Øystein Varpe
Geir W. Gabrielsen
Published: Nov. 9, 2022
Seabirds in cold biomes sometimes aggregate near glacier fronts and at sea-ice edges to forage. In this note, we report on large aggregations of black guillemots (Cepphus grylle) at the edge of sea ice in front of the tidewater glacier Kongsbreen (Kongsfjorden, Svalbard). During several days in the second half of June 2011, we observed 49–155 individuals of black guillemots at this ice edge. They foraged actively, and many of the dives were directed underneath the sea ice. The outflow of glacial meltwater and resulting upwelling generated opportunities for the black guillemots to feed, likely on zooplankton or fish. The …
Chuan Chen
Published: March 17, 2022
With China becoming more active in Greenland, worries abound that China might have hidden intentions. Despite that, the Greenlandic government is showing an increasing interest in deepening its cooperation with China. This article explores Greenland’s motivation behind its positive attitude towards China and examines whether China will be a threat to Greenland’s independence. For Greenland, China is both a deep-pocketed investor and a huge consumer market, especially in the mining, fishing and tourism industries. Greenland, therefore, views China as an important partner in its economic development, which is necessary for its independence from Denmark. Considering China’s relationship with Denmark, its …
Alvaro Soutullo
Ana Laura Machado-Gaye
Eduardo Juri
Published: June 20, 2022
For more than 20 years Antarctic Treaty Parties have been discussing how to appropriately manage cumulative impacts in the continent. Preventing cumulative impacts requires the fluent exchange of information to enable proper and timely assessment of, and response to, the impacts that result from multiple activities, undertaken by multiple stakeholders and supervised by different Parties. This is a particular challenge for the effective management of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs), as a lack of coordination may potentially put at risk the fulfillment of their conservation objectives. Here we suggest that incorporating lessons learnt from protected areas management elsewhere might improve …
Anna M. Gielas
Published: Sept. 12, 2022
Journals dedicated to the polar sciences have been outliers. Within both the history of science and the history of media, they stand out in several ways, including their comparatively late establishment of peer-review. It was not until the second half of the 20th century, that polar sciences journals began to carry predominantly peer-reviewed original research rather than synopses of research published elsewhere. This Perspective piece uses the 40th anniversary of Polar Research as an opportunity to look at the past of polar sciences periodicals—and invites reflection on their future.
C. Leah Devlin
Published: Dec. 14, 2022
Alfred Edwin Eaton (1844–1929) was amongst numerous Victorian naturalists whose exotic collections disseminated to the natural history museums of Britain laid the groundwork for our understanding of biodiversity. What sets him apart from his contemporaries was his first-hand knowledge of organisms at the polar extremes. This paper describes Eaton’s contributions to polar biology, especially in the field of entomology, from two high-latitude expeditions: the 1873 Benjamin Leigh Smith Expedition to Svalbard in the European Arctic and the 1874 British Transit of Venus Expedition to Kerguelen Island in the southern Indian Ocean. His observations of flightless polar and subpolar insects, in …
Olof Bengtsson
Kit M. Kovacs
Christian Lydersen
Published: Jan. 1, 2022
This study uses cetacean sighting data, acquired via a citizen science programme, to update distributions and spatial trends of whales and dolphins in waters around the Svalbard Archipelago during the period 2005–2019. Distributions, based on kernel density estimates, from an early period (2005–2009) and a recent period (2015–19) were compared to identify potential shifts in distribution in this area, which is experiencing rapid warming and concomitant sea-ice losses. Among the three Arctic endemic cetaceans, white whales (Delphinapterus leucas, also known as beluga) had a stable, coastal distribution throughout the study, whereas narwhals (Monodon monoceros) and bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) were …
Coralie Gautier
Alexandre Langlois
Vincent Sasseville
Erin Neave
Cheryl Ann Johnson
Published: Jan. 1, 2022
Accelerated warming of the Arctic has reduced sea ice and has increased the occurrence of winter extreme events like rain-on-snow and storms that impact snow-cover densification, affecting Peary caribou (Rangifer tarandus pearyi) seasonal movements and grazing conditions. We used caribou movements between Banks, Melville and Victoria islands and mainland Canada, documented from Indigenous Knowledge, to assess whether spatiotemporal trends in sea-ice anomalies (1983–2019) can be used as an indicator of caribou movement. We used the SNOWPACK model to evaluate how foraging conditions (as indexed by simulated snow properties) contribute to the prediction of caribou presence. Our results suggest that changes …
Shengni Duan
Zhina Jiang
Min Wen
Published: Jan. 1, 2022
The boreal wintertime atmospheric responses, especially cold events over central Asia, to low sea-ice concentration (SIC) with and without realistic daily variation over the Barents Sea are explored with the Community Atmosphere Model version 4.0 (CAM4.0). The results show that the general atmospheric responses to approximately equal winter-mean Arctic sea-ice loss with a similar pattern but with climatological versus realistic daily variation are different. With the forcing of low SIC with climatological daily variation, Asian cold events become a little longer and stronger than in the control experiment; this mainly results from the enhancement of a 500-hPa Ural anticyclonic anomaly. …
Mykhailo V. Savenets
Larysa Pysarenko
Svitlana Krakovska
Ivan Parnikoza
Denis Pishniak
Published: Jan. 1, 2023
We describe the main features of LT variability that influence native vascular plants in the Antarctic and examine the relationship between the temperature regime at the micro-level and meteorological conditions at the macro-level. We used a period of over a year, during which 37 specialized mini-loggers recorded LT near vascular plants in the Argentine Islands–Kyiv Peninsula region of the Antarctic Peninsula. Rather than measuring standard air or soil temperature, these loggers detect the temperature near the ground, in the microhabitats that harbour vascular plants. On a daily scale, LT correlates with standard (2-m) air temperature, with the values higher at …
Sturla F. Kvamsdal
Dorothy Dankel
Nils-Arne Ekerhovd
Alf Håkon Hoel
Angelika Renner
Anne Britt Sandø
Stein Ivar Steinshamn
Published: Jan. 1, 2022
Many areas in the Arctic are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We observe large-scale effects on physical, biological, economic and social parameters, including ice cover, species distributions, economic activity and regional governance frameworks. Arctic living marine resources are affected in various ways. A holistic understanding of these effects requires a multidisciplinary enterprise. We synthesize relevant research, from oceanography and ecology, via economics, to political science and international law. We find that multidisciplinary research can enhance our understanding and promote new questions and issues relating to impacts and outcomes of climate change in the Arctic. Such issues include recent …