorded at the Congress roundtable sessions.
The conference will focus on global climate, environmental and geological challenges facing today’s society, and aims to establish an interdisciplinary global network of individuals committed to solving these challenges.
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Svalbard Science Forum, in cooperation with the Norwegian Polar Institute, will award Arctic Field Grants in connection with research projects in Svalbard in 2010.

Application deadline: 20 Nov 2009, 4pm.
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This data set provides a near-real-time (NRT) map of sea ice concentrations for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The near-real-time passive microwave brightness temperature data are acquired with the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F17 satellite. The SSMIS instrument is the next generation Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) instrument. SSMIS data are received daily from the Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and are gridded onto a polar stereographic grid. Investigators generate sea ice concentrations from these data using the NASA Team algorithm.
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An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Russia is prepared to develop international cooperation on exploration of the Northern Sea Route, said Artur Chilingarov in a meeting with the Norwegian Barents Secretariat. A representation office can be located in Kirkenes.
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New ground measurements made by the West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN) project, composed of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, The Ohio State University, and The University of Memphis, suggest the rate of ice loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet has been slightly overestimated.
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Finland’s Minister for Foreign Trade and Development, Paavo Väyrynen, says the country needs a strong organ to coordinate Finland’s activities in the Arctic regions.
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The Russian Ministry of Regional Development will present a new strategy for the development of the Russian Arctic zone before the end of the year.
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The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the second warmest September on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Based on records going back to 1880, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides.
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According to climate change experts, our planet has a fever — melting glaciers are just one stark sign of the radical changes we can expect. But global warming's effects on farming and water resources is still a mystery. A new Tel Aviv University invention, a real-time "Optical Soil Dipstick" (OSD), may help solve the mystery and provide a new diagnostic tool for assessing the health of our planet.
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Life in the Antarctic depends on the lowest members of the global food chain - krill. This would be reason enough for scientists to investigate the comings and goings of the small crustaceans. But researchers also wanted to know why trillions of krill formed swarms so vast the superswarms can be seen from the air.
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Russian oil major Rosneft is ready to let foreigners into their projected offshore fields in the Arctic. But will demand market shares in the companies’ respective countries in return.
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It will be a tale of two winters in the United States -- warmer and drier than average in the North and wetter and cooler in the South -- thanks to El Nino, government forecasters said on Thursday.
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New measurements suggest the Arctic will be largely ice-free during summer in about a decade and completely open during summer within 30 years. The projections are more stark and sudden than other studies in recent years that have also warned of a present and continuing meltdown.
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The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice free in summer within a decade, scientists announced today—the latest in a stream of wildly varying predictions.
This past spring scientists had taken measurements along a 280-mile (450-kilometer) route across the northern part of the Beaufort Sea (map). Most of the ice, they found, was young and thin.
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Aboard a ship in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, a tourist from Great Britain spotted a swimming polar bear with a cub on her back. Intrigued by the sight, the tourist got in touch with the Norwegian Polar Institute to ask about the mother bear’s behavior.
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The First Murmansk International Economic Forum discusses the strategy of the Arctic’s development. The forum attracted over one thousand people - business people and representatives of banks and research institutions from Russia and seven other countries.
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In a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, ecologists estimate that Arctic lands and oceans are responsible for up to 25 percent of the global net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Under current predictions of global warming, this Arctic sink could be diminished or reversed, potentially accelerating predicted rates of climate change.
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Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday.
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Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt today took over the chair of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council from Russia’s Sergei Lavrov. Environment and climate change will be on top of the Swedish chairmanship agenda.
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The Norwegian Government plans to increase allocations to Svalbard with 10.3 million NOK. Most of the money goes to the Governor’s office.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is departing for Murmansk on Wednesday to take part in the 12th ministerial session of the Council of the Barents Euro-Arctic region (BEAC). The organisation brings together Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland. The European Commission will also take part in its work.
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A positive effect of climate change that is helping to support a £30m industry has been uncovered by new research.
Ocean warming in UK waters is increasing stocks of the great scallop Pecten maximus, according to the study published in the journal Marine Biology.
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A robust geosynthetic bag developed by the French and Norwegian partners of EUREKA project E! 3702 GISSAC can be filled with locally available, low-grade soil and used to build protective infrastructures capable of withstanding sea and ice erosion in the harsh Arctic climate.
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In the Government’s budget proposal for 2010, a record increase in funding of about NOK 530 million (Euro 64 million) has been proposed for a range of measures in the High North.
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Some 50 to 60 million years ago the temperature difference between thesea waters near the equator and at the poles was very small: This is theconclusion reached by a team of scientists from Utrecht University, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and the Universityof California at Santa Cruz after analyzing sediments retrieved fromthe ocean floor east of Tasmania, an area which bordered Antarctica at the time.
