Free Republic

Spinning a "mucus net" off its paddle-like foot-wings to trap algae and other foods, the swimming snail species Limacina helicinia is no bigger than a bean. But the discovery that it and at least 234 other species inhabit both Arctic and Antarctic waters is big news to biologists.

It may be freezing here but it's too warm for some polar bears: Amazing pictures of the world's most endangered creatures By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE 07th February 2009 A formidable hunter and powerful swimmer, the polar bear is perfectly adapted to the harsh demands of the wild Arctic landscape. And these extraordinary pictures give a more intimate portrait of its life than ever before. Whether diving under water, rolling in the ice alongside a cub or moving in for a breathtaking close-up, these images capture its raw beauty and amazing grace.

The last place scientists expected to find the fossil of a freshwater, tropical turtle was in the Arctic. But they did. The discovery, detailed today in the journal Geology, suggests animals migrated from Asia to North America not around Alaska, as once thought, but directly across a freshwater sea floating atop the warm, salty Arctic Ocean. It also provides additional evidence that a rapid influx of carbon dioxide some 90 million years ago was the likely cause of a super-greenhouse effect that created extraordinary heat in the polar region. "We've known there's been an interchange of animals between Asia and...

-43 Degree Temps Recorded In North Dakota Much of the country is in winter's icy grip and forecasters said it won't be letting go anytime soon. In Pollock, S.D., temperatures fell to a record-setting 47 below zero Thursday. Todd Moser works at a gas station where he said it took about 10 minutes to get the pumps working. Record to near record lows were set all over the Midwest, including Aberdeen, S.D., at -42 degrees; Dubuque, Iowa, at -26 degrees; Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at -29 degrees. The -29 degrees at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the coldest temperature ever recorded there...

In one of its last official acts, the Bush administration released a comprehensive policy Monday for the Arctic regions, addressing the growing number of boundary, resource development and shipping disputes in the fast-changing waters north of Alaska's coast. The Bush presidential directive takes no startling new policy turns, but it does emphasize the outgoing president's support for Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty, an international agreement blocked by some conservative Republicans. The directive asserts that the Northwest Passage through Canada is an international shipping route and calls for building up the U.S. presence in the region to...

Over ten days ago, Meteorologist Kevin Martin from OWSweather.com predicted a rare arctic storm to the Western United States, including the Southwestern states. Well, that time has come and Martin's prediction was correct. Kevin Martin predicted back on December 7, 2008 that a rare near historical arctic blast would hit Southern California and the Southwestern states. On December 17, 2008 this blast hit within the 13th-20th window, proving that Martin correctly predicted this arctic blast. Three to Six inches of snow fell in Vegas, with nine reported in higher elevations surrounding the strip. It was a winter wonderland. Snow shut...

Russia's Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of gas export monopoly Gazprom, is considering attracting foreign partners to develop a major Arctic oil deposit, a Gazprom Neft official said on Tuesday. Gazprom Neft Deputy General Director Boris Zilbermints told a conference that foreign companies may be considered as partners in developing the Prirazlomnoye field in the Barents Sea. "We will consider the possibility of attracting foreign partners," he said. Gazprom, whose wholly controlled subsidiary, Sevmorneftegaz, owns the license for Prirazlomnoye, has initially said it could develop the field jointly with foreign partners, but then said it would do it alone. The...

The World Wildlife Fund, responding to a recent European Commission policy paper on the Arctic, has called for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and development in the region until the capability has been developed for handling spillage. "Many arctic species are already under stress from human activities and climate change," said Neil Hamilton, director of WWF International's Arctic program. "There is a strong need for avoiding additional pressures on the environment caused by unsustainable exploitative activities." WWF said the Arctic is on the threshold of historically unprecedented, potentially dangerous ecological change which will have global repercussions. "The most...

