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The first ozone hole above the North Pole has been aggravated by extraordinarily cold winter temperatures, say scientists. Cooling of the ozone layer enhances the effect of ozone-destroying substances such as chlorofluorocarbons - CFC. A repeated ozone hole above the Arctic is to be expected, say scientists from the KIT Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research. About a year ago, the scientists detected that ozone degradation above the Arctic for the first time reached an extent comparable to that of the ozone hole above the South Pole. At a level of around 13 miles above the ground, 80 per cent...

4 Dead, 49 Missing After Arctic Oil Rig Sinks18 December 2011 By Khristina Narizhnaya At least four people died when the floating Kolskaya oil rig overturned and sank with 67 people on board in the stormy Sea of Okhotsk as it was being towed to shore, 200 kilometers off Sakhalin Island. Fourteen people survived with minor injuries and 49 were reported missing late Sunday, the Transportation Ministry said. Four survivors were flown to the Nogliki Airport on Sakhalin Island. The Kolskaya, owned by state-owned offshore drilling company Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka, was being transported to Sakhalin after testing the Pervoocherednaya deep-sea oil well....

Russian scientists have discovered hundreds of plumes of methane gas, some 1,000 meters in diameter, bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic Shelf recedes, the unprecedented levels of gas released could greatly accelerate global climate change. Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences tells the UK's Independent that the plumes of methane, a gas 20 times as harmful as carbon dioxide, have shocked scientists who have been studying the region for decades. "Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of meters in diameter," he said. "This...

"Over 100 Beluga whales are trapped in water between ice floes in the Chukotka region of Russia's Far East..." "Their habitats are threatened by the oil industry, global warming and hunting, according to ecologists. Whales are often trapped in the Arctic ice but rarely in such numbers as in the incident off Chukotka."

Arctic sea ice extent increased rapidly through October, as is typical this time of year. Large areas of open water were still present in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas at the end of the month. The open water contributed to unusually warm conditions along the coast of Siberia and in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Overview of conditions Average ice extent for October 2011 was 7.10 million square kilometers (2.74 million square miles), 2.19 million square kilometers (846,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average. This was 330,000 square kilometers (127,000 square miles) above the average for October 2007,...

These stunning images reveal a remarkable glimpse of life at the ends of the earth. Our melting polar worlds have been captured in breathtaking pictures by the BBC for this autumn's landmark natural history series Frozen Planet. It is the last chance to see the world's greatest wildernesses before they change forever, according to narrator Sir David Attenborough. 'The pictures captured behaviour and phenomena that had never before been recorded,' said Sir David, 85. 'Those pictures will become increasingly valuable as time passes. 'For this may well prove to be our last chance to record, in their full splendour, these...

The science journal Nature is making headlines this week with news of the largest hole in the ozone layer over the North Pole in history, rivaling the size of its well known Antarctic cousin. Researchers credit this "unprecedented Arctic ozone loss" to "unusually long-lasting cold conditions" in the stratosphere at a time when their colleagues are in turmoil over melting Arctic sea ice a few miles below, supposedly caused by man-made global warming. Of course, humans are also responsible for the chilly stratosphere, they say. With sky-is-falling overtones the article's authors warn, "We cannot at present predict when such severe...

Earlier this week, the journal Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study on climate change that is at the same time scary, comforting, insightful and a statement of the obvious.To be more accurate, I should probably say that the paper is capable of being interpreted in all of those ways, rather than risk implying that the authors intended to do more than run the numbers and see what popped up. What they're talking about is climate change in Europe, specifically between 1500 and 1800 AD - a period that encompasses the so-called Little Ice Age. It...

Russia, currently vying for the title of world's top oil producer with Saudi Arabia, claimed that new findings in its offshore Arctic territories have effectively doubled the nation’s energy reserves. According to numerous Russian media reports, addressing a meeting of the sixth media forum of the United Russia Party on 25 September, Russian Natural Resources Minister Iury Trutnev said that the preliminary forecast is that resources in the Russian Arctic shelf are comparable to those in mainland Russia, adding, “Speaking of long-term planning, these reserves could last 100, may be 150 years, but longer is unlikely. Humanity will eventually have...

