Curiously Polar http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show Considerations about nature, history, culture and politics of the Arctic and the Antarctic. CC BY-SA 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ firtz podcast publisher v2.0 https://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar_1440x1440.jpg Curiously Polar http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show 144 144 Chris Marquardt The Arctic and the Antarctic are privileged locations for observers interested in understanding how our world is shaped by the forces of nature and the workings of history. These areas have inspired countless humans to undertake epic expeditions of discovery and have witnessed both great triumphs and miserable defeats. As a planetary litmus paper it is at the poles we can detect the effects of natural oscillations and human activities on the global ecosystems. Considerations about nature, history, culture and politics of the Arctic and the Antarctic. arctic,antarctic,pole,polar,svalbard,greenland,north pole,south pole,polar bear,penguin,aurora,northern light,spitzbergen,spitsbergen no # flattrid: # eazyliving en-EN info@curiouslypolar.com Chris Marquardt Chris Marquardt http://curiouslypolar.com/ 168 Scramble for the North Pole http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp168 Mon, 29 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp168 Transcription of this episode | Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

showThis episode is a joint production of Curiously Polar and Polar Geopolitics. Joining today are Klaus Dodds, Professor for Geopolitics and Executive Dean for the School of Life Sciences and Environment at Royal Holloway, and Eric Paglia, postdoctoral researcher in the SPHERE project at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and producer and program host of the podcast Polar Geopolitics.

SCRAMBLE FOR THE NORTH POLE

Not only since 2007, when a submersible planted the Russian flag at the North Pole, the question of who owns the North Pole are a widespread topic discussed in several media outlets around the globe. With a large portion of its claim scientifically sound and confirmed by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a new scramble for the North Pole has set in. But where does this interest come from and what are the implications of it, particularly with the Russian war on Ukraine and the resulting political isolation of Russia on the world stage? How will the Arctic Council as intergovernmental forum for circumpolar cooperation develop in the future and how will the claims of different Arctic states effect the work in the Arctic Council? We discuss these and other questions together with Eric Paglia and our guest, Professor Klaus Dodds.

You can find Klaus Dodds’ latest book ‘Border Wars’ here and an overview over a selection of his other books here.

Please consider to check out Eric Paglia’s podcast Polar Geopolitics and send us your questions or feedback to todays episode.notes

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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167 The Worlds largest Waterfall http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp167 Fri, 05 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp167 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL:

01 Mapping the Ocean Floor: The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project was endorsed as part of the UN Ocean Decade. The project aims to map all the world’s oceans by the end of the decade. When it launched, only 6% of the seabed was mapped to a modern standard. On May 2, 2023, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco announced that now 24.9% of the seabed is mapped, including some 19,000 newly discovered undersea volcanoes. Mapping the ocean floor is a critical step towards informing decision-making in areas such as resource management, environmental change, and ocean conservation1 . 02 One Year in the Life of Ocean Eddies: The Alfred Wegener Institute simulated a year of ocean eddies in the Southern Ocean with the FESOM2 ocean model in a 3 km resolution.

THE WORLDS LARGEST WATERFALL

Deep beneath the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland, lies the largest and most powerful waterfall on Earth - the Denmark Strait cataract. This undersea wonder is around 160 kilometres wide and cascades over immense cataracts hidden from our view, descending nearly 3 kilometres to a depth of 3,505 metres. The Denmark Strait Cataract carries around 5 million cubic metres of water per second, dwarfing any giant waterfall on land.

The Denmark Strait Cataract is a natural wonder that has been a mystery to many. It is formed by the difference in temperature between the ultra-cold Arctic waters of the Greenland Sea and the slightly warmer Irminger Sea. When the water from the Greenland Sea meets the Irminger Sea water, it slides right down through it to the bottom of the ocean. The cold, dense water quickly sinks below the warmer water and flows over the huge drop in the ocean floor, creating a downward flow estimated at well over 3,482,972.13 cubic metres per second. This massive flow equals between 20 and 40 times the sum of all river water that flows into the Atlantic.

The existence of an undersea waterfall is astonishing in itself. The Denmark Strait cataract is not only remarkable for its height and power but also for its ability to exist at all. Its discovery is a testament to our ongoing exploration of our planet’s oceans and our continued fascination with their mysteries.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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166 Race for the oldest ice http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp166 Tue, 14 Mar 2023 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp166 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL

01 Life at the bottom of the Southern Ocean: The team of the icebreaker RRS Sir David Attenborough has been testing the new deep sea research capabilities in the 5.6 km (3.5 mi) deep and least explored parts of the Southern Ocean, the Hesperides Deep, unveiling incredible lifeforms at the bottom of the sea. | 02 New interactive Antarctic mapping tool: The Australian Antarctic Division developed the amazing interactive mapping tool, Nilas to to assist voyage planning and enhance climate research in the sea ice zone.

RACE FOR THE OLDEST ICE A global race is on to drill for the oldest known layers of Antarctic ice, so researchers can peek back in time to better understand the planet’s hotter future. Picking up from the record-breaking 2017 Allan Hills ice core, that unearthed ice dating back 2.7 million years, the US team returns to the site and aims to fill the gaps in the climate records. At the same time, the European project Beyond EPICA aims at obtaining ice cores, which are expected to provide continuous high-resolution climatic data up to 1.5 million years old at a site less than 40 km away from the Italo-French Concordia station at Little Dome C. End of January 2023, the team reached an important milestone and successfully completed the first ice core drilling campaign at a depth of 808 metres. Only five kilometres away from the European drilling site, the Australian Antarctic Division is making camp for their Million Year Ice Core project. To do so, the Australian team is mastering an incredible logistical challenge and traverses the East Antarctic Ice Sheet from the coastal Casey Station to the inland camp at the drilling site - and back. Lotter Kock, the Technical Lead for the Ice Drill System, tells his story on ABC Radio Hobart, certainly worth listening.

Check out Henry's article "Deep Freeze: Ice Core Drilling for Earth's Climate Archive" for a deeper dive into the topic.

Extra Media: Follow BAS scientists Huw Griffith and Jamie Maxwell on Twitter.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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165 The Holiday Episode http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp165 Fri, 23 Dec 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp165 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

It's that time of the year HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!! And while we covered some festive topics and traditions in the past, let's loaok at what we are doing for Christmas ourselves.

The Curiously Polar Holiday Book Club (CPHBC):

POLAR NEWSREEL:

Nations Adopt Four Goals, 23 Targets for 2030 At the 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Montreal 188 nations agreed on an unprecedented package of measures to protect and restore biodiversity and natural ecosystems. The agreement, called the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), includes four goals and 23 targets for achievement by 2030. The goals include protecting and restoring ecosystems, officially recognizing "nature's contribution to people", several ways of financing the process across borders.

New Polar Code Regulations The new addendum, second phase of the Polar Code, urged Member States to implement voluntary safety measures of the Polar Code on ships not certified under the SOLAS Convention, approved guidance for navigation and communication equipment intended for use on ships operating in polar waters, approved Interim guidelines on life-saving appliances and arrangements for ships operating in polar waters and gave consideration to the possible application of chapters 9 (Safety of navigation) and 11 (Voyage planning) of the Polar Code to non-SOLAS ships and discussing how best to enhance the safety of these ships when operating in polar waters. Additional link

New artifacts extracted from HMS Erebus during 2022 campaign During the 11 days campaign, a team of archeologists performed 56 dives on the wreck of one of Franklin's lost ships, the HMS Erebus. They retrieved exciting and promising artefacts that will surely contribute to forming the picture of the fate of the expedition. The conditions of the wreck are excellent but delicate and this ship will be the initial focus of the work. The other ship, the HMS Terror, is in a deeper, more secure position and will have to wait until the work on the HMS Erebus is finished.

Why is the southern hemisphere stormier than the northern? The Southern Ocean regions have picturesque names: “roaring forties”, “furious fifties” and “screaming sixties”. A study combining observations and models indicates that the global ocean “conveyor belt” and the large mountain ranges in the northern hemisphere are some of the main factors contributing to the difference in storminess between the hemispheres. This work also shows that the southern hemisphere is getting even stormier over time, whereas the north is not. This is consistent with what climate models simulate for a warming world. These changes are important because we know stronger storminess can result in more high-impact events, such as extreme winds, temperatures and rainfall. Additional link

Current State of Sea Ice Cover Rapid changes have been occurring in the Arctic, where the ice coverage has been declining at a substantial rate. In contrast, in the Antarctic the sea ice coverage has been increasing although at a lesser rate than the decreases in the Arctic. In the North at the beginning of winter, ice extent seems to be increasing close to the average from the 2010s. In the South, sea ice extent is particularly low and in an unusual distribution. Additional link

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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164 Solan Jensen Expedition Leader http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp164 Tue, 20 Dec 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp164 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

Henry sent a message from a ship far far away. And that message had a discussion attached to it that he had with his colleague and legendary expedition leader Solan Jensen. They talked for half an hour about this and that, about the changes in the polar regions as a global issue, about excursions into the environment, about the climate and about the overall industry. Enjoy!

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163 Sensational Discovery of Infamous Vasa Sisterhip in Sweden http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp163 Tue, 13 Dec 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp163 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

SENSATIONAL DISCOVERY OF INFAMOUS VASA SISTERSHIP IN SWEDEN Maritime archaeologists from Sweden’s Vrak - Museum of Wrecks have discovered the wreck of a 17th century warship. In collaboration with the Swedish Navy the archaeologists surveyed a strait at Vaxholm just outside Stockholm. While a large shipwreck was discovered there in 2021, the team could only identify the wreck in the spring of 2022 und reveal its details as very similar to Sweden’s most famous shipwreck, Vasa. Commissioned by the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus and build in 1629, only a year after the sinking of Vasa, the ship was designed by the same shipbuilder who completed Vasa, but contained improvements to the design. However, the construction still proved to be unsuccessful. After service in Europe's 30 Years' War, Äpplet was deliberately sunk in Vaxholm in the Stockholm archipelago in 1659, when it was deemed unseaworthy. The important discovery adds another key piece to the puzzle of the development of shipbuilding that eventually lead to Sweden’s emergence as a great power in the 1600s and its dominance in the Baltic Sea.

Extra Media: Map: https://goo.gl/maps/TSiad5UDrRPQVheE6 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_69o4NK8aCc Vasa Museum: https://www.vasamuseet.se/en

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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162 The Two Arctics - The Arctic Circle Assembly 2022 http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp162 Tue, 29 Nov 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp162 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

THE TWO ARCTICS - THE ARCTIC CIRCLE ASSEMBLY 2022 The 9th Arctic Circle Assembly showcased a very divided Arctic Community, with Russian participants glaringly absent.