After looking for possible oil and gas supplies in Central Asia and Africa to increase its energy security, the European Union is widening its interest towards the Arctic. "The E.U. has to state its position concerning a unique region of strategic importance which is located in its immediate vicinity," the European Commission said in a statement Thursday. The race to establish rights over the Arctic resources has recently heated up. Russia has increased its presence in the region and a Russian submarine planted the country's flag on the seabed under the North Pole last year. Up to 25% of undiscovered...

Barents Observer and Russian news agency Tass have both reported that Alexei Miller, chairman of Russian energy giant Gazprom, said in a Russian television interview that his company has been invited to explore for oil and gas in several blocks on the Alaska outer continental shelf, including blocks in the Chukchi Sea. Mr. Miller said that a new round of talks with U.S. authorities is to be held, after which it is to be decided which blocks to be offered to the company," Barents Observer said Oct. 22. Miller was one of the members of a Gazprom delegation that visited...

WASHINGTON – Carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas that worries climate scientists. Airborne levels of two other potent gases — one from ancient plants, the other from flat-panel screen technology — are on the rise, too. And that's got scientists concerned about accelerated global warming. The gases are methane and nitrogen trifluoride. Both pale in comparison to the global warming effects of carbon dioxide, produced by the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. In the past couple of years, however, these other two gases have been on the rise, according to two new studies. The increase is...

WASHINGTON – Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported Thursday. "Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter" to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card. The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at a variety of conditions in the Arctic. The region has long been expected to...

(CNN) -- Summer is over in the northern hemisphere, but it's been another chilling season for researchers who study Arctic sea ice. "It's definitely a bad report. We did pick up little bit from last year, but this is over 30 percent below what used to be normal," said Walt Meier, a research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. This past summer, the Arctic sea ice dwindled to its second lowest level. Arctic sea ice is usually one to three meters, or as much as 9 feet thick. It grows during autumn and winter...

OTTAWA: Canada is stepping up its military alertness along its northern frontier in response to Russia’s “testing” of its boundaries and recent Arctic grab, the prime minister said yesterday. “We are concerned about not just Russia’s claims through the international process, but Russia’s testing of Canadian airspace and other indications ... (of) some desire to work outside of the international framework,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “That is obviously why we are taking a range of measures, including military measures, to strengthen our sovereignty in the North,” he said, highlighting a new sensor net, navy patrols and a military training...

The European Union has declared it does not oppose drilling for oil and gas at the North Pole. But officials have said techniques will have to be developed to make drilling safe for the local environment, which has been named by conservation groups as being highly fragile. Nature organisations, like the World Wide Fund for Nature, prefer alternative energy sources to be used. The Artic is rich in valuable raw materials and Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States want to secure their share of the region. In May next year, they will be able to submit an ownership...

WASHINGTON - Crucial Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level on record, continuing an alarming trend, scientists said Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT The ice covered 1.74 million square miles on Friday, marking a low point for this summer, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Last summer, the sea ice covered only 1.59 million square miles, the lowest since record-keeping began in 1979. Arctic sea ice, which floats on the ocean, expands in winter and retreats in summer. In recent years it hasn't been as thick in winter. Sea ice is...

Ever since Russia planted a flag under the North Pole last year, the issue of sovereign rights under an increasingly slushy arctic has tensed. In a race to claim ownership of some of the arctic seabed, a two-ship caravan of Canadian and U.S. scientists is sailing around the Arctic Ocean right now. Their mission, which will last from September 6th to October 1st, is to measure the seabed and the continental margins in an attempt to solidify our possible rights over the far north—an area that will become accessible to oil drilling and mining as the earth warms and arctic...

<p>RUSSIA must stake its claim to a slice of the Arctic's vast resources, the secretary of Russia's Security Council said at an unprecedented session of the council held on a desolate Arctic island. Russia, the world's second biggest oil exporter, is in a race with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States for control of the oil, gas and precious metals that would become more accessible if global warming shrinks the Arctic ice cap.</p>

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2008 – The Coast Guard is testing and compiling initial lessons learned from its ongoing Arctic operations, a senior officer said last week. “It became obvious to me 18 months to two years ago that with the retreat of the multiyear polar sea ice, the Coast Guard was going to have to do more than it had in the past to provide maritime safety and security to northern and western Alaska, the Arctic Ocean and the Beaufort Sea,” Coast Guard Rear Adm. Arthur E. Brooks, commander of the 17th Coast Guard District, told bloggers and online journalists...