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Understanding the pace of our changing climate depends, to a large extent, on our ability to understand and model the climates of the past and their rate of change. These days we’re barraged by weather and climate data. But that is only a comparatively recent phenomenon. Scientists did not begin to gather accurate meteorological data until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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SVALBARD, Norway - Kurt Olsen touched the mine's rocky ceiling and broke off a piece of coal sticking out.
"This is young coal, between 60 and 100 million years old," the Norwegian miner said, as he directed the beam of his helmet flashlight onto the chunk of rock. The coal, gleaming in the light, was surprisingly lightweight. "It's full of oxygen," Olsen explained. "If you can manage to set it afire, even water will not extinguish it. The trapped oxygen fans the flames."
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The snows are late in coming on the Arctic Yamal peninsula where moist, dark permafrost entombed for 10,000 years crumbles into the sea at the top of the world.
Western scientists and environmentalists say collapsed river banks, rising tide waters and warmer winters in northwest Russia are clear signs of climate change, but they add Russia is in denial, ignoring a potentially disastrous "methane bomb".
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Every 101 minutes or so, a Department of Defense imaging satellite circles the Earth, capturing images from the equator to the polar ice caps. It's that DOD drone (colorfully named the DMSPF-17) that monitors geologic changes, such as the decreasing size of the Arctic and Antarctic ice covers. The images it snaps are the ones most people see of the Earth's two white domes, which have been steadily diminishing for the past decade.
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A team of French and Norwegian researchers have developed an environmentally friendly, low-cost way to protect Arctic regions from coastal erosion and rising seas: so-called geosynthetic bags made of woven polymers and filled with whatever local, low-grade soil is available.
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CHINA will spend three to four years building its own icebreaker for scientific expeditions to the northern and southern extremes of the planet.
The vessel would join Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, now the nation's only icebreaker that was built overseas, officials from the Polar Research Institute of China said yesterday.
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Three sailors who crossed the Northwest Passage this summer completed the final leg of their journey Saturday in Halifax harbour.
Canadian Cameron Dueck and two Germans set sail from Victoria in early June, hoping to raise awareness about the impact of climate change in the Arctic.
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Oil and natural gas are luring the major powers to the Arctic. The new Great Game includes Russia, the US, Canada and other countries competing for natural resources around the North Pole. More information is available today than ever before about the location and abundance of the region's riches.
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In March 2009, Norway invited the five nations with polar bears in their territory to a meeting under the Polar Bear Agreement from 1973. Now, the final report of this meeting is available.
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A number of polar meteorological stations in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug have recently got new equipment and new buildings. This will contribute to a mayor improvement on water pollution monitoring in the Barents Sea, White Sea and Kara Sea.
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Starting this month, a giant NASA DC-8 aircraft loaded with geophysical instruments and scientists will buzz at low level over the coasts of West Antarctica, where ice sheets are collapsing at a pace far beyond what scientists expected a few years ago. The flights, dubbed Operation Ice Bridge, are an effort by NASA in cooperation with university researchers to image what is happening on, and under, the ice, in order to estimate future sea-level rises that might result.
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Bridget Wade collects sediments in Tanzania. Wade and colleagues braved lions and hyenas in East Africa to extract microfossils in samples of rocks, which helped them link declining levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with the formation of the Antarctica ice sheet about 34 million years ago..
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A report released last Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that Cook Inlet Belugas in southern Alaska are still on the decline. After scientists found the whales close to extinction, they were listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act, providing them protection from hunting. Nonetheless, their numbers have continued to fall. Dropping from 653 belugas in 1994 to 366 ten years later, the beluga population has shrunk to 321 this year.
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The snows are late in coming on the Arctic Yamal peninsula where moist, dark permafrost entombed for 10,000 years crumbles into the sea at the top of the world.
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BERGEN: Once more, politics and development in the High North are issues for discussion at a larger conference. In the Western Norwegian town of Bergen more than 200 students and others gathered to listen about resources and security politics in the Arctic.
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You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.
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A robust geosynthetic bag developed by the French and Norwegian partners of EUREKA project E! 3702 GISSAC can be filled with locally available, low-grade soil and used to build protective infrastructures capable of withstanding sea and ice erosion in the harsh Arctic climate.
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Content:
1. Oslo Science Conference, 8-12 June 2010
2. Polar Week Underway!
3. Polar Information Commons
4. Canadian Workshops and Conferences
5. APECS Update
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October Polar Week will focus on recruiting new individual and institutional partners, will stimulate increased engagement by polar partners, and will highlight classroom activities developed for the new IPY Polar Resource Book. This polar week will feature fresh accessible science, live events, fun classroom activities, virtual balloon launches and spontaneous global inter-connections - activities that have made IPY Polar Days effective and enjoyable.