The sun has just set at the top of the world, and the weather in that neck of the woods is about as lousy as you would expect. the temperature dropped to 4 degrees Fahrenheit earlier this week at the world’s northernmost outpost, Alert, in Canada’s Nunavut territory. Another Arctic winter is coming. Nevertheless, the high Arctic is still the epicenter of global climate change, and the scientific and policy controversies that surround the topic. much of the region has just experienced another abnormally warm summer. Springtime snowpack was extremely low across Siberia, which set the stage for thawing breezes...

Canadian explorers have drawn a blank in the latest hunt for the remains of Captain Sir John Franklin's fatal expedition, 160 years after he took his crew of 129 men deep into the Arctic.In 1845, Capt Franklin, an officer in the British Royal Navy, took two ships and 129 men towards the Northwest Territories in an attempt to map the Northwest Passage, a route that would allow sailors to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the icy Arctic circle. Stocked with provisions that could last for seven years, and outfitted with the latest technology and experienced men, the...

The “good” news for wildlife around the Arctic Circle is that BP, renowned despoiler of the Gulf of Mexico, will not be coming. BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred as the Macondo blowout), which surged for three months, has won a place in the Guinness book of records as the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. The bad news is that U.S. oil international Exxon Mobil has sealed an Arctic oil exploration deal with Russia’s state-owned oil firm Rosneft, following an agreement signed on 29 August in the presence of Russian Prime...

Today, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced Exxon Mobil has been awarded exploration rights in the Russian Arctic superseding efforts by BP and Rosneft the Russian state owned oil company. This amazing coup gives the US based company the rights to the highly lucrative offshore fields. Russia gets Exxon Mobil’s offshore drilling expertise and a massive investment. From the NY Times: "The agreement seemed to supersede a similar but now-defunct partnership that Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, reached with BP earlier this year. The deal announced Tuesday replaces BP, the British oil giant, with its American counterpart and introduces some...

Over the past few days, Arctic sea ice extent has braked dramatically in the daily loss rate and now has made a sharp right turn, which is rather unusual. Here’s the JAXA extent: What does this mean? The short answer is, probably nothing. When we approach the minimum, and the ice pack becomes more fractured and scattered, it also becomes more susceptible to the vagaries of local and regional wind and weather. WUWT regular and contributor “Just the facts” suggested in comments that: One factor appears to be the Greenland Sea, where sea ice began to grow on July 15th...

On a small, floating piece of ice in the Beaufort Sea, several hundred miles north of Alaska, a group of scientists are documenting what some dub an "Arctic meltdown." According to climate scientists, the warming of the region is shrinking the polar ice cap at an alarming rate, reducing the permafrost layer and wreaking havoc on polar bears, arctic foxes and other indigenous wildlife in the region. What is bad for the animals, though, has been good for commerce. The recession of the sea ice and the reduction in permafrost -- combined with advances in technology -- have allowed access...

Arctic researchers have discovered a clue as to why sea ice in the North is melting so much faster than anyone thought it would. Scientists have long puzzled over why Arctic sea ice is retreating at up to three times the rate that climate models say it should. In an effort to answer that question, a group of U.K-based explorers walked more than 500 kilometres of sea ice in the High Arctic, taking temperature readings of the ocean below them. They found a layer of cold, salty water about 200 metres down that they suspect has come from the melting...

* General Staff working on plan to boost presence in Arctic * Russia set to start producing Bulava nuclear missile MOSCOW, July 1 (Reuters) - Moscow will create two brigades to protect its valuable Arctic resources, Russia's defence minister said on Friday. Moscow has walked a fine line between cooperation and aggression in the Arctic which the world's top energy producer believes could hold huge reserves of natural gas and oil. "The General Staff is currently working on plans to create two such units," Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was quoted as telling media by state-run news agency Itar-Tass. ... Prime...