Unexpected partnerships are forming among nations vying to extend their Arctic undersea territories as they join to counter Russia's aggressive Arctic claims. A United States coastguard icebreaker left port in Alaska last week to join a Canadian icebreaker to conduct a seismic survey of the Beaufort seabed north of the Yukon-Alaska border. Both countries are gathering research to support their claim to Arctic territories that may hold vast natural resources and potential new shipping routes. Canada and the US say a past land dispute over 12,000 sq km of seabed elsewhere in the Beaufort Sea is being put aside in...

With its bust of Lenin stood next to crumbling block of flats, and its morose coal miners drinking vodka at lunchtime, Barentsburg looks like any forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. It is in fact stuck on the frozen Norwegian island of Spitsbergen just 600 miles from the North Pole, a territory granted to Moscow under an obscure 1925 treaty and since then a base for homesick coal miners. Four hundred families still shiver through the island's five-month Arctic winters in total darkness, eking out a meagre living by working for a state-owned mining company. But now their luck...

OTTAWA - The Canadian government confirmed Friday it will embark on the most extensive search ever for the fabled British shipwrecks Erebus and Terror, with Environment Minister John Baird saying the hunt led by Parks Canada scientists will boost "our case for sovereignty" in Arctic waters. .... The six-week search - the first season in what could be a three-year project headed by Parks Canada’s senior underwater archeologist Robert Grenier and Inuit historian Louie Kamoukak - is set to get under way within days aboard a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker. Both of the expedition leaders attended a news conference Friday...

Ice at the North Pole melted at an unprecedented rate last week, with leading scientists warning that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer by 2013. Satellite images show that ice caps started to disintegrate dramatically several days ago as storms over Alaska's Beaufort Sea began sucking streams of warm air into the Arctic. As a result, scientists say that the disappearance of sea ice at the North Pole could exceed last year's record loss. More than a million square kilometres melted over the summer of 2007 as global warming tightened its grip on the Arctic. But such destruction could...

There's something rotten north of Denmark Just a few weeks ago, predictions of Arctic ice collapse were buzzing all over the internet. Some scientists were predicting that the "North Pole may be ice-free for first time this summer". Others predicted that the entire "polar ice cap would disappear this summer". The Arctic melt season is nearly done for this year. The sun is now very low above the horizon and will set for the winter at the North Pole in five weeks. And none of these dire predictions have come to pass. Yet there is, however, something odd going on...

5.6, 5.4, 4.5, 4.5, 4.4, and a 4.9 in the last 2 day at the same spot http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/10/100_85.php And then a 4.6 in another spot http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/ortho/270_90.php

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/ortho/270_90.php

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. Coast Guard cutter will embark on an Arctic voyage this week to determine the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska and map the ocean floor, data that could be used for oil and natural gas exploration. U.S. and University of New Hampshire scientists on the Coast Guard Cutter Healy will leave Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday on a three-week journey. They will create a three-dimensional map of the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland.

The Canadian military is sending a long-range Aurora aircraft to investigate reports of a mysterious explosion along Canada's Northwest Passage that may have killed several whales. The drama apparently began in the early-morning hours of July 31, when an Inuit hunting party at an outpost camp at Borden Peninsula on northeastern Baffin Island was alerted to the sound of an explosion, followed by a cloud of black smoke. An Inuit member of the Canadian Rangers, a military reservist unit stationed in the far North, reported the incident, and said a hunter at the camp saw several dead whales on shore...