It seems the circumpolar Arctic does not exist at the moment and the new chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), Sara Olsvig, reiterates that there can’t be a solution to this in the Arctic without the inclusion of indigenous people as they live across the modern-day borders. She also said very clearly that with Arctic democracy under great pressure, the post Arctic Council and its future is reason for big concerns.

Further, the future of the Arctic Council in the light of Russia’s unprovoked War on Ukraine has been discussed on numerous occasions. There has been speculation that the West will fundamentally reshape Arctic governance by forming a new international body, known as “Nordic Plus.” While Nordic Plus would have shared values and government norms, it would forfeit the institutional legitimacy and progress that the Arctic Council has fostered. Furthermore, little utility exists in such an organisation without Moscow.

The Arctic Circle Assembly went highly political when the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Robert Bauer , delivered a very blunt and aggressive speech about the state of regional security, which included the statement that Beijing was undermining the “rules-based international order,” underlining the very different narratives between the United States and China over China’s Arctic interests. His remarks were promptly criticized by China’s Ambassador to Iceland He Rulong, who was in the audience and who accused the NATO official of taking an “arrogant” stance.

This exchange during the Arctic Circle Assembly demonstrated both how cooled the China-US relations are, as well as the high level of difficulty facing Beijing as it navigates a political Arctic much different from five years ago, when China’s own Arctic White Paper was released.

But it’s not all gloom and doom. The Arctic Circle Assembly remains a forum to exchange on numerous topics and it also highlights particular efforts for the circumpolar Arctic with two prizes, the 2022 Arctic Circle Prize for the Alfred Wegener Institute and its groundbreaking MOSAiC Drift Ice Expedition, and the Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award given to Professor Hanne Hvidtfeldt Christiansen and Associate Professor Marius Jonassen of the University Centre of Svalbard for their PermaMeteoCommunity project.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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161 Ice Breaker http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp161 Thu, 17 Nov 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp161 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

HENRY IS BACK FROM THE ICE BREAKER After finishing its first season in the Arctic, Henry just returned from the French-flagged ice breaker Le Commandant Charcot and talks about his experiences and adventures in East Greenland, at the North Pole and in the Northwest Passage.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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160 Polar-Space Connections http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp160 Wed, 03 Aug 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp160 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

// Satellite broadband for the Arctic Traditional, geostationary satellites are not at all optimal for use in polar areas/high latitude. A few operators are now building satellite networks in Non-Geostationary Orbit (NGSO) that promise better covaerage for polar areas and lighter equipment. Incidentally, this will also profit internet coverage for intercontinental flights routed through the same areas. LEO Constellations and Astronomy: A discussion with astronomer Meredith Rawls // Antarctic agriculture Growing vegetables and other useful plants at stations in Antarctica is not a new trend. The Discovery expedition in 1904 was already pioneering onboard food production. A modern approach, mainly through hydroponics, is not only useful for the survival of polar personnel but also to show methods of vegetable production for space travel. // Penguing surveillance robot Not only emperor penguins live in one of the roughest and thoughest environment on earth, but they are also easily disturbed by human presence. If not kept in check this disturbance can have adverse effects on the species. The ECHO rover is a small robot that researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) use for monitoring a colony of about 20,000 emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri). This hybrid rover is partly autonomous and partly remote-controlled.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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159 A New Polar Bear Population http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp159 Thu, 28 Jul 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp159 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: // A New Border The nearly 50-years-old infamous Whiskey War between Canada and Denmark/Greenland has come to an end with an agreement to divide Hans Island with the first land border between Canada and Denmark. // Proof of Life? Being a prime candidate for extraterrestrial life, [the most common surface feature on Jupiter’s moon Europa]([EarthSky | Do Europa’s odd ridges indicate life?]https://earthsky.org/space/odd-ridges-on-europa-greenland-habitability/) has been found its earthy analog in double ridges in Northwest Greenland, providing a possibility of liquid water in Europa’s icy shell. | // Earthquakes in Antarctica Orca Seamount, a long believed extinct underwater volcano in the Bransfield Strait, has been place of the largest seismic swarm ever recorded in the history of the region.

A NEW POLAR BEAR POPULATION Until recently, polar bears were thought to primarily survive on ice-covered waters. Not only do they tend to breed and rest on sea ice, but they also prey on seals that use cracks and holes in the ice to breathe. A new study has now shown that a small population of a several hundred bear in southeast Greenland has evolved to survive in an area where the sea ice season tends to be shorter than four months. In the summer months, pieces of ice calve into the ocean from marine-terminating glacier, creating what scientists call a freshwater glacier mélange, a chunky slush that can pack tightly enough for polar bears to walk—and hunt—on. Being the “most genetically isolated polar bears on the planet” with a common ancestor, about 200 years ago when a small number of individuals separated from the larger group, the scientists suggest to accept the group as the 20th subpopulation of polar bears in the Arctic.

But while it’s tempting to read the study as a new hope that polar bears can survive with less sea ice, it does not mean a salvation of polar bears as the animals are “living at the edge of the physiologically possible.” If anything, this study really is another piece of evidence of the fundamental relationship between polar bears and ice-covered water. However, the findings offer a small glimmer of hope nevertheless as the region’s conditions are said to be similar to the climatic conditions expected in the northern Arctic at the turn of the century if global warming can’t be stopped.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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158 On The Ice Breaker http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp158 Tue, 19 Jul 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp158 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

Henry returns to land and he and Chris discus the adventures on the ice breaker in the Antarctic. He describes the challenges of braving the elements in such remote and isolated locations. We learn about how this expedition was a bit different from what we usually expect.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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157 Meanwhile in Russia and Ukraine http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp157 Tue, 05 Jul 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp157 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Sanctions jeopardize the future of Arctic construction projects The sanctions imposed on Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine are impacting several large construction projects in the Arctic. The gravity-based structures (GBS), floating rigs, under assembly at the Novatek’s LNG Construction Center in Belokamenka outside Murmansk are among those hit by the lack of materials. A consequence of this might be a crisis of the real estate market in Murmansk if the foreign portion of the 20,000 workers at the Belokamenka yard need to move away from the region. | War in Ukraine is damaging scientific research in the Arctic The war in Ukraine is having an negative influence on Arctic science by stopping collaborations, data sampling and sharing between scientists from Russia and other nations. A series of ongoing projects have to pause the collection of data which could cause large gaps in the series and jeopardize our understanging of this rapidly changing environment. | Walrus bones found in Kyiv is testimony of viking trade During a dig in Kyiv, Ukraine, archeologists retrieved walrus remains from the twelfth century. These specimen, brought to the area by Norse Vikings, were analyzed for ancient DNA and stable isotopes to determine their origin. The results suggest that there was a high demand for walrus products and a consequent large trading route network that stretched from the remote areas of Greenland all the way through Western Europe and reaching Russia, Byzantium and Asia.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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156 A Closer, Deeper Look on Ice http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp156 Wed, 29 Jun 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp156 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Plan for satellites giving better Arctic weather observations Weather satellites, like Meteosat, are in a geostationary orbit that limits the field of view of the sensors in the polar areas. A consortium of the European Space Agency (ESA) and OHB Sweden is working on a constellation of 16 weather satellites in polar orbit. These will relay homogeneous, high-quality, real-time data on temperature and humidity for the whole globe. The Canadian Space Agency is planning an Arctic Observing Mission (AOM) with two satellites in highly elliptical orbits that would gather data on meteorological conditions, greenhouse gasses, air quality and space weather over Arctic areas. | Changes in sea ice have influence on ice sheet stability Antarctic ice shelves buttress against the uncontrolled release of inland ice into the ocean. The collapse of Larsen A and B shelves, has made the news in the past decades because of the calving of spectacular tabular icebergs in 1995 and 2002 respectively. A recent paper with lead author Dr Frazier Christie from the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) shows that decadal changes in the air circulation over the sea ice around Antarctica also change the concentration of sea ice that protects the ice shelves from the mechanical action of waves. In the last decade of the past century there was comparatively little sea ice and this has facilitated the breakup for the shelves, while the past decade with more sea ice has protecting them from the waves has had significantly fewer breakups. | Looking for methods to slow climate warming Researchers working at the non-profit Arctic Ice Project, launched in 2008 as ICE911, are proposing to sprinkle powdered glass "microspheres" on low-reflectivity, young sea ice off Alaska to increase its reflectivity and thus facilitating its growth and slowing down its melting. Recently though several local tribes and Indigenous Peoples organizations have expressed their concerns about the possible influence of the large amounts of microbeads on the animals and people of the Arctic.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

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155 A Most Remote Easter http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp155 Tue, 07 Jun 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp155 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: North Pole research platform almost ready | Worrying sea ice concentration in Bering Sea | Easter celebrations in Ittoqqortoormiit

MAIN TOPIC: Easter celebrations in Ittoqqortoormiit Being one of Greenland’s most remote villages with a population of only 345, Ittoqqortoormiit is not only the village most frequented by polar bears but also the chess stronghold of the country. After a two-year hiatus, the traditional Easter festival creates happy times for kids and adults alike bringing a chess tournament as well as entertainment and performances.

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154 An Arctic Encounter http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp154 Tue, 31 May 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp154 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Hundreds of meltwater lakes hide deep beneath the expanse of Antarctica’s ice sheet. | Russia to invite non-Arctic states developing the Arctic | Meeting the Arctic: The Arctic Encounter Symposium 2022

Meeting the Arctic: The Arctic Encounter Symposium 2022 After a long pandemic, Arctic stakeholders had the chance to meet each other early April in Alaska to discuss several different topics.

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153 A Siberian Rewilding http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp153 Thu, 05 May 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp153 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL:

01 Arctic Lightnings: A dramatic rise in lightnings last summer saw nearly double as many strikes as the previous nine years combined in the High Arctic which correlates with global temperature anomalies and can become an important climate crisis indicator. | 02 Scottish Arctic: Defining itself as the northernmost non-Arctic state and sharing similar rural and demographic features mean that Scottish and Arctic communities share many present-day priorities analysts feel

that Scotlands geostrategic significance to the High North is still being overlooked despite its own Arctic Policy Framework .

A SIBERIAN REWILDING

A new study published by the University of Leeds suggestspermafrost is thawing all over the Arctic and might have reached a tipping point in Northern Europe and Western Siberia and indicates that even with the strongest efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, by 2040 the climates of Northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost. Storing more than double the carbon of the planet’s atmosphere, a thawing permafrost acts as a positive feedback loop, further increasing warming.

The unprecedented speed of the climate crisis asks for creative solutions and in Northeast Siberia, Russian scientists are working on one of the most unlikely solutions to restore high productive ecosystems and help protect the permafrost. For the past 33 years, the father-and-son team Sergey and Nikita Zimov have been slowly transforming a 20 square kilomtres area in northeastern Siberia, to investigate how man can affect the climate through ecosystem reconstruction.