DUBLIN — Environmentalists are scuttling to courts to stop a modern-day gold rush at the top of the world, as the United States and four other countries scramble to stake claims to potentially vast oil riches under the frozen waters of the Arctic Sea. Environmental activists such as Greenpeace are opposed to any resource extraction in the region. “Greenpeace has been protesting on all Arctic ice drillings since 2000,” said Truls Gulowsen, program director of Greenpeace Nordic. “We believe it’s high time to put some bars on the industry’s push into the area. It’s too vulnerable, and there is no...

STOCKHOLM (AP) -- A new assessment of climate change in the Arctic shows the ice in the region is melting faster than previously thought and sharply raises projections of global sea level rise this century. The report by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, or AMAP, compiles the latest science on how climate change has impacted the Arctic in the past six years. A summary of the key findings obtained by the AP on Tuesday shows Arctic temperatures during that period were the highest since measurements began in 1880.

LONDON — A 73-year-old grandmother who was dropped into freezing Arctic waters during botched rescue attempt has died, British media reported Saturday. Janet Richardson died Saturday at Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle, England, The Daily Mail reported. Her 78-year-old husband, George Richardson, was by her side at the time of her death. Richardson had been fighting for her life in the British hospital after rescuers dropped her into freezing Arctic waters as they attempted to transfer her from a cruise ship to a lifeboat. Richardson reportedly began to feel dizzy and ill on the Ocean Countess cruise along the coast of...

History rates as losers those leaders who fail to deal with big problems. Consider the Iranian Revolution. President Carter fretted about the turmoil as protesters took to the streets of Tehran, writing in his diary, "The situation in Iran varies from bad to terrible." Still, it was just one of many issues on his plate. In fact, Carter spent far more time on normalizing relations with China and arms talk with the Soviets. Days later, he even penned hopefully, "[Khomeini] indicated he might return to Iran and would be receptive to friendship with the U.S."

Arctic environment during an ancient bout of natural global warmingScientists are unravelling the environmental changes that took place around the Arctic during an exceptional episode of ancient global warming. Newly published results from a high-resolution study of sediments collected on Spitsbergen represent a significant contribution to this endeavour. The study was led by Dr Ian Harding and Prof John Marshall of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES), based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.Around 56 million years ago there was a period of global warming called the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), during which global sea...

<p>Some 11,500 years ago one of America's earliest families laid the remains of a 3-year-old child to rest in their home in what is now Alaska. The discovery of that burial is shedding new light on the life and times of the early settlers who crossed from Asia to the New World, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.</p>

Arctic sea ice not melting: new research By BOB WEBER-- The Canadian Press  IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) -- A Canadian scientist is pouring cold, unfrozen water on the notion that global warming is melting arctic sea ice like a Popsicle at the beach.  Greg Holloway galvanized an international meeting of arctic scientists Tuesday by saying there is little evidence of a rapid decline of the volume of ice in the northern oceans.  Despite breathless media reports and speculation of an ice-free Northwest Passage, he suggests that it's far more likely that the ice has just been moved around in the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is ill-equipped to deal with a major oil catastrophe in Alaska, the Coast Guard admiral who led the US response to the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill and others warn. Only one of the US Coast Guard's three ice breakers is operational and would be available to respond to a disaster off Alaska's northern coast, which is icebound for much of the year, retired admiral Thad Allen told reporters this week. Former Alaska lieutenant governor Fran Ulmer said that before drilling in the Arctic, the United States must "invest in the Coast Guard."...

OSLO (Reuters) – A North Atlantic current flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than for at least 2,000 years in a sign that global warming is likely to bring ice-free seas around the North Pole in summers, a study showed. Scientists said that waters at the northern end of the Gulf Stream, between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, averaged 6 degrees Celsius (42.80F) in recent summers, warmer than at natural peaks during Roman or Medieval times. "The temperature is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years," lead author Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature...

An ancient mummified forest, complete with well-preserved logs, leaves, and seedpods, has been discovered deep in the Canadian Arctic... The dry, frigid site is now surrounded by glaciers and is completely treeless, except for a few bonsai-size dwarf trees... located on Ellesmere Island, one of the world's northernmost landmasses. The rangers had come across wood scattered on the ground from much larger trees than the few dwarfs currently in the area, including logs that were several feet long... When Barker and colleagues found where the scattered logs were coming from -- a slope that had been eroded by a river...