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U.S. satellite measurements show Arctic sea ice extent in 2009 – the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by floating ice – was the third lowest since satellite measurements were first made in 1979. The ice area at minimum was an increase from the past two years, but still well below the average for the past 30 years.
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Finland is to get an Arctic strategy to allow it to establish guidelines for Finland’s possibilities to exploit the areas.
According to Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb (Nat. Coalition Party), the strategy is to be ready already next year.
“The Arctic regions have proven invaluable. We need to put effort into it”, Stubb said at the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi.
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Researchers in the Laboratoire d'Océanographie at Villefranche (LOV) (Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)/Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC)) have just demonstrated that key marine organisms, such as deep-water corals and pteropods (shelled pelagic mollusks) will be profoundly affected ocean acidification during the years to come.
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At the end of the Arctic summer, more ice cover remained this year than during the previous record-setting low years of 2007 and 2008. However, sea ice has not recovered to previous levels. September sea ice extent was the third lowest since the start of satellite records in 1979, and the past five years have seen the five lowest ice extents in the satellite record.
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Protection for polar bears' shrinking icy habitat is the subject of a proposed rule sent to the White House by the Interior Department.
The proposed rule, "Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Critical Habitat Designation for the Polar Bear" is the latest step in a long process aimed at shielding the big white bears from the effects of climate change.
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Early in the 20th century, a succession of adventurers and scientists pioneered the exploration of Antarctica. A century later, they're still at it, albeit with a different set of tools. This fall, a team of modern explorers will fly over Earth's southern ice-covered regions to study changes to its sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers as part of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge.
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Competition for resources in the Arctic Circle could provoke conflict between Russia and Nato, a newly appointed commander at the alliance warned yesterday. Russia has recently been aggressive in its pursuit of claims to parts of the region and in February sent a submarine to the floor of the sea symbolically to plant a Russian flag. Admiral James Stavridis said that military activity and trade routes would also be potential sources of competition around the polar cap.
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The Northern Sea Route might be given a new lease of life as Yamal peninsula gets more economic activity. RusBusinessNews analysts found out that the process will be assisted by the development of the Yamal Harasavey port to service the Bovanenkovo gas field which is currently being developed. However, risks are still high.
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ON BOARD COAST GUARD FLIGHT ABOVE BEAUFORT SEA (Reuters) - Out in the Arctic Ocean, about 200 miles (322 km ) north of the nearest human settlement, the future of the world's climate is written in the patterns of ice patches on the water's surface.
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The International Polar Year Youth Time Capsule Project Committee is holding a writing contest for Pan-Arctic youth, and is calling for submissions about life in the north that will be included in the IPY Time Capsule, to be re-opened 25 years from now.
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With help of satellite technology, researchers monitor periglacial landforms in the permafrost landscape in Svalbard. The project PERMASAR is a cooperation between the Northern Research Institute Norut in Tromsø, the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), the Geological Survey of Norway, the Norwegian Space Centre and the University of Oslo.
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An innovative technique called L.I.F.E. imaging used successfully to detect bacteria in frozen Antarctic lakes could have exciting implications for demonstrating signs of life in the polar regions of Mars, according to an article published in the current issue of Astrobiology.
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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on world sports and Olympic officials on Saturday to lend support to a global climate deal which he called a "race against time."
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A recent study shows that contaminant levels in pink-footed geese are three times higher than in barnacle geese. This may be caused by a different pollutant exposure in their wintering areas in continental Europe and Scotland, respectively.
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...Out in the Arctic Ocean, about 200 miles (322 km ) north of the nearest human settlement, the future of the world's climate is written in the patterns of ice patches on the water's surface.
Old, "multiyear" ice -- the glue that holds the polar ice cap together and forms the Arctic's defense against encroaching warming -- is slowly disintegrating, a process that is plain to see from the air.
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For Sophie Warny, LSU assistant professor of geology and geophysics and curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, years of patience in analyzing Antarctic samples with low fossil recovery finally led to a scientific breakthrough. She and colleagues from around the world now have proof of a sudden, remarkably warm period in Antarctica that occurred about 15.7 million years ago and lasted for a few thousand years.
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Climbers from Greenpeace have since early Friday morning been blocking the loading of coal from the Svea mine at Svalbard. The action is a protest against coal mining and climate changes.
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A series of flights over the Earth's southern ice-covered regions is planned this autumn as a part of a broader study of changes in sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers. A team of modern explorers will fly a DC-8, an "airborne laboratory that can carry many instruments," over the southernmost continent on earth. The NASA crew will fly the plane from California to Punta Arenas, Chile, which they will use as a base form which they will carry out up to seventeen eleven-hour flights over West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and other areas where sea ice is prevalent.
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A new study of microscopic marine microbes, called phytoplankton, by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of South Carolina has solved a ten-year-old mystery about the source of an essential nutrient in the ocean.
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