The project is repopulating the area with large herbivores like horses, moose and reindeer, musk ox, bison, yaks, cows and sheep. Sergey Zimov’s hypothesis is that the change from tundra to grassland will result in a raised ratio of energy emission to energy absorption of the area, leading to less thawing of permafrost and thereby less emission of greenhouse gases. The grasslands themselves are proving better for the environment. The pale grasses are reflecting sunlight, and their deep roots increase soil carbon storage. Overall, the temperature of the permafrost in the area in which they are working is colder by an average of 2.2° C.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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152 Polar Newsreel http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp152 Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp152 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Ten Pioneering Women of Antarctica and the Places Named for Them | Fossils in a Forgotten Ice Core Rewrite Greenland’s Icy Past | Beast of the Central Arctic | Seals help researchers collect data from under the ice | Obsessed by polar exploration?

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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Polar Newsreel: Nature's Teflon 🐚 http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp151 Tue, 05 Apr 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp151 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: 32000 year old plant revived Scientists in Vienna are seeking to sequence the genome of an ancient flowering plant (Silene stenophylla) believed to have been buried 32,000 years ago by an Ice Age squirrel near the banks of the Kolyma River, a top site for people looking for mammoth bones today. | Sudden halt in Ukraine's Antarctic expedition The RV Noosfera, formerly RRS James Clark Ross, is in Punta Arenas since 14th March to pick up scientists and specialists and is ready for Ukraine's National Antarctic Scientific Centre (NASC) first Antarctic Expedition in 20 years, but the war is jeopardizing the mission and crew change at Vernadsky station. | Ocean temperature change calls for redefining acoustic hotspots Sounds travel faster and further in a warmer and saltier ocean and this calls for the identification of acoustic hotspots to allow for timely mitigation of anthropogenic sounds. One of these areas is located in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean close to Greenland. Others are found in the Barents Sea, northwestern Pacific, Southern Ocean between 0 and 70E, at 500m in the Arctic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Southern Caribbean Sea. | Holes in the bottom of the Arctic ocean Longer-term climate cycles might be at the origin of rapid thawing of submerged permafrost at the bottom of the Beaufort Sea between 2013 and 2019. An investigation using robots and sonar discovered the formation of large, city block sized craters in the seabed. | Detecting salinity from satellite Salinity estimates derived from data by the European Space Agency (ESA) SMOS satellite was used by the researchers at the Barcelona Expert Center (BEC) of the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) to improve prediction of Arctic marine circulation of the TOPAZ Arctic prediction model. Salinity is measured using passive microwave remote sensing, which captures the electromagnetic energy emitted by surfaces and which, in the case of the ocean, depends on temperature and salinity. | Ice-proof scallops The Antarctic scallop Adamussium colbecki does seldom freeze even in supercooled water. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Mainz have discovered that the particular structure shape of its shell is resistent to cryofouling, the ice does not attach to it, unless it is colonized by other organisms.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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150 The Ugly Effects of Science and Tourism in the Polar Regions http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp150 Wed, 30 Mar 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp150 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles Extremes of 40C above normal. Antarctic and Arctic temperatures have shocked researchers. Antarctic areas reach 40C above normal at same time as north pole regions hit 30C above usual levels. | Lowest extent of Antarctic sea-ice since the start of satellite observations This February 24th the measure of extent of Antarctic sea-ice has reached a new low more than 7% lower than the previous record-low in 2017. The larger loss of sea ice in 2022 is seen to be concentrated in especially the Ross Sea, toward the Amundsen Sea, and in the outer part of the Weddell sea ice cover. | Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent at a near-record early date This year’s sea ice maximum was the 10th lowest on record with its greatest extent on Feb. 25, one day short of the earliest date on record. However, an early start to the melt season does not necessarily set up a low September minimum. This year’s freeze patterns varied by location, as is typical. By the time the maximum was reached, ice extent was near or above long-term averages in some places like the Bering Sea and Baffin Bay, but it was below average in other places, like the Barents Sea. | Will less ice in the Arctic Ocean lead to colder winters in the northern hemisphere? Model runs show that there is a weak link between Arctic sea ice and climatic indicators for the Northern hemisphere that may or may not link the two. | Black carbon from tourism and science and Antarctic snowmelt Study shows that local pollution from burning fossil fuels in Antarctica darkens the snow and increases melting by 23mm per year on average or by 83 tonnes for each visitor (and the carbon footprint of a researcher is 10 times that of a tourist). | Black Carbon in the Arctic The threat to the Arctic from black carbon from shipping has been known for some time. When black carbon, a short-lived climate-forcer responsible for around 20% of shipping’s climate impact, is emitted from the exhausts of ships and settles onto snow and ice, it accelerates melting and the loss of reflectivity - the albedo effect - which creates a feedback loop that further exacerbates local and global heating. Due to the use of heavy fuel oils and increased Arctic shipping traffic, emissions of black carbon from ships in the Arctic increased 85% between 2015 and 2019. With the Arctic heating-up faster than anywhere on Earth, it’s clear that this upward trend of black carbon emissions must be reversed urgently. | Sahara Dust Fertilizing Plants in the Amazon Dust from the Sahara desert is regularly transported by winds over large distances and visibly deposited on cities in Europe, but it is also surprisingly blown westwards towards South America. The Sahara dust deposited over the Amazon area is an important source of phosphorus as fertilizer for the forest plants.

Black carbon from tourism and science and Antarctic snowmelt - Study shows that local pollution from burning fossil fuels in Antarctica darkens the snow and increases melting by 23mm per year on average or by 83 tonnes for each visitor / Black Carbon in the Arctic

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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149 Endurance! ⚓️ (also: Henry's back!) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp149 Fri, 18 Mar 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp149 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

ENDURANCE FOUND!: The Endurance22 expedition has found Shackleton's ship! Probably the most amazing shipwreck discovery happened 3008m below the frozen Weddell Sea on the 100th anniversary of the Boss' burial at the cemetery in Grytviken, South Georgia.

POLAR NEWSREEL: Arctic Council on hold The conflict in Ukraine has entrained a pause in the cooperation within the Arctic Council and its subsidiary bodies | New Icebreaker for Argentina Argentina has 13 bases in Antarctica and for the time being only one icebreaker, the ARA Almirante Irízar. Now the government has approved the construction of a new polar vessel in cooperation with Finnish consultants Aker Arctic | Surprising finds on the early stages of the life of the West Antarctic ice-sheet Recent research indicates that when Antarctica froze up 35 million years ago glaciation of the area of the West Antarctic ice-sheet was delayed, possibly by warmer upwelling waters | Larsen B embayment breaks up A large portion of sea-ice that has been present since 2011 has broken away and it has taken with it a sizeable portion of the adjacent Scar Inlet ice-shelf | Large heat source below Greenland ice sheet increases melting Heat produced by the transformation of gravitational energy stored in descending meltwater causes high rates of melting at the base of the Greenland ice sheet | Blue Blob near Iceland and glacial melt An unusually cold patch of sea water south of Iceland and Greenland has, and will cool the wind blowing northwest thus slowing glacial melt in Iceland, possibly until 2050 | Follow-up: Women in Science and Exploring In 1958 Anésia Pinheiro Machado, pilot and among the first to achieve several feats, became the first Brazilian to reach Antarctica but the honors went to a male national, Durval Rosa Borges, who arrived months later | Endurance Found! | Endurance22 Podcast Episode Dan Snow takes us along the Agulhas II looking for Shackleton's Endurance

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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148 Polar Newsreel: Deep-Sea Roombas and Aliens 👽 http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp148 Tue, 22 Feb 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp148 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Women in Polar Research: How a 1969 Six-Women Scientific Expedition in Antarctica Reveals a Blatant Gender Gap The first women landed at the South Pole at the end of the 1960s and their story highlights some of the gender issues at the time but also how the gender gap is still present today | Getting Closer: The Ongoing Search for the Endurance The research icebreaker Agulhas II has reached the mission area in the Weddell Sea and has begun the search for the wreck of Shackleton's Endurance | Our Arctic Presence: A New Arctic Podcast Is Born Arctic indigenous youth created the podcast “Our Arctic Presence” in celebration of the Arctic Council’s 25th anniversary: hear their voices | Claustrophobic or Amazing? The McMurdo Station Observation Tube Descend into a pipe in the ice at McMurdo Antarctic station to experience diving under the pack ice without getting wet | Life Finds a Way: Living in Impossible Conditions in the Depths of the Arctic Ocean Sponges on the depths of the Arctic Ocean feed on the remains of animals that died thousands of years earlier

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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147 Polar Newsreel (Click Click 📸) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp147 Tue, 15 Feb 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp147 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Stark Black and White Photos Capture Life in a Melting Arctic Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson has documented the Arctic and its people for over 40 years. Black and white photos document the challenging life of humans and their sled dogs in various countries of the Arctic and its extreme environment. | Glacier retreat in Svalbard between 1928 and 2002 Historical photos of glaciers in Svalbard reenacted for a before-and-now comparison of the effects of a warming Arctic by Swedish photographer Christian Aslund. | PolarPod: An inhabited oceanographic platform Renouned French explorer Jean Louis Etienne is planning to navigate the Southern Ocean around Antarctica in a vertical research vessel!| Argentine navy rescues Russian vessel in trouble Russian scientific research vessel “Professor Logachev”, with 29 crew members, including 12 scientists, was stranded Wed 2nd Feb 2022 next to the Polish station Arctowski at Lasserre Bay and was rescued by the Argentine navy ARA Bahía Agradable without any environmental damages. | Search for the Endurance is underway Expedition to the Weddell Sea looking for the wreck of the ship Endurance that was used by Shackleton has left South Africa and is en route for the search area.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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146 Polar Newsreel (Hare Journey 🐇) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp146 Tue, 01 Feb 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp146 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Strategic maneuvers of the Russian fleet | Beavers moving north | Arctic sea ice projections | Nanoplastics detected obove both polar circles in Greenland and Antarctica | Vanishing king penguin colony | Penguins move further South | A68 iceberg freshening the Southern Ocean | Long distance hopping for Arctic hare

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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145 Polar Newsreel (Millions of Nests 🧊🐟) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp145 Tue, 25 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp145 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: One of Svalbard's two internet cables is still broken from an unknown cause since January 7 and is a reminder of the vulnerability of digital infrastructure critical for research and the public in the North. | New research found that narwhals quickly react to anthropogenic noises by modifying their behavior, going silent and swimming close to shore. An increase of this type of disturbance can quickly lead to disruption of feeding and social interactions and negatively affect populations. | Eight years of sound recordings in the Bering Strait show that orcas move further north as the Arctic warms up and quickly occupy new territory. A similar pattern has been observed in the European Arctic. The novel presence of large numbers of top predators in the Arctic ecosystem can trow them out of balance. | Underwater footage shows 60 million icefish nests in Antarctica’s southern Weddell Sea representing the largest concentration of fish nests ever recorded in an area that was thought to be a desert. This find indicates that icefish are the major player in the Weddell Sea ecosystem and a major resource for top predators like seals. | Antarctic Pole expeditions struggle to finish while others have completed their journeys. There are still "firsts" to be conquered when considering the challenges of operating in Antarctica. | Two new runways in Antarctica can mean increased safety and better logistics for research station but also an increase in pollution and biosecurity threats by multipling visits and opening to airborne tourism.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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144 Polar Newsreel (Follow the North Star!) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp144 Mon, 17 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp144 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL: Arctic weather influence on Europe | Russia's North Pole platform to sail in 2022 | Maiden voyage of the world's most powerful icebreaker to date | Corona infections on research station | Astra Zeneca reached the Antarctic | Microplastics Antarctica | Follow Polarstern | Invasive species in Antarctica | Hunt for Endurance

