Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov is appointed new Head of the Governmental Commission for Russian presence on Svalbard.
Zubkov takes over the post after another First Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov.
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China formally signed up on Tuesday for the climate accord struck at the Copenhagen summit, the last major emerging economy to endorse a plan strongly favoured by the United States.
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A three-year field program now underway is measuring carbon distributions and primary productivity in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to help scientists worldwide determine the impacts of a changing climate on ocean biology and biogeochemistry. The study, Climate Variability on the East Coast (CliVEC), will also help validate ocean color satellite measurements and refine biogeochemistry models of ocean processes.
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Each year Svalbard Science Forum and the Norwegian Polar Institute designate funds to selected Master students, PhD students and researchers associated with Norwegian institutions for fieldwork in Svalbard. The intention of the fund is to support researchers and students carrying out fieldwork in Svalbard with an emphasis on those that are new to Svalbard. The scholarship is allocated yearly and the next application deadline will be announced in late summer/early autumn 2010.
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Since 2004, University at Buffalo anthropologist Ezra Zubrow has worked intensively with teams of scientists in the Arctic regions of St. James Bay, Quebec, northern Finland and Kamchatka to understand how humans living 4,000 to 6,000 years ago reacted to climate changes.
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The recently observed reduction in air pollution implies that more solar radiation reaches the Earth's surface. This could lead to a far more rapid increase in the Earth's temperature in the coming decades than has previously been expected based on calculations of CO2 emissions alone.
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The general aim of the ColdWear project at SINTEF is to gather physiological data on how we react to cold. These data will give scientists the expertise they need to develop what they call "advanced protection" for persons who operate in our most severe climate zones, such as Siberia and the Arctic.
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SSF and SMS have jointly organized a workshop that aimed at exchange of information and finding solutions for accessing and carrying out future research in the least accessible, and the most logistically demanding places in Svalbard - the East.
East Svalbard is indispensable as reference area. Its importance for monitoring climate change in the Arctic through reference-based research cannot be underestimated e.g. the changes in weather patterns are first visible in the east and should be captured already there.
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A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.
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The ongoing El Niño of 2010 is affecting north Pacific Ocean ecosystems in ways that could affect the West Coast fishing industry, according to scientists at NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
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Content:
1) Oslo Science Conference
2) Polar Week - 15 to 19 March 2010
3) IPY Publications Database
4) IPY International Field School in Svalbard, 21 June to 9 July 2010
5) Call for proposals for International Teams in Space Science
6) APECS Update
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The beasts had long lain extinct and forgotten, embedded deep in the frozen turf, bodies swaddled in Earth's layers for thousands of years before Christ.
Now, the Russian permafrost is offering up the bones and tusks of the woolly mammoths that once lumbered over the tundra. They are shaped into picture frames, chess sets, pendants. They are gathered and piled, carved and whittled, bought and sold on the Internet.
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Scientists at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have found evidence of hydrothermal vents on the seafloor near Antarctica, formerly a blank spot on the map for researchers wanting to learn more about seafloor formation and the bizarre life forms drawn to these extreme environments.
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Skepticism about climate change is going mainstream, and that is worrying. One-third of Americans now say global warming doesn’t exist – triple the percentage of three years ago.
This defiance of science isn’t just harmful for the environment. It’s also distracting us from growing threats to US national security. Actual – not theoretical – effects of climate change are turning the Arctic into a potential military flash point.
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Margit Dyrland has worked on observations of temperature and airglow changes in upper atmosphere/mesosphere trying to find a key to weather and climate variability. Combination of several methods was used and she has found relationships between various climate elements, fully described in her PhD thesis.
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A large space rock may have exploded over Antarctica thousands of years ago, showering a large area with debris, according to new research.
The evidence comes from accumulations of tiny meteoritic particles and a layer of extraterrestrial dust found in Antarctic ice cores.
Details of the work were presented at a major science conference in Texas.
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China is starting to prepare for the commercial and strategic opportunities arising as global warming melts the polar ice cover in the Arctic, an international peace research group said Monday.
Researchers expect the North Pole to be ice free during summer months in a matter of decades, opening up new shipping lanes and potential resource exploration in an area believed to contain as much as a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
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The latest findings from research on Antarctica's rich marine life are presented this week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Marine Biologist Huw Griffiths from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is involved in a major international investigation into the distribution and abundance of Antarctica's vast marine biodiversity -- the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML).
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The same antifreeze proteins that keep organisms from freezing in cold environments also can prevent ice from melting at warmer temperatures, according to a new Ohio University and Queen's University study published today in the Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Climactic changes might currently be threatening the survival of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), but similar shifts appear to have played an important part in bringing the species into existence in the not too distant past.
Researchers announced today that they have sequenced the mitochondrial genome of an ancient polar bear. The genetic traces they found in the bear's 110,000- to 130,000-year-old jawbone reveal that the species likely split from brown bears (U. arctos) just 150,000 years ago, at a time when specializing in arctic living quickly became an advantage rather than a liability.
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Climate models project that the global average temperature will rise about 1°C by the middle of the century, if we continue with business as usual and emit greenhouse gases as we have been. The global average, though, does not tell us anything about what will happen to regional climates, for example rainfall in the western United States or in paradisical islands like Hawai'i.
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The failed climate negotiations in Copenhagen last December will not make Russia relax its climate goals, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stressed in a meeting devoted to issue.
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Sovcomflot intends to carry out a trail shipment of oil from the Varandey terminal in Nenets through the north coast of Siberia to Japan this summer.
Lloyd’s List reports that Sovcomflot will send one of its purpose-built 70.000 dwt ice-classed shuttle tankers to Japan with oil loaded at the Varandey terminal on the Pechora Sea coast.
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Ships blowing off steam are helping researchers understand how human-made particles might be useful against global warming. New results from modeling clouds like those seen in shipping lanes reveal the complex interplay between aerosols, the prevailing weather and even the time of day the aerosol particles hit the air, according to research presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in San Diego.
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The Catlin Arctic Survey 2010, which is to begin in early March, will take leading research scientists to an Ice Base some 1,200 km from the North Geographic Pole to study the potential impact of rising levels of acidity in the Arctic Ocean.
Based on recent projections, some scientists believe that the world’s oceans might reach acidity levels never seen in 20 million years by 2050. As oceans worldwide absorb about a quarter of the CO2 we produce (no less than 24 million tons a day), ocean acidification is “the other CO2 problem”.
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More frequent tropical cyclones in Earth's ancient past contributed to persistent El Niño-like conditions, according to a team of climate scientists led by Yale University. Their findings, which appear in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Nature, could have implications for the planet's future as global temperatures continue to rise due to climate change.
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