An armed conflict in the Arctic area is not far away unless USA leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution. Washington has forfeited its ability to assert sovereignty in the Arctic by allowing its icebreaker fleet to atrophy, says former U. S. Coast Guard officer Thanks to global warming, the Arctic icecap is rapidly melting, opening up access to massive natural resources and creating shipping shortcuts that could save billions of dollars a year. But there are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region. Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the...

“The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years.” One would have thought Joe Carroll’s Bloomberg News report would have evoked some interest by the public and other media outlets. Instead, news of the U.S. Geological Survey was greeted mostly by a giant collective yawn. “One third of the undiscovered oil is in Alaskan territory, the agency found…” Considering that the Democrat-controlled Congress adamantly refuses to let drilling occur for the oil known to exist in and off-shore Alaska,...

Aug. 4, 2008 -- Jets of searingly hot water spewing up from the ocean floor have been discovered in a far-northern zone of the Arctic Ocean, Swiss-based scientists announced Monday. The so-called "black smokers" were found 73 degrees north, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway, in the coldest waters yet for a phenomenon first observed around the Galagapos islands in 1977.The earth's plumbing system of hydrothermal vents contain their own, unique ecosystems given the absence of sunlight at depths, in this case, of 7,874 feet, with vinegar-like water attaining temperatures of up to 752 degrees Fahrenheit.A team from...

“The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan, and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years.” One would have thought Joe Carroll’s Bloomberg News report would have evoked some interest by the public and other media outlets. Instead, news of the U.S. Geological Survey was greeted mostly by a giant collective yawn. “One third of the undiscovered oil is in Alaskan territory, the agency found…” Considering that the Democrat-controlled Congress adamantly refuses to let drilling occur for the oil known to exist in and off-shore Alaska,...

Huge chunk snaps off storied Arctic ice shelfBreak marks latest in erosion that has whittled 9,000 square kilometres down to 1,000 over past century JESSICA LEEDER From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 29, 2008 at 3:39 AM EDT A four-square-kilometre chunk has broken off Ward Hunt Ice Shelf - the largest remaining ice shelf in the Arctic - threatening the future of the giant frozen mass that northern explorers have used for years as the starting point for their treks. Scientists say the break, the largest on record since 2005, is the latest indication that climate change is forcing the...

The area north of the Arctic Circle has an estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, the U.S. Geological Survey announced Wednesday. The USGS said technically recoverable resources are those produced using currently available industry practices and technology. The Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas, the USGS reported.

In 1999, seismographs detected a swarm of earthquakes at a spot on the Gakkel ridge, a midocean ridge that traverses the Arctic. A few expeditions to the area, north of Siberia about 350 miles from the pole, produced indirect evidence of explosive eruptions deep on the seafloor. Explosive volcanism at such depths would be very unusual, said Robert A. Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “People had been afraid to even suggest it, because it seemed so ludicrous.” Seafloor volcanoes do erupt violently, but in relatively shallow water. The Gakkel ridge spot is 13,000 feet down, and...

NEWS    It's a 26ft Jaws and it sucks... Big sucker ... the shark   By VIRGINIA WHEELER Published: Today   A MASSIVE Arctic shark that sucks up seals whole and may live for 200 years is being studied by boffins for the first time. The mysterious Greenland shark’s mouth with hundreds of teeth is UNDER its body — so it cruises along the ocean bed scooping up prey. Baffled boffins say whole reindeer and polar bear heads have also been found in stomachs of the deep-sea monsters, which can be 26ft long. They are cannibalistic but their flesh...

<p>The Arctic holds 100 billion barrels of oil in unexplored fields, a government geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey said Monday at an international oil industry gathering in Spain.</p> <p>"The Arctic is almost completely unexplored," said Donald Gautier at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid. "There are 100 billion barrels of oil to be found in the Arctic."</p>

Climate Change: While the media scream that man-made global warming is making the North Pole ice-free, another possible cause is as old as the Earth itself. They just have to look deeper.To the delight of Al Gore and the rest of the Gaia groupies, scientists at the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Colorado are predicting that the North Pole will be completely free of ice this summer. The apocalyptic headlines already are starting to appear. "From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important," says the...