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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143 Polar Newsreel http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cpxxx Wed, 08 Dec 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cpxxx Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

The 1st December 2021 marked the 62nd anniversary of the signing of the Antarctic Treaty by the twelve countries whose scientists had been active in and around Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58. The total number of Parties to the Treaty is now 54. Among the most important agreements the treaty states that "Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only” (Article I); “Freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation toward that end… shall continue” (Art. II); “Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available” (Art. III) / On the 4th December 2021 a total eclipse of the sun will be visible in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The instant of greatest eclipse occurs over the Weddell Sea at 07:33:27 UTC and its duration will be 1 minute 54 seconds. / Albatross in the Falkland Islands seem to be affected by warmer water temperatures which made up to 8% of albatross couples split up. Either warming waters force the birds to hunt for longer and fly further or stress hormones go up in harsher environments, such as when waters are warmer. / Linking up with the previous episode, inflow of warm water from the Atlantic influences the temperatures in the Arctic Ocean: a phenomenon called Atlantification. At the German Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) weekly CryoSat data with daily SMOS data are merged to generate a weekly-averaged product every day on ice volume in the Arctic. / The Arctic Ocean has been warming since the beginning of the 1900s due to warmer water flowing from the Atlantic Ocean. The Arctic Ocean temperature has risen by approximately 2 degrees Celsius, while sea ice has retreated and salinity has increased. / Arctic warming means that the thawing permafrost could release bacteria, viruses, chemicals and other substances stored in the frozen soil . / The famed Northern Sea Route this year has been closing up earlier than expected as the ice has trapped ships and icebreakers have had to come to their rescue. Video: Yamal breaking ice

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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142 Climate COP26 in Glasgow http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp142 Tue, 23 Nov 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp142 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL In episode 141 we promised you an update on the 40th annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). Unfortunately, for the 5th year in a row there was no progress on the proposed Marine Protected Areas. // A new study documents the formation in 2020 of a 3,000-square-kilometer rift in the oldest and thickest Arctic ice north of Ellesmere Island. This is another sign of the rapid changes taking place in the Arctic, according to researchers. // A very instructive and entertaining short video on Antarctic krill has been published by the WWF: enjoy the view!

CLIMATE COP26 IN GLASGOW The "greenhouse effect" was described in 1824 by the French physicist Joseph Fourier and in 1896 the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated a doubling of CO2 due to industrial-age coal burning will raise the global temperature by several degrees Celsius. In spite of these early discoveries it took until 1988 for the members of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to establish the UN Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC) to tackle anthropogenic climate change. In the course of its history the UNFCCC has held many Conferences of the Parties or COP's, the most famous of which are the Kyoto Protocol of 2005 and the Paris Agreement of 2015. This year the 26th COP was held in Glasgow (UK) and has resulted in a declaration that disappointed the advocates of the phasing out of coal. However, COP26 made history by directly mentioning fossil fuels, a first time in a UN climate agreement.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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141 Polar Newsreel (WALRUS FROM SPACE!) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp141 Tue, 19 Oct 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp141 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

On today's Polar Newsreel:

  • Russia aims for year-round shipping on the Northern Sea Route in 2022 or 2023 to go from about 1/10th to 1/3rd of the Panama Canal shipping volume.
  • Sign the petition and help protect Antarctica by adding your name to the Call On CCAMLR petition to protect Antarctica and secure the largest act of ocean protection in history. CCAMLR meets 18-29 Oct 2021.
  • A new research effort focuses on Alaska’s sub-Arctic corals and sponges.
  • A similar undersea mapping effort was initiated in Norway with the Mareano project started in 2006 and is still ongoing (Videos)
  • A new video visualises one of the most unstable glaciers in Antarctica to point out why it is important for the world.
  • Beaufort Sea polar bears are declining in a stair-step pattern. Also see Curiously Polar episode 008 about counting whales.
  • Join the next Arctic eTalks on Thursday, 21 Oct, when Michael Mann, European Union Ambassador to the Arctic, will discuss the new EU Arctic policy being released next week as well as the role and interests of the Arctic for European Union. Also listen to the recordings of previous Arctic eTalks.
  • Ice Cores from James Ross Island in Antarctica not only indicate a date for Maori arrival in New Zealand but also show the Impact of humans mass-burning forests 700 years ago.
  • Capsule of air from 1765 reveals ancient histories hidden under Antarctic ice at Polar Zero exhibition in Glasgow featuring a sculpture encasing air extracted from start of Industrial Revolution.
  • "WALRUS FROM SPACE" is an intriguing project title! If you liked helping scientists count penguins and identify whales why not try counting walrus from satellite imagery? 500,000 citizen scientists are needed over the next five years!
  • COP26 in the UK (Glasgow) will start in 2 weeks! The Pre-COP was held in Italy (Milan) 30 September – 2 October 2021 and brought together climate and energy ministers from a selected group of countries to discuss and exchange views on some key political aspects of the negotiations and delve into some of the key negotiating topics that will be addressed at COP26 in Glasgow.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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140 Polar Explorers, pt. 3: The Real Most Interesting Man In The World http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp140 Tue, 12 Oct 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp140 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL Scientists found that puffins and other auk birds suffer in washing-machine-like waves. // A new research paper outlines how penguin poop reveals changes in the Antarctic ocean. // Help scientists and count penguins online or upload your whale pictures to increase the understanding of these animals. // A group of school kids found fossil remains of a 30 million year old giant penguin in Waikato, New Zealand. // Japanese scientists published a research paper of the influence of higher waves on the formation of ice clouds and changes the albedo effect of the Arctic sea ice. // The 2021 Arctic sea ice minimum extent proofs one more time the long-term trend towards shrinking of the Arctic ice cover continues. // Greenland’s foreign minister has been demoted following comments about excluding non-Inuit citizens from a future vote on independence from Denmark. // A visit to the Arctic induces the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee calling for a sustained EU focus on the region.

POLAR EXPLORERS, PT. 3: THE REAL MOST INTERESTING MAN IN THE WORLD Few people can claim to have lived many different lives. But all of them come short to what Peter Freuchen has experienced. Only the shortlist of the accomplishments of this over two-metres-tall giant includes an expedition to the furthest North of Greenland, escaping an ice cave armed with his bare hands and frozen feces, escaping a death warrant issued by the Third Reich, and being the fifth person to win the jackpot on the game show The $64,000 Question. But because the trmrkable life of Peter Freuchen hardly can be contained a short list, we explore his incredible life in detail in this episode.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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139 From Earth to Space and Back Again http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp139 Tue, 05 Oct 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp139 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL As nations seek increased catches in the Southern Ocean, scientists are trying to track the impacts of fishing and climate change on this vital part of the Antarctic food chain. // New Research and Monitoring Plan for the South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands Marine Protected Area // Chinese scientists have published a fascinating review on the use of unmanned underwater vehicles in polar research, an area in which China now excels. Their Haiyi gliders "can perform surveys in 99.8% of the global oceans. // While Scientists race to preserve crucial climate records in glacier ice before they melt away, researchers from the University of Minnesota lead in search for mind-boggling 1.5 million-year-old Antarctic ice to transform our understanding of Earth's climate.

FROM EARTH TO SPACE AND BACK AGAIN The US space agency NASA is well-known for their illustrious human spaceflight programs. But not many people would know, that NASA is also one of the largest polar research institution and one of the key players in uncovering the last blank spots at the poles. To understand how life can exist in the most extreme environments known to mankind helps NASA scientists to get a better idea of how life on other planets or moons could develop. A place so hostile to life but so similar to Jupiter moon Europa, Antarctic subglacial Lake Vostok provides an incredible insight in lifeforms that master practically inhospitable conditions buried under 3.7 kilometres of ice. It's projects like this that connects the mission of the US Space Agency to Earth in its undertaking of broadening our understanding of Space. With that research NASA is highly contributing not only on the research end but is also leading in communicating its work and the results of its research. It created ground-breaking science communication platforms that not only translate scientific research to non-academics. It also fosters through these platforms a stewardship for our planet.

With platforms like the Scientific Visualization Studio of the Goddard Space Flight Center it helps us visualise the complex connections of life on earth and space. The NASA Visualization Explorer app brings the experience right at your palm. The Earth Oberserving System EOS gives us access to processed images from the numerous NASA missions with focus on many different aspects of the Earth systems. Here you can also access The Earth Observer, that reports for over thirty years on the research done through NASA’s Earth Science Program, a very interesting, free read. Visible Earth provides a comprehensive catalog of NASA images and animations of our home planet. The Earth Observatory with its breathtaking images and mind-boggling articles picks up the most recent topics and tries to deliver footage to highlight certain aspects or explain connections that make the difference. And of course, we highlighted it a lot throughout past episodes, particularly in our video version on youtube, we shall not forget to mention the NASA Worldview website with its almost real-time access to satellite imagery of the entire planet.