LONDON (AFP) – Snow swept Europe on Friday causing travel chaos in the continent's north, shutting Bulgaria's major Black Sea ports and leaving Italian cities blanketed in a rare covering. Britain's national weather service, the Met Office, said if the cold snap continued it would set a new record for the month after two bitterly cold weeks in early December. With just days before Christmas, the weather conditions and plummeting temperatures caused disruption for road, rail and air travellers with huge motorway tailbacks in Germany and warnings from traffic police in some parts not to venture out except in an...

PARIS (AFP) – There is no "tipping point" beyond which climate change will inevitably push the Arctic ice cap into terminal melt off, according to a study released Wednesday. The northern polar cap has shrunk between 15 and 20 percent over the last 30 years, unleashing concern that on current trends -- with regional temperature increases twice or triple the global average -- it could disappear entirely during the summer months by century's end. One of the factors in this calculation is a so-called positive feedback, in which a reduced area of floating ice helps to stoke global warming. As...

Ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted unusually quickly this year, but did not shrink down to the record minimum area seen in 2007.That is the preliminary finding of US scientists who say the summer minimum seems to have passed and the ice has entered its winter growth phase.2010's summer Arctic ice minimum is the third smallest in the satellite era.Researchers say projections of summer ice disappearing entirely within the next few years increasingly look wrong...

For decades mystery clouded the fate of the adventurer Georgy Brusilov -- captain of the first Russian crew to seek the elusive Arctic trade route from Asia to the West -- inspiring a generation of books and films. But the famed voyagers' remains and a journal -- dated to May 1913 from aboard their vessel, the Saint Anna -- were found this summer on the icy shores of Franz Josef Land, Europe's northernmost land mass... Midway into its epic journey along the Siberian coast, after navigating the perilous Vilkitsky Strait into the Kara Sea, the expedition ran aground on thick...

The Canadian government on Monday announced that it had failed, in a small Arctic expedition it mounted last week, to find the remains of two British ships that disappeared more than 150 years ago seeking the fabled Northwest Passage. The trip had more than historical relevance: It marked the latest move in a bigger geopolitical game—Canada's ambition to burnish its position as an Arctic power. As the globe logs an unusually hot summer, Canada is boosting its presence in the warming and increasingly accessible Arctic. Driven by the promise of rich resources and a desire to control its northern waterways,...

Sometime earlier this month, a Bermuda-sized ice island broke free from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf along the northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island. The breakup on this ice shelf continued a years-long pattern of retreat on the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, and a decades-long pattern of retreat of the ice shelves along the Ellesmere coast in the high Arctic. NASA's Aqua satellite detected fractures on the shelf on Aug. 18. Compared to images of the ice shelf from eight years earlier, the fractures show the dramatic change to the coast. The fractures on the shelf in 2010 are immediately...

A giant sheet of ice measuring 260 sq km (100 sq miles) has broken off a glacier in Greenland, according to researchers at a US university. The block of ice separated from the Petermann Glacier, on the north-west coast of Greenland. It is the largest Arctic iceberg to calve since 1962, said Prof Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware. The ice could become frozen in place over winter or escape into the waters between Greenland and Canada. If the iceberg moves south, it could interfere with shipping, Prof Muenchow said. Cracks in the Petermann Glacier had been observed last...

NASA's Earth Observatory put up this remarkably low-cloud view of the Arctic. The linked article has a smaller size labeled image. (Click for full-size, 10x bigger)

Christopher Bowen is making a 4,000-mile beer run. This July the 43-year-old financial planner will ride a BMW motorcycle from his house in Bethlehem, Pa. up to the Hudson Bay in the Canadian Arctic. Once there, he'll set up camp and brew 100 gallons of beer using a 158-year-old recipe. No, this wasn't a plan dreamed up after a few too many cold ones. In 2007 Bowen watched a sealed 1852 bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale sell for $500,000 on Ebay. The final bid turned out to be bogus (Bowen thinks the bottle was worth $300,000), but the auction inspired...

