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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category polar.
  • Sharon Guynup, Mongabay

    2022: Another consequential year for the melting Arctic

    ›
    September 27, 2022  //  By Wilson Center Staff
    BANNER-IMAGE-SHARON-GUYNUP-1200x727This article, by Sharon Guynup, originally appeared on Mongabay.

    In August, I traveled aboard the icebreaker Kinfish to the Svalbard archipelago, north of the Arctic Circle. Invited to the bridge as we cruised fjords near the 80th parallel, I was transfixed by towering blue glacier walls, but was confused by the map displayed on one of the ship’s screens. It showed our vessel sailing across a non-navigable frozen sheet.

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  • More EU in the Arctic and More Arctic in the EU?

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  Navigating the Poles  //  February 7, 2022  //  By Romain Chuffart & Andreas Raspotnik
    Press,Conference,By,European,Commissioner,Virginijus,Sinkevicius,On,The,New

    The Arctic is ground zero for climate change. Warming in the region is occurring at three times the rate of the global average and September Arctic sea-ice is now declining at a rate of 13 percent per decade. However, the reverse is also true. The complex changes taking place in the Arctic are having profound effects on the rest of the world, and major economies are taking note. 

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  • Tip of the Iceberg: Polar Ice Loss Effects the Planet

    ›
    Navigating the Poles  //  February 2, 2021  //  By Olivia Popp & Michaela Stith
    Climate,Change,-,Antarctic,Melting,Glacier,In,A,Global,Warming

    When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, Americans considered the “frozen wasteland” to be a reckless, wasteful acquisition. What could ice possibly offer? 

    In fact, polar ice is a critical resource for the Earth. The summer and fall of 2020 marked the lowest sea ice extent ever recorded in the Arctic Ocean, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says contemporary September sea ice extents are so low that they are unprecedented in at least 1,000 years. Moreover, collapses in the ice shelves of West Antarctica, Canada, and Greenland raised concerns in 2020. The immediate effects of climate change in the polar regions are merely the tip of the iceberg—ultimately, they have profound effects on climate and communities around the world.

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  • How U.S. Arctic Policy and Posture Could Change Under President-elect Biden

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    From the Wilson Center  //  Navigating the Poles  //  December 15, 2020  //  By Olivia Popp
    shutterstock_1153631344

    Truth, trust, and transparency are key aspects to sound and sustainable governance of the Arctic, said Ulf Sverdrup, Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He was one of a panel of experts who spoke on Nov. 30 at “The Arctic in a Post-Election World,” the first event in a two-part series sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute.

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  • Largest Polar Expedition Ever Seeks to Explain Shrinking Arctic Sea Ice

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    Navigating the Poles  //  On the Beat  //  November 17, 2020  //  By Michaela Stith & Olivia Popp

    Matthew Shupe drives a snowmobile over a bridge towards MET City.

    “If you’re a sea ice person, MOSAiC is the kind of experiment that you just live for,” said Don Perovich, a Dartmouth College researcher with the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. “It’s the kind of experiment you dream about. It’s an opportunity to spend a whole year on the ice, just watching how a floe evolves over time.” He spoke at a recent event sponsored by IARPC Collaborations, an Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) member space where scientists and others involved in Arctic research share knowledge and resources. The researchers on the expedition, said Perovich, aimed to collect data that would shed light on the causes and consequences of the evolving and diminished Arctic sea ice cover. MOSAiC’s mission was to facilitate a breakthrough in understanding the Arctic climate system and improve the world’s climate and weather forecasting models.

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  • Sharon Guynup, Mongabay

    Brave New Arctic: Sea ice has yet to form off of Siberia, worrying scientists

    ›
    Navigating the Poles  //  November 4, 2020  //  By Wilson Center Staff
    shutterstock_497256760

    The original version of this article, by Sharon Guynup, appeared on Mongabay.

    At this time of year, in Russia’s far north Laptev Sea, the sun hovers near the horizon during the day, generating little warmth, as the region heads towards months of polar night. By late September or early October, the sea’s shallow waters should be a vast, frozen expanse.

    But not this year. For the first time since records have been kept, open water still laps this coastline in late October though snow is already falling there.

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  • Cruising the “7Cs” of the Arctic: A Wilson Center NOW Interview with Mike Sfraga

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    From the Wilson Center  //  May 14, 2020  //  By Bethany Johnson
    24407631587_9aece455bb_o

    Former Vice President Biden’s recent Foreign Affairs article on his proposed presidential policies hit on all major hot spots of U.S. interest globally but one, said Mike Sfraga, director of the Wilson Center’s Global Risk and Resilience Program and Polar Institute, in a recent episode of Wilson Center NOW.

    “The Arctic should be a part of the foreign policy dynamic of the United States,” said Sfraga. Global politics, economics, security, and the environment connect in countless ways throughout the region, only some of which show up in headlines.

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  • Permafrost Melt, Rising Seas, and Coastal Erosion Threaten Arctic Communities

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    November 5, 2019  //  By Shawn Archbold
    Christmas_came_early_for_one_Alaska_village_151016-Z-MW427-552

    “In 1959, he knew it was coming,” said Delbert Pungowiyi, a Yupik native of Savoonga, Alaska, on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea in an interview at the Wilson Center’s 8th Syymposium on the Impacts of an Ice-Diminishing Arctic on Naval and Maritime Operations. “He prepared me my whole life for this. It is a crisis.”

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