Much of the work is done in the polar regions and particularly for us polar-nerds this really is a gift to have all these sources and all the research to actually make us understand how precious these places are but also what impact they have to our daily lives thousands of miles away.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

All video episodes at https://tfttf.com/curiouslypolarvideo

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138 Unintended Consequences: The EU Seal Ban and Indigenous Seal Hunters http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp138 Tue, 21 Sep 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp138 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL Protection of marine wildlife can result in conflicts with small scale fishing communities. // Protection of marine wildlife can give healthier ecosystems and increased carbon capture by the ocean: meet the sea otter. // More whales equals more carbon storage. // After the decrease in hunting pressure harp seals are increasing in numbers and their population is growing fast

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: THE EU SEAL BAN AND INDIGENOUS SEAL HUNTERS In 1964 Radio Canada released a film about hunting harp seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The images, later admittedly choreographed and not corresponding to the reality of the hunt, shocked the world and resulted in opposition to this activity. Among the notable opponents we find a baby seal-hugging Brigitte Bardot, one of the icons of the fight to end seal hunting. It took forty years for the EU to deliberate in 2009 what is known as the EU Seal Ban which in practice was a ban on imports of seal products. The ban's wording was at best unfortunate and this caused dire problems for the Inuit and indigenous communities traditionally relying on sealing for nutritional, cultural and spiritual needs especially in Greenland and Canada, and resulted in the 2015 amendment to the regulations. The present EU law allows trade in seal products from "hunts conducted by Inuit or other indigenous communities" and sets a clearer definition criteria among which we find the terms "tradition", "subsistence" and "animal welfare". In spite of the EU public apology, the damage to the Inuit and other indigenous communities of the Arctic might be permanent. Another consequence of the decrease in hunting pressure has been an increase in harp seals numbers and in the area of highest hunting pressure, the Northwest Atlantic, their population has been growing fast.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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137 A Comprehensive Polar Library, Part 1 http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp137 Tue, 14 Sep 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp137 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL There have been historical mentions of polar bears using tools to hunt walruses mainly based on accounts by Inuit local. An article by Dr Ian Stirling, the foremost authority on polar bears, reviews the knowledge on the matter and concluded that "possible tool use by polar bears in the wild is infrequent and mainly limited to hunting walruses // Space technology has an impact in the polar area in more than one way, reports The Barents Observer. This Thursday parts of a rocket will hit the surface of the Barents Sea and hopefully avoid the many vessels that are present in the area. // Cleaning the Arctic of past sins is a priority of the Russian Chairmanship of the Arctic Council. The Barents Observer reports of success for an expedition to find the location of nuclear material dumped in the sea. // Being different is usually considered detrimental to reproductive success, but new research shows that penguins with unusual coloring still find mates. // The demand for krill oil seems to increase and so is the fleet equipped for harvesting this resource. But is it a good - sustainable - idea? // While trying to save award-winning director Alexander Melnik during strategic drills in the Arctic, Russian Emergency Situations Minister Yevgeny Zinichev died tragically.

A COMPREHENSIVE POLAR LIBRARY, PART 1 This week we present a collection of our most favorite polar books, gems that are not to miss for your comprehensive polar library.

  • For pioneering expeditions to climb the Arctic peaks: H.W. Tilman (1974) "Ice with Everything" and (1977) "Triumph and Tribulation", originally by Nautical Publishing Company. Look for these and other fascinating works by the prolific Tilman on Amazon
  • In "The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and our Perilous Future" writer Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The story begins with adventure describing explorations of Greenland’s ice covered interior from the 1880’s through the 1930s, leading to climate change, the future of Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers, and what that holds for the world.
  • An account of the events during World War 2 that led to the establishment of the Sirius Patrol in North East Greenland and beginning of the home-rule: David Howarth (1957) "The Sledge Patrol", Collins. On Amazon
  • Many books have been written about the story of Ernest Shackleton, but Nick Bertozzi managed to address a different audience to this remarkable story of survival. The graphic novel "Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey" is introducing Shackleton’s expedition aboard in a nice and surprisingly uplifting way.
  • About the expeditions seeking the North West Passage and especially about the Franklin voyage and all the rescue efforts that followed, but not only: Pierrre Berton "The Arctic Grail, the quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole 1818-1909", first edition in 1977, my copy shown during the podcast is 1988 published by McLelland and Stewart. Last published in 2000 by The Lyons Press and still available on Amazon
  • Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnasson manages what many people before and after him couldn't manage: making Climate Change personal. In his book "On Time And Water" he uses elements of memoir, world history, mythology and the latest scientific reportage to help readers connect with and truly understand where we are in the fight and what is at stake. A true marvel.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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136 Back With a Vengeance http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp136 Tue, 07 Sep 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp136 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL The time of discoveries in the polar regions has not ended yet. A team that was aiming to land at Oodaaq island, the northernost dry land in the world north of Greenland, actually landed on new emerged bank slightly northwest of it and thus serendipitously discovered the, so far, northernmost emerged land in the world. The discoverers have suggested the name “Qeqertaq Avannarleq”, which means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic. Algae are the basis of all life in the oceans. This project from UNIS in Svalbard studied how the rapid temperature rise in the Arctic affects the sea ice algae and the phytoplankton. The results are to be used for modeling the impact of Arctic warming on the ecosystem. Penguins have inspired the shape of one of the newest additions to the instruments to study oceans: the Quadroin, a 25kg and €80,000 wireless AUV that can sample data autonomously down to 150m in environments where other vehicles are unable to go, for example, under sea ice or in shallow water. For the first time in recorded history rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland. Over a weekend in mid August temperatures at the Greenland summit rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. The rain dumped 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet, the heaviest rainfall on the ice sheet since record keeping began in 1950. Our currently most favourite iceberg out in the ocean, the well documented A-74 that's nearly the size of Greater London, reportedly touched the western tip of Brunt Ice Shelf due to strong easterly winds. The bump, however, has not been strong enough to effect Brunt Ice Shelf and nearby Halley research station of British Antarctic Survey which has been in hibernation since the begin of the pandemic.

BACK WITH A VENGEANCE After a two months break we are back with an alarming topic. The IPCC has recently released the first part of their Sixth Assessment Report focusing on "The Physical Science Basis" of climate change. Two more parts are due for completion next year, "Mitigation of Climate Change", and "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" as well as eventually the "Sixth Assessment Report Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2022". The good news on this report is: There is nothing new. There's no big news, nothing that we didn't already know. We're seeing the effects of climate change already. And this report just confirms what our research and experience has told us is happening. "The Physical Science Basis" states that unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach. What’s surprising is that the IPCC uses in this report a very strong, definitive language, like the use of words like unequivocal in a way that leaves no doubt. It takes away all the conspiracy arguments of the so-called sceptics. In its press release the IPCC summarises the report very clear: "Climate change is bringing multiple different changes in different regions – which will all increase with further warming. These include changes to wetness and dryness, to winds, snow and ice, coastal areas and oceans."

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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135 The Best Explorer Polarquest http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp135 Wed, 07 Jul 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp135 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL A decision by the National Geographic Society gave popular recognition to the Southern Ocean as the World’s fifth ocean with its own distinct features. On Amery Ice Shelf a large meltwater lake suddenly disappeared. After spending 24,000 years frozen in permafrost a tiny multi-cellular animal called Rotifer has been revived. On the other side of the planet soils from rocky ridges in the center of Antarctica don’t contain no microbes, something never found anywhere else.

THE BEST EXPLORER POLARQUEST 2021 For years, Mario’s father has conducted explorations, especially in polar waters, on his own sailing boat, Best Explorer, with the ambition to expand the knowledge of places and peoples and at the same time to conduct cultural and scientific projects in collaboration with public and private institutions. After finishing his circumnavigation of the Arctic, Best Explorer is writing a new chapter joining the Polarquest 2021 and will set sail on a scientific exploration of Svalbard and the Arctic ocean, sampling of water for eDNA, driftwood for drift paths and accumulation dynamics, mapping glaciers with drone and side-scan sonar survey looking for the wreck of the famous airship Italia.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

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134 Polar Explorers, pt. 2: The Heroine of Wrangel Island http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp134 Tue, 22 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp134 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry / Mario

POLAR NEWSREEL In Episode #125 we talked about Dinosaurs in Antarctica and recently we stumbled across the trailer for an upcoming film with the same title, check it out! The 43rd Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting between 14 and 24 June marks the 60th Anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty and the 30th Anniversary of the Madrid Protocol (also known as Protocol on Environmental Protection. While those talks are taking place a debate on the future of the Antarctic Treaty System has been initiated, raising the question how to maintain Antarctica a military-free continent. In Russia the supposedly most dangerous vessel no longer poses a nuclear threat to the Arctic. Researchers of the University of Waterloo have recently found that several toxic, long-lasting human-made contaminants have found in people living in northern Canada.

THE HEROINE OF WRANGEL ISLAND Born in the remote settlement of Spruce Creek, forty miles east of Nome, Alaska, 23-year-old Iñupiat women Ada Blackjack was stricken by life hardships already at young age. When she joined an Arctic expedition across the Chukchi Sea to Russia's Wrangel Island in 1921 out of her desperation to pay for her last surviving son’s medical care, no one could have guessed that she would raise to fame.

The Wrangel Island Expedition was a curious and baffling episode in the history of Arctic exploration—at best, an example of shocking hubris; at worst, a case of murderous neglect. Almost from the beginning, the team was ill-prepared, had bad luck and made poor decisions.

Setting sail with four young men in their twenties on an expedition to colonise the island north of Siberia, she had doubts when she realised that the hired Inuit families to come along on the expedition bailed out of the venture on the day of departure. Hired for her sewing and cooking skills, Ada suddenly became in charge of the camp when three of the expedition party perished while searching for help after the promised ship didn’t picked them up the next summer. Left alone with the deadly ill last man of her team, she took care about him until his death and learned how to survive in the hazardous condition of the high north. Even though she lacked any wilderness skills, she taught herself to hunt and trap, picked roots, hauled wood, made her own clothing, and dodged hungry polar bears.

It was her wish to be reunited with her son that drove her will to survive. She returned two years later as the only survivor put in the rank of heroines, presented as the female Robinson Crusoe. Later she has been accused of negligence, after having let the fourth man, Knight, die. Fame did not benefit her and she spent the rest of her life trying to get out of poverty.

Despite of her fame, life continued to be a struggle for Ada. Bennet never overcame his health issues and eventually died, at age 58, in 1972. Unlike the organisation of the expedition, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Ada didn’t profit from the expedition. Deeply wounded by the media circus and the experiences she had on Wrangel Island, she withdrew more and more and led a simple life as a reindeer herder.

Then, on May 29, 1983, Ada Delutuk Blackjack Johnson died at age eighty-five at the Palmer Pioneers’ Home, where no one knew she was once an Arctic hero.

The experimental dramatic short film Ada Blackjack Rising preserves her memory and brings together the current inhabitants of Northern Alaska with that legendary woman from the same land. The film is based on the biography, Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic, written by Jennifer Niven.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/ Mario Acquarone https://www.buymeacoffee.com/polarmario

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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133 Mario is Back http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp133 Thu, 17 Jun 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp133 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

POLAR NEWSREEL After the 2019 Ministerial meeting could not agree on a joint ministerial declaration the Arctic Council adopted in Reykjavík its first-ever strategic plan for the Council's work for the next ten years, marking the end of the two-year Icelandic Chairmanship and beginning of the Russian Chairmanship. // Scientists of the Norwegian Polar Institute and the University of Bergen research the world’s largest creatures, blue whales and fin whales, and their exposure to a wide variety of chemicals during their cycles of movement across ocean basins. // Recently, the 2.000 square kilometre-large iceberg D-28, which calved from Amery ice shelf in September 2019, impacted ice shelves in the Queen Maud Land area of Antarctica creating 5 new icebergs.

