Why Arctic Icebergs are Heading South Earlier Than Usual. For over a decade, Tim Papakyriakou has been participating in studies of the marine ecosystem in the Canadian coastal Arctic. This year, Papakyriakou and his colleagues were set to undertake a survey of Hudson Bay as part of an effort to investigate the effect of hydroelectricity generation-related river management. "We wanted to see how the Bay [ecosystem] looks, and then use the data to look forward, using models, at how climate change and regulation are going to be impacting [it]," explains Papakyriakou director of the Centre for Earth Observation Sciences and an associate professor at the University of Manitoba. The BaySys project team of 40 scientists from five universities left Quebec City on the CCGS Amundsen at the end of May. Maclean's

 

What it's Like in the Cold, Dark, Isolated Coal Mines of the Arctic. Svalbard is a cold, dark and isolated island in the Arctic Ocean, situated midway between continental Norway and the North Pole. Norway and Russia are the only two nations with settlements there. Large-scale coal mining established communities in Svalbard during the 1920s, and its remains the main industry to this day. The mines on the Svalbard archipelago are the northernmost in the world. Its location means that the mine's operators have to deal with some unusual weather conditions; the summer months bring 24-hour daylight, while the winter months are in total darkness and temperatures can plummet below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The Washington Post

 

Rapid Thawing of the Arctic Subsea Permafrost Could Heighten Global Warming. A new study reveals that the East Siberian Arctic Sea is thawing rapidly than previously thought. It thaws at a rate of 14 cm each year, which is much faster for permafrost on land. The study was printed in the journal Nature Communications. It was led by researchers from Stockholm University. The study suggests that the thawing of permafrost in the Arctic subsea could lead to the increased global warming as there will be an increase of discharge of methane. Orjan Gustafsson, the Professor of Biogeochemistry at the Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry (ACES) and the Bolin Center for Climate Research and co-author of the study, said that the area that is thawing is about four Baltic Seas. He described it as enormous. Science World Report

 

Arctic Ice is Having Breakdown. The science is pretty clear about ice's increasingly rapid decline in the Arctic - temperatures there are soaring. But at the same time sea ice in the Antarctic has been growing, at least until late last year, when it broke down relatively overnight. Specifically, roughly 30,000 square miles of Antarctic ice melted every day during the last quarter of 2016. Nothing like this in the historical record has been seen before, although it should be noted that that time frame only extends back to the dawn of the satellite era in the late 1970s. A new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters purports to have found a reason for last year's unprecedented ice loss in the Antarctic - a series of massive storms that tore up the relatively thin ice. Researchers are reluctant to tie the storms to climate change.  The Daily Herald

 

Lightning-Caused Fires Rise in Arctic as the Region Warms. Climate change is driving up the number of forest fires ignited by lightning, and it's pushing them farther north, to the edges of the Arctic tundra, researchers say.

Lightning-caused fires have risen 2 to 5 percent a year for the last four decades, according to a paper published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change. And as thunderstorms intensify and become more frequent, fires are increasingly occurring in the boreal forests, and even on the permafrost tundra. Warmer temperatures encourage more thunderstorms, which in turn bring more lightning and greater fire risk. The changes are part of a complex climate feedback loop that is only now becoming more clear to scientists, said Sander Veraverbeke of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the study's lead author. Scientific American

	Sen. Dan Sullivan