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In Norway's far north, amid a harsh landscape and unforgiving climate, Lund & Slaatto's convent for nuns of the reclusive Carmelite order embodies a pragmatic yet poetic sensibility.Carmelite nuns belong to one of the most introverted and reclusive monastic orders within the Catholic Church. Communication with the outside world is strictly limited and daily life is ordered by sustained periods of contemplation and meditation. The sisters own nothing and are totally self-sufficient. The new Carmelite convent in Tromse, far above the Arctic Circle, has the distinction of being the world's most northerly outpost of the order. Designed by Lund...

The extent of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean grew until the last day of March, the latest the annual melting season has begun in 31 years of satellite records, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said. Cold weather and winds from the north over the Bering Sea and Barents Sea meant that the area of ocean covered by ice expanded through last month, the Boulder, Colorado-based center said today in a statement on its Web site. That’s two days later than in 1999, the previous latest start to a melting season since satellite monitoring began in 1979....

See graph at link. Arctic sea ice (for date 4/6/2010) highest since 2003.

The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic dramatically increased last month, reaching levels not seen at this time of year for nearly a decade. The scientists who released the data stressed that last month's rise was part of yearly variations in ice cover and could not be taken as a sign that global warming is coming to an end. But sceptics argued that the findings undermined 'alarmist' claims that the North Pole could be free of summer ice by 2013. -snip- The best measure of the health of the Arctic was not only the amount of cover, but also...

On the same day that Time magazine published a scare piece about the melting Arctic seas, a British paper reported recent findings that ice levels have dramatically increased to levels not seen in almost a decade.

Area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

Barring an about face by nature or adjustments, it appears that for the first time since 2001, Arctic Sea ice will hit the “normal” line as defined by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) for this time of year. NSIDC puts out an article about once a month called the Sea Ice News. It generally highlights any bad news they can find about the disappearance of Arctic ice. Last month’s news led with this sentence. In February, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track below the average, and near the levels observed for February 2007. But March brought...

The latest nail in the global warming coffin!Remember all that alarmist nonsense about the Arctic melting with the consequences of the Polar Bears dying and the planet flooding? The alarmists pointed to thinning Arctic ice as proof the planet was warming and that we must listen to their dire predictions and raise the cost of everyone's energy (as if that would do anything to slow warming). Well, don't worry. Looks like Mother Nature has stepped in once again and put things right. The latest chart from the National Snow and Ice Data Center makes it clear: Steven Goddard and Anthony...

Global warmists continue to circulate alarming warnings that the past winter was among the warmest on record. See, for example, Andrew Freeman's March 15 article in the Washington Post entitled " D.C.'s winter was cold, but the globe stayed toasty". Somehow the Arctic Ocean did not get the memo. See here for an update on the rapidly growing extent of the polar ice cap throughout March 2010. Remember, ice-water is used to calibrate thermometers (zero Celsius). Polar ice therefore a much more reliable, widespread indicator of global temperature than the geographically-limited, fallible, error-prone network--array of thermometers employed by the "Climate...

Sea-ice grows and retreats each winter.  Satellite images have record the extent of artic sea-ice coverage on a daily basis since 1979.  The trend in March 2010 shown here is well above the lowest coverage recorded in 2006-2007.  This should be encouraging news for all those alarmed that the ice-caps might be melting.

This daily chart illustrates that the Arctic Ice Cap continues to expand its coverage and is now within less than 2 standard deviations from the 1979-2000 average. Global Warming Hoax, its over http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future. Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago). This period is characterized by warm temperatures similar to those projected for the end of this century, and is used as an analog to understand future conditions. The U.S. Geological Survey found that summer sea-surface temperatures in the Arctic were between 10 to 18°C (50 to 64°F) during the mid-Pliocene, while current...

In the black depths of the frigid Arctic Ocean, scientists on a 2005 expedition found a splash of color: The brilliant, blood-red Crossota norvegica jellyfish (pictured). The creature was spotted by a remotely operated vehicle 8,530 feet (2,600 meters) underwater during a two-month National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expedition to the Canada Basin, the deepest and least explored part of the Arctic waters. Though C. norvegica is not a new species, several new deep-sea animals were discovered during the expedition--some of which were announced in recent research papers in 2009.