MARIO IS BACK Listeners who have been following Curiously Polar for a long time have missed him, but after a well-deserved break, Mario Acquarone is back in front of the microphone. The three of us now regularly dive into the vastness of the polar regions again. In this episode we will introduce you to Mario in more detail and talk about what to expect in the coming weeks.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/
Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/
Mario Acquarone

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132 Polar Explorers, pt. 1: The Woman Who Tamed The Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp132 Tue, 25 May 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp132 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

POLAR NEWSREEL 20-24°C hotter than average but truly mind-boggling for this time of year, a ferocious heatwave has reached large parts of the Russian Arctic with +30°C (86.5°F). The workhorse of Antarctic field operations, the Twin Otter DHC-6, had its 1st flight 56 yrs ago in 1965 - Happy Birthday! Global warming has unlocked hundreds of Viking artifacts from the ice of the Norwegian mountains in recent years. The new heavyweight champion in the league of icebergs is A-76, a hunk of ice that measures 1,670 square miles (4,320 square kilometers) and broke of the Ronne Ice Shelf on May 13. An a new study shows that those giant icebergs may be playing a larger role in carbon sequestration and Earth’s global carbon cycle than previously thought.

THE WOMAN WHO TAMED THE ARCTIC The first part of the Polar Explorers mini series introduces the woman who tamed the Arctic. As a true explorer, Louise Arner Boyd has contributed greatly to our understanding of the Arctic today, particularly our understanding of the coasts of Greenland.

Born in 1887 into a wealthy family in San Rafael, California, her intense interest in the Arctic grew after the first sight of the pack ice while touring Svalbard in her late thirties. Boyd would dedicate the rest of her life and fortune to learning more about the Arctic through science and the lens of her camera.

Louise Arner Boyd led seven self-financed Arctic expeditions, published three books of photographs through the American Geographical Society, chartered the first private flyover of the North Pole, and was honoured with numerous awards and medals from myriad organisations and governments.

Boyd's 1931 and 1933 expeditions to the northeast coast of Greenland provided the basis for her book The Fiord Region of East Greenland, which included 350 photographs. For these trips, Boyd chartered the Veslekari, a large ship, and brought along surveyors, geologists, and botanists. Boyd served as leader of the expedition and the only photographer, having invested in some very high-end equipment and learned the principles of photogrammetry, the science of taking and interpreting photographs to create models or maps. Her excellent photographs led to the accurate mapping of a remote area of eastern Greenland that was relatively unknown. Subsequently, Denmark named this area “Louise Boyd Land."

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

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131 Scramble for the North Pole http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp131 Tue, 18 May 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp131 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

POLAR NEWSREEL: A new batch of new satellites brings broadband connectivity services to some of the world’s hardest to reach places. German start-up Rocket Factory Augsburg has signed a contract with Norway's Andøya Space for a 2022 maiden flight of the company’s RFA One small-satellite launch vehicle. The Nunavut community of Iqaluit has declared a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. And the [Icelandic volcano spits lava fountains up to 300 metres](https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/arctic-2050-mapping-future-arctic ) into the sky.

SCRAMBLE FOR THE NORTH POLE: Just a few weeks back media outlets around the globe where alarmed when Russia submitted an extension to its claim in the Arctic Ocean, quoting Canada’s Foreign Minister: “You cannot claim any more.” Diving into that raises the question who actually owns the North Pole and why is it important?

Beginning in 1925 numerous countries have claimed parts of the Arctic based on the so-called Sector Principle, which extends the territorial claim along the longitudes of its land-territory towards the North Pole. Canada was the first country to do so, followed by the Soviet Union and Norway. Later those claims have been based on scientific evidence in the legal framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) finding a peak in 2007 when Russia planted a flag at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Under current international law, the North Pole and the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it are not owned by any country. As of now, three nations have submitted claims for the seabed below the Arctic Ocean, Russia, Canada and Denmark (Greenland) but none of the claims have been accepted yet and it might take years. So eventually, all three nations will need to sit down and start negotiations on the final delimitations of their Arctic territory, including their competing claims to the pole, and that’s a truly exciting chapter of human history.

One might ask, what all the fuzz is actually about. It’s an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that are thought to lie under the polar oceans, although the central North Pole region is not thought to be especially rich in fossil fuels.

Claiming the North Pole and thus ownership over it has to do with its symbolic importance rather than access to natural resources. This plays into the narrative of Arctic sovereignty, protecting your Arctic territory, and upholding your Arctic presence. Being able to extract the estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from the seafloor in the middle of the Central Arctic Ocean, is technologically a long ways off. The North Pole is more of a symbolic prize in all this.

Episode 56: The Whiskey War

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

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130 Drifting North http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp130 Mon, 26 Apr 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp130 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

POLAR NEWSREEL Our long-time friend and most favourite of all icebergs, A-68A, is gone. Russia starts its work on a fiber optic cable to connect the Asian part of the Russian Arctic. And in Greenland a new government has taken over with the youngest prime minister in the country’s history.

DRIFTING NORTH A largely unknown episode of polar research tried to cast some light onto scientific observations in the Central Arctic Basin, the first since Fridtjof Nansen’s famous Fram Expedition from 1893-96. Based on observation from the First Soviet High-Latitude Expedition onboard the icebreaking steamer Sadko, the Soviet Union deployed four researchers under Expedition Leader Ivan Papanin onto the Arctic sea ice close to the North Pole. The drift ice station North Pole-1 continued for 274 days, during which the station travelled more than 2600 km. The success but also the observations of this expedition led to a series of 31 drift ice expeditions where 88 polar crews occupied the ice floes for a total of 29,726 drift days, while drifting a distance of 169,654 km. The research program of the "North Pole" drifting stations is unequalled in the 20th century by duration, variety of observational material, importance of scientific discoveries, and number of resolved problems. After the end of the Soviet Union, Russia has picked up the programme in spring 2003 but since the mid-2000s it became more and more difficult due to global warming to find a suitable ice floe to station camp on and several stations had to be evacuated prematurely because of unexpectedly fast thawing of the ice. In December 2020 the ice-resistant self-propelled research platform Severnyy Polyus (eng. North Pole) has been launched. The most unusually egg-shaped floating platform is supposed to replace the previous ice-based drift expeditions and intended for multi-year drifting deployments in very high latitudes.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

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129 Jeanette: The Mother of Modern Arctic Exploration http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp129 Sun, 25 Apr 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp129 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Polar Newsreel As the planet continues to heat up, a third of all Antarctic ice shelves risk to collapse, a new study founds. At the same time, Russia orchestrates a complex Arctic military exercise, letting three nuclear submarines surfacing simultaneously through the ice close to the North Pole. It remains to be seen whether this should underpin Russia’s new, extended claim for a larger piece of the Arctic. In Iceland, however, the ongoing volcanic eruption draws a lot of tourism and brings a large number of contenders for this year’s Darwin Award.

The Mother of Modern Arctic Exploration Thanks to Mia Bennett and Antoine Vanner, today’s episode looks into the question how one one ill-fated expedition could impact so many future expeditions in the Arctic.

Following a long-standing theory of an ice-free North Pole and at a time when the United States just recently bought Alaska and started to wonder what lies beyond their new northern-most territory, James Gordon Bennett Jr., the publisher of the most popular and profitable daily newspaper of the time, The New York Herald, set up the USS Jeannette to sail up the Bering Strait, following the hypothesised temperate ocean current, the Kuro Siwo, all the way to the North Pole.

Shortly after the expedition, led by US Navy Lieutenant Commander George Washington De Long, entered the Chukchi sea they charted a new group of Islands north of the New Siberian Islands but very soon got caught in ice and locked up for the next 21 months. After almost two years in the ice, the pressure of the ice crushes the Jeannette and the ship sinks. The 33 men make their way towards the Lena Delta not without carrying the comprehensive ship’s log containing a number of valuable information.

And it’s the ship’s log that make the biggest treasure of that failed expedition. Those records, along with similar data housed in many other archives, are being fed into the 20th Century Reanalysis, a sophisticated weather reconstruction database developed by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration that allows scientists to characterise floods, droughts, storms, and other extreme events from history - and use the violent weather of the past to understand the present.

But further, when in June 1884 wreckage of the ship was found near Julianehåb, todays Qaqortoq, in south-west Greenland, the theory was born that an ocean current flowed from east to west across the polar sea. It gave the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen the idea for his famous Fram expedition that later led to the modern-day MOSAiC expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institut.

So posthumous the so miserably failed expedition became a great success long after its time turning it into the Mother of modern Arctic Exploration.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

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128 Iceland Erupts http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp128 Thu, 08 Apr 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp128 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

shownotes

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

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127 Outer Space, So Close http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp127 Tue, 23 Mar 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp127 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

POLAR NEWSREEL: Soon we may be start to talk not only about the Polar Regions of Planet Earth, but maybe even about the Polar Regions of the Moon! Meanwhile, a volcanic fissure opened in Iceland creating a beautiful touristic eruption. And the British Antarctic Survey starts its event series Extreme Antarctica.

OUTER SPACE, SO CLOSE: Outer space and the polar regions are so different and yet so similar. They’re both defined by remoteness and extreme conditions making any activity dangerous and expensive. Within the US State Department, the lawyer for cold, dark and dangerous places is charged with responsibilities for the arctic and outer space. But that is not the only connection of the polar regions and outer space.

Antarctica is the closest you can get to space without leaving Earth. It’s an isolated, confined and extreme environment where Antarctic expeditioneers live remotely for up to nine months of the year. Today space agencies from around the world send their people to Antarctica to actually test the human factor in almost total isolation.

This episode dives into the many things that make the polar regions and space so similar, shows how science in either place influence each other and explains why Antarctica is the best place to find meteorites - what could be closer to space on earth?

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

All video episodes at https://tfttf.com/curiouslypolarvideo

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126 Running AMOC http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp126 Mon, 15 Mar 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp126 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Polar Newsreel: One of the most bizarre news of the polar regions comes from China where recently a so-called polar bear hotel opened, praising all its rooms having an exceptional view on the completely enclosed polar bears.

In Antarctica, renowned German research icebreaker Polarstern squeezed through a narrow ice channel between new mega iceberg A-74 and the Brunt Ice Shelf it just recently calved off. A spectacular view and incredible scientific chance.

Running AMOC: One of the largest and fastest ocean currents on earth is believed to be a key indicator for climate change and part of the complex climate regulation mechanisms of the planet. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - publicly known as Gulf Stream System - is an integral part of the thermohaline circulation that transports heat from the equator to the poles and operate like a large engine for the global climate. Its length of 10,000 km makes it one of the largest and fastest currents on Earth, and it’s very warm. At roughly 2 m/s it brings up to 100,000,000 m³ of 30°C warm water per second from the Gulf of Mexico towards Europe where it introduces crucial heat to the continent. In order to produce the same heat that it brings to the shores of Europe, we would need 1,000,000 nuclear power plants why it's also called the heat pump. Without it, the temperature would be significantly colder here, at least five to ten degrees.

In the last few years, scientists and pundits in the media have repeatedly expressed the fear that the Gulf Stream could come to a standstill due to climate change and the question everything revolves around is whether the Gulf Stream System aka the AMOC has already weakened? And indeed, the most recent research paper delivers evidence: The weakest state of the Gulf Stream System in 1,000 years.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

All video episodes at https://tfttf.com/curiouslypolarvideo

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124 The Polar Vortex Anomaly http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp124 Tue, 16 Feb 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp124 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Polar Newsreel: Our North American correspondent, Robert, forwarded us the film Drifting North: Into the Polar Night by Amy Richman, a collaboration between the University of Colorado Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, from the first leg of the historic MOSAiC expedition led by the Alfred Wegener Institute from late 2019. We recommend to give it a try. / Iceberg A-68 is fragmenting further with the crumples being picked up by the southern front of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. A team of the British Antarctic Survey is on its way to take the chance to research the impact of the massive piece of ice on the fragile marine ecosystem around the island of South Georgia. / Chris introduced Project Cybersyn, a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy from 1971 to 1973 often referred to as Chile's socialist internet. After the CIA-backed military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973, Cybersyn was abandoned and the operations room was destroyed.

The Polar Vortex Anomaly: For a few years now, the buzzword of the Polar Vortex has been making the rounds particular in combination with recent weather patterns of snow in Spain and, at the same time, a freezing cold snap in North America. New data reveal, the freak weather of the last few weeks is due to an extraordinary disturbance of the polar vortex. During this "Berlin Phenomenon” (Sudden Stratospheric Warming) the polar stratosphere suddenly warms up by dozens of degrees. This breaks down the polar jet stream that forms a wind barrier that normally keeps arctic air away from mid-latidues. To explain this extraordinary event we dive into the atmosphere layers with their distinct features, get a closer look on the particulars of the Troposphere, analyse the atmospheric flow and the special atmospheric features of the polar regions before looking at the formation of the polar front as barrier between the cold, dense, so-called arctic air and the tropical, much warmer air and finally unveiling the current anomaly of the polar vortex. Thanks to ESA's Aeolus satellite, we can for the first time directly follow such an event. This satellite is the first to be able to measure polar winds directly from orbit. The current analyses show that the polar vortex has weakened unusually strong since mid-December 2020. An event can be observed in which the polar vortex is split into two parts - one air mass circles over the North Atlantic and one over the North Pacific with the wind direction reversing in large areas of the polar vortex. The interesting thing about it: A few years ago, scientists discovered that weakening of the polar vortex and the rarer Sudden Stratospheric Warming are becoming more frequent. A likely cause of this is the retreat of the Arctic sea ice and the increasing warming of the North Atlantic. Because according to models, the associated influx of heat into the atmosphere promotes the sudden warming of the stratosphere. But we need to understand better whether and to what extent climate change intensifies this polar weather phenomenon. It is still too early to draw concrete conclusions from the Aeolus data.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

All video episodes at https://tfttf.com/curiouslypolarvideo

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123 A Brief History of the Discovery of Antarctica http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp123 Tue, 09 Feb 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp123 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Polar Newsreel: A wallet lost by US navy meteorologist on Antarctica in the 1960s turned up during demolition work])https://future.usap.gov/demolition-new-aims-construction/= at McMurdo base 53 years later. Nornickel must pay €1.62 billion for the huge Arctic oil spill.

Main Topic: Since the times of the father of geography, Ptolemy, people believed that the massive landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere would be balanced out by massive, yet undiscovered, lands in the south. This idea of the hypothetical "Great Southern Continent" together with the desire for a great fertile southern continent rich in resources to rival those of the New World nurtured expeditions to the Far South.

It was James Cook’s second voyage of 1772-75 which finally destroyed the dream of a vast, inhabited and prosperous “Terra Australis Incognita” and ushered in the new age of South Polar exploration.

Who actually discovered the southern continent has been heatedly disputed, chiefly on nationalistic grounds, primarily between the British support of Bransfield and Smith, and the Americans for Palmer. The controversy raged for over a century with accusations of wilful misinterpretation of the accounts and logs right up to claims and counter-claims for forgery.

In fact, the first person to actually see the continent was neither British nor American but was almost certainly the Russian Admiral von Bellingshausen. However, this wasn’t realised until his records became available in the West, almost a century later. Today it’s believed that the Russian expedition reached on 28 January 1820 a point within 32 km (20 mi) from Princess Martha Coast and recorded the sight of an ice shelf at 69°21′28″S 2°14′50″W that became known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf.

Further reading (affiliate links): Jakob Sondergard Pedersen & Philip Curtis (2012) The Mapping of Antarctica, The Map House of London, Robert Clancy, John Manning & Henk Brolsma (2013) Mapping Antarctica: A Five Hundred Year Record of Discovery, Springer Praxis Books, Peter Fretwell (2020) Antarctic Atlas: New Maps and Graphics That Tell the Story of A Continent, Particular Books

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

All video episodes at https://tfttf.com/curiouslypolarvideo

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125 When Dinosaurs Roamed Antarctica http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp125 Wed, 03 Feb 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp125 Subscribe to our NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Polar Newsreel If lockdown is taking it too hard on you, you might find some ease drawing some icebergs and see how they float. | To see an actual iceberg the size of Greater London you can follow the brand new one recently calved from Brunt Ice Shelf. | At the same time the first commercial vessel sailed the Northern Sea Route during winter. | After being fined $2 billion for the damage caused by the major fuel spill last year, Nornickel is making headlines again when three people die in a partial collapse of its ore processing plant in Norilsk. | Turkey plans it’s very own year-round Antarctic Research Station at Horseshoe Island in Marguerite Bay.

When Dinosaurs lived in Antarctica Wo would expect to find Dinosaurs in the coldest and most remote place in the world? But it hasn’t always been that way. There used to be a time when Antarctica was covered in forests and dinosaurs roamed the continent free. And in 1986 a group of Argentine scientists made their way to James Ross Island under expedition leader Eduardo B. Olivero. The expedition came back home with a sensational finding - the excavation of a few fossils, namely a partial skeleton and bony plates of some sort of body armour of a new plant-eating species, later to be named Antarctopelta oliveroi. And the area seems to be the dinosaur hot spot in Antarctica at the moment. In 1986 an expedition of the British Antarctic Survey discovered the second dinosaur on neighbouring Vega Island.

The places those fossils have been found so far are ice free and rather easy accessible. The more the Antarctic ice sheet will retreat, the more area the ice will set free, the more likely is that scientists may unveil more fossils to get a better picture of how Antarctica looked like in previous periods. And that in turn will give us a better understanding of how things have changed in the past.

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

Listen to all podcast episodes at https://curiouslypolar.com

All video episodes at https://tfttf.com/curiouslypolarvideo

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122 Logistical Extravaganza http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp122 Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp122 Watch this on video Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

News: Get a glimpse on the current seismic activity around the South Shetland Islands and embrace the break-up of Iceberg a-68a into smaller fragments that still are incredibly large or dive into geopolitics, architecture, glaciology, photography and conservation of Antarctica and more with the videos of the seven-day-online-festival Antarctica Now!

While logistics for Antarctic research stations are already challenging in ‘normal’ times, the pandemic has put them onto a new level and pushed everyone involved to their limits. The US Antarctic Programme and the National Science Foundation boarded their field staff in San Francisco and other cities to sail them down all the way to Antarctica. The Russian Antarctic Programme did the same, staffing icebreakers in Murmansk to send them all the way down to the 7th continent to bring the so-called winterers for the Russian stations. Most Antarctic Programmes have either cancelled or drastically reduced their research seasons in Antarctica due to the ongoing global pandemic. The British Antarctic Survey has evacuated staff from a number of research station but puts finishing touches on the upgrade on Rothera station. For those constructions, workforce have been brought to the Falkland Islands and then shipped down to the Antarctic Peninsula. And also the German Antarctic Programme operated by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute faced the necessity of becoming creative and almost causing a diplomatic incident to get the turnover staff to its Neumayer III research station.

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121 Crash Landing http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp121 Tue, 26 Jan 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp121 Watch this on video Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Hostile conditions in Antarctica make scientific research rather difficult, so most scientists rarely visit the 7th continent, instead using satellite data to complete their work. But sometimes even scientists are baffled when they find structures on satellites pictures they cannot explain right away.

That happened when scientists got hold of a picture that showed something that appeared to be a crash site forming long stretch in the ice. Aviation experts agreed that it could be formed by something landing there and skating to a halt. This theory wasn’t completely out of the blue since the site where this picture has been taken from is quite close to the incident site of one of the world’s worst aviation accidents when a passenger aeroplane crashed into Mount Erebus back in 1979. But the theory couldn’t hold for long once the shadows of the shown objects got taken into consideration and NASA scientists revealed an unusual type of glacier forming a seven-mile-long wall of jagged ice on the frozen sea of McMurdo Sound.

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120 United in Peace? Research at the End of the World http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp120 Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp120 Watch this on video Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

Antarctica is a very special place in many ways. The sheer size of its ice cover, the astonishing wilderness, the inaccessibility, being Earth's only continent without a native human population - it seems like the last vastly untamed place on earth. It is because of that that the 7th continent turned into an Eldorado for scientists despite its inhospitality. The Antarctic Treaty has put all territorial claims on hold and devotes the continent to Science and Peace since 1959 and besides the 12 original signees a total of 54 countries operate seasonal research stations in Antarctica.

However, all claiming states operate a number of research stations to underline their claim, some of them even tried to [establish permanent civil settlements]((https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/can_you_live_in_antarctica.php#:~:text=There%20are%20two%20places%20in,tip%20of%20the%20Antarctic%20Peninsula) and send pregnant woman to give birth to "native Antarcticans" to support such claims.

Aiming for the lowest possible “disturbance footprint” on the planet the research facilities are largely planned as temporary structures. In 2018 the Australian government considered a new infrastructure project in the area that is claimed as Australian Antarctic Territory. While the project remained largely undiscovered in the public eye in past years, resistance is now forming in the group that is supposed to benefit most from the project. Scientists are largely critical of the project, as it represents a significant interference with the extremely fragile balance of the continent and its ecosystems and could create a real bad precent in terms of the scale of investment and the impact on the environment but certainly would turn Australias footprint in Antarctica to the biggest of any nation. Beyond environmental questions, the project’s long term and more troubling impact may be the altering of the political conditions on the frozen continent.

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119 Operation Morning Light http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp119 Tue, 12 Jan 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp119 Watch this on video Buy us a coffee: Chris Henry

A story about space archaeology with Alice Gorman at the Ologies podcast brought us the story about a nuclear-powered Soviet reconnaissance satellite. Part of the Soviet Union's Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite programme, or RORSAT (Russian: Upravlyaemy Sputnik Aktivnyy, US-A), the satellite was assigned the number Kosmos 954 and launched in 1977. The low orbit satellite operated in about 260 to 280 km (160 to 170 mi) and could track marine traffic in real-time if operated under perfect conditions. However, poor weather and high seas could greatly interfere with a RORSAT's tracking ability. RORSATs also had a short lifespan of two to four months. As a result, they were only launched when the U.S.S.R. was expecting a large increase in NATO or U.S. naval activity, for example, just before major naval exercises or during a crisis. Shortly after launch, the satellite became uncontrollable and the emergency boosting manoeuvre necessary to lift the reactor into graveyard orbit could not be carried out. The United States, closely watching Russian satellite activity, realised in November 1977 that Kosmos 954 is in serious trouble and threatened to enter the atmosphere with a possible impact area somewhere on the North American continent. Despite a quick huddle with key allies of NATO and OECD, the public was kept in the dark about the incident. Fearing that the satellite might re-enter over the U.S., raining radioactive debris across heavily populated areas and several major cities, the Department of Energy, with support from the Department of Defense, prepared for the possibility of Kosmos 954 impacting on U.S. territory.

In late January 1978, about 3 months after Kosmos 954 was launched, the satellite fell back down to Earth, raining a trail of debris across the Northwest Territories in Canada. Covering a total area of 124,000 square kilometres (48,000 sq mi) a joint American-Canadian team began a clean-up effort codenamed Operation Morning Light and would spend most of 1978 combing over northern Canada, searching for any fragments of Kosmos 954 that survived re-entry. The teams had to deal with difficult terrain and sub-zero temperatures. The sensitive equipment used to survey the environment for radiation did not always work well in such conditions. However, the team was ultimately able to recover twelve large pieces of the satellite, ten of which were radioactive.

Under the terms of the 1972 Space Liability Convention, a state which launches an object into space is liable for damages caused by that object. For the recovery efforts, the Canadian government billed the Soviet Union C$6,041,174.70 for expenses and additional compensation for future unpredicted expenses; the USSR eventually paid C$3 million. Kosmos 954 has not been the first nor the last of such incidents and have become merely a side note of an era called the Cold War. Today the reactors of many dead RORSATs are still in burial orbit and will eventually fall back down to Earth, which means that humanity will have to launch missions to clean up the reactors sometime in the next couple hundred years.

Literature: Grasty R.L. (1980) The Search for COSMOS-954. In: Haley K.B., Stone L.D. (eds) Search Theory and Applications. NATO Conference Series, vol 8. Springer, Boston, MA. Morrison C.A. (1982) Voyage into the Unknown: The Search for and Recovery of Cosmos 954, Stittsville, Ontario: Canada's Wings. Dean R., Lackenbauer P. W. (2018) Operation Morning Light: An Operational History, Arctic Operational Histories, no.3, Mulroney Institute, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. Gummer W.K., Campbell F.R., Knight G.B., Ricard J.L. (1980) COSMOS 954 - The Occurrence and Nature of Recovered Debris, Minister of Supply and Services Canada.

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118 A (very special) Polar Year http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp118 Tue, 05 Jan 2021 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp118 Watch this on video Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

In this year's review of the year we look back on an interesting but exciting year with 37 episodes that brought us plenty of ice, the mysterious case of a lost propeller blade, the almost uncovered largest oil spill in the Arctic, the impact of COVID on polar research and of course our little cultural getaway with the Voices of the North 5-part mini series. Thanks to all of you who tune in and send us feedback and Happy New Year 2021!

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Curiously Polar Christmas Special 2020 http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp117 Wed, 23 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp117 Watch this on video

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Updates: Sevmorput, A86a (iceberg)

For centuries Christmas plays a large role in cultures around the globe and when the early explorers set sails to Arctic and Antarctic those traditions came along one way or the other. But given the extreme circumstances in the polar regions, the limitations of transport and logistics but also the packed expedition schedules, how did Christmas actually looked like for Peary, Amundsen and Scott and what delicacies were to expect? Pemmican

This is an episode of the Curiously Polar podcast

with Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com/ Henry Páll Wulff: https://henrypall.com/

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116 Mysterious Antarctic Murders http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp116 Tue, 15 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp116 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / [Henry (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/aguycalledpaul)

Even the most remote continent without a native population and only roughly a thousand scientists during wintertime is not free from crime. And maybe it is precisely the desolate location and seclusion that drives some people out of their minds. Enclosed in a very small space with a handful of people who cannot be chosen with six months of total darkness people are under significantly higher stress and the stress induced by harsh winter conditions on the continent has been known to take its toll on residents and explorers of the Antarctic. If you’re stuck there with somebody you really can’t stand, too bad. You’re stuck with them. And if you’re missing somebody who’s far away, too bad. You’re stuck without them. Apart from that, Antarctic stations are largely not designed to be your fancy home away from home, they can be dull places to live. They’re designed to minimise construction cost, rather than keep people amused, interested and comfortable, and extreme weather can make stepping outside for a change of scenery difficult, dangerous or impossible.

Under these conditions, some people thrive by developing a sense of solidarity and teamwork. Others may become depressed and change their behaviour. One station cook began serving unpalatable meals to his crew-mates after a love affair with a co-worker went sour until the group revolted and frightened him back into line. In an extreme case at Russia’s Vostok station in 1959, a scientist became unhinged after losing a game of chess, and murdered his opponent with an axe. Chess was subsequently banned at Russian Antarctic stations. And in 2000 an Australian astrophysicist died mysteriously from methanol poisoning at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. Due to complicated jurisdiction in Antarctica the scientist’s body was held for nearly six months over winter before it could be flown to Christchurch, New Zealand, the base for American activities in Antarctica, for autopsy. Until today, the circumstances of his death remain a mystery.

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115 A Lost Year http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp115 Sat, 12 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp115 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / Henry

With its first research station established in 1956, the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute today operates eight year-round stations and four summer stations under its continuous Russian Antarctic Expedition. The most isolated of them all, Vostok Station, is also the second oldest, 1500 km away from the sea, at 3500 meters above sea level and only 1,301 kilometres short of the Geographic South Pole but near the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility and the South Geomagnetic Pole and at the southern Pole of Cold, with the lowest reliably measured natural temperature on Earth of −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F; 184.0 K), making it one of the optimal places to observe changes in the Earth's magnetosphere. Founded during the International Geophysical Year 1957, the station is now getting on in years and even the annual repairs and improvements can no longer hide the fact that the station is decaying. Because of the low temperatures at Vostok nine months of the year the station operates in full autonomy, without any possibility to access it either by air or land. The functioning of the station is totally dependent on the supplies delivered during summer season by the transport-sledge convoys.

The station consists today of four buildings mounted on piles in 1978 with renovations carried out from time to time, including frame structure change, mounting of heat-insulated panels, repairs to the living rooms and laboratories. However, throughout the years the station buildings become worn out, making the construction of the new wintering complex necessary. Since the fall of 2018, the issue of creating a new wintering complex for Vostok has been discussed at the government level. After financing was secured mainly through Novatek, Russia's second-largest natural gas producer, and the seventh-largest publicly-traded company globally by natural gas production volume, the new station was commissioned in April 2019 and construction was completed by the Pilot Plant of Building Structures located in Gatchina End of August 2020 with the intention to finish the reconstruction of the whole station in East Antarctica by 2024. The complex got dissembled into 133 block modules and loaded onto Nuclear lighter- and container carrier Sevmorput, the world’s only civilian nuclear-powered cargo ship, which left St. Petersburg on October 5th. On October 16 or 17, the speed of the Sevmorput got reduced to 6 to 7 knots. Following an unusual zick-zack-track along the coast of Africa, the ship stayed just outside the Angolan port of Luanda. Even though Rosatomflot, the operator of all Russian civil nuclear ships, kept silent regarding the incident, message got through Russia's Facebook clone Vkontakte, confirming that the ship has lost a propeller blade, of the only propeller used for propulsion. How, in principle, it is possible to break a blade designed to work in ice, being in clear water and open sea at a distance of 500 miles from the coast, where the average depth is 2 thousand meters after the ship just completed dock repairs in January and passed all certifications, nobody dares to explain.

Russian divers flew to Angola to assist in cutting off a second blade in hope of restoring the balance and Russian newspaper Kommersant now confirms that the divers’ repair attempts were unsuccessful and as the time-window for reaching the Antarctica summer season is about to close, it is decided to call Sevmorput home. In addition, this year the spring in Antarctica is warm, and the fast ice around the dedicated destination Progress Station is unreliable. This breakdown could delay the renewal of the only inland Russian scientific station in Antarctica, Vostok, for at least a year.

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114 Collision Course http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp114 Thu, 10 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp114 Watch this on video | Buy us a coffee: Chris / [Henry (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/aguycalledpaul)

In Episode 95 we got a little impression of the world's largest iceberg currently floating in our oceans. Since then, A-68A has moved on his journey and left the vicinity of the Weddell Sea and entered the South Atlantic following the paths of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. With an area of still roughly 4.700 square kilometres, the iceberg is heading with a speed of approximately 1 kilometre per hour towards the island of South Georgia, part of the British Overseas Territory [South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands]https://www.gov.gs/). The slightly smaller island covers an area of 3,528 square kilometres and houses more biomass per square kilometre on the coastal terrain of South Georgia than on any other place on Earth, being home to approximately 5 million seals of four different species and more than 1.5 million penguins, including the second largest of all penguin species, the king penguin](https://oceana.org/marine-life/seabirds/king-penguin). Its surrounding waters serve as an important habitat for migrating whales and diverse fish populations.

It is remarkable that the 150 kilometres long but only 200 metres thick A-68A has stayed pretty much intact despite over three years of drifting in the Southern Ocean given its area-to-thickness ratio that is approximately the same as a few sheets of copier paper stuck together. But it is this feature that makes the iceberg so dangerous. The particular shallow waters host a diverse marine life that plays a critical role in balancing global climate as it acts as a carbon sink. If the iceberg approaches these shallow waters, it has the potential to scrape the seafloor and thereby significantly disrupt the important ecosystem. This would disturb the wildlife and release carbon into the water and ultimately into the atmosphere with the potential to upset the balance for years to come.

The British Antarctic Survey fears that the closer the iceberg comes to the shores of the remote island, the higher the chances of a large negative impact that might happen during a critical time of the breeding season when the seal pups and penguin chicks are growing fast and require frequent meals from their parents. As a result, the parents have a time limit to find enough food during their foraging trips and get back to their offspring before they starve. The iceberg could disrupt this process in several ways. All these factors could lead to very few young penguin and seals surviving this year. Even more frightening is that the sheer size of the iceberg means that it could be around for a number of years, which could lead to the collapse of many penguin and seal colonies on South Georgia.

However, scientists stress that it is