Over the past few days, a plethora of articles have been published saying that Arctic ice is melting at a faster rate than last year, which was a recent historical record, and the North Pole will soon be ice free. The graphic below and link to this thread show the opposite: Compare (Arctic) Daily Sea IceAssociated web page:The Cryosphere Today As for the North Pole being ice free, there are openings in the sea ice that don't mean the entire surrounding area is free of ice:The Top of the World: Is the North Pole Turning to Water?

(CNN) -- The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. It's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen last autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said. Serreze said it's "just another indicator of the disappearing Arctic sea ice cover" but that it is happening so soon is "just astounding to me." "Five years ago, to think that we'd even be talking about the possibility of the North...

Study finds Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes The Arctic seabed is as explosive geologically as it is politically judging by the "fountains" of gas and molten lava that have been blasting out of underwater volcanoes near the North Pole. "Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to an international team that sent unmanned probes to the strange fiery world beneath the Arctic ice. They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the...

PARIS (AFP) - Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday. The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia. Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms. But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of...

Russia plans Arctic training exercises Link only

Are the ices of the Arctic north about to melt away for good? Rami Abdelrahman gets the views of a range of Swedish researchers. Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria is one of a number of Scandinavian royals making for the Arctic archipelago on the Swedish ice-breaker Oden this weekend to participate in an event to coincide with and promote International Polar Year. But will there even be a need for such ice-breaking vessels in years to come? Many commentators would have us believe that glaciers and ocean ice are about to go the way of the dodo. Upon their arrival at...

Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to...

Russia plans Arctic military build-up By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow Last Updated: 10:49PM BST 11/06/2008Russia has raised the stakes in the international scramble for the Arctic by announcing it will boost its military presence in the region to protect its "national interests". The defence ministry said naval vessels would be sent to the Arctic Ocean, which is believed to be home to 25 percent of the world's untapped energy resources, as part of a Summer training zone. Gen Vladimir Shamanov, the head of the combat training directorate, stated that Russia had "highly trained military units" prepared for Arctic warfare. He...

Michael Byers, professor of global politics and international law at the University of British Columbia, said Ottawa should pay closer attention to co-operation with its Arctic neighbours and not engage in "conflict and heated rhetoric." Byers said Canada cannot back up strong words with the hardware needed to assert sovereignty in the North. Byers and other critics say Canada's surveillance and control of the North falls short, even with Ottawa's recent plans for a bigger military presence. Norway, the United States, Denmark and Russia also have claims in the vast region. Denmark is gathering scientific evidence to show that the...

e battle for "ownership" of the polar oil reserves has accelerated with the disclosure that Russia has sent a fleet of nuclear-powered ice breakers into the Arctic. It has reinforced fears that Moscow intends to annex "unlawfully" a vast portion of the ice-covered Arctic, beneath which scientists believe up to 10 billion tons of gas and oil could be buried. Russian ambition for control of the Arctic has provoked Canada to double to $40 million (£20.5 million) funding for work to map the Arctic seabed in support its claim over the territory. The Russian ice breakers patrol huge areas of...

Thursday is the deadline set by a federal judge in Alaska for the Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether the polar bear is a threatened or endangered species. All the evidence shows the polar bear doesn’t need his help. Environmental groups petitioned for such a listing and sued when a decision was not forthcoming by the deadline. They claimed that global warming had already diminished polar ice, would continue to do so and doom the estimated 23,000 or so bears to extinction by perhaps 2050. If the bears were listed, the service would be obliged to designate “critical habitat.”...

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea are starving as they struggle to adapt to a warming Arctic climate, according to the latest research by a Canadian polar bear expert. Changing spring sea ice is making it more difficult for the bears to hunt their primary prey, the ringed seal, said Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service. Residents and RCMP in Deline, N.W.T., described the three polar bears that wandered into their community April 2 as being thin and hungry. (Photo courtesy Les Baton) In an article published in the March issue of Arctic, the journal of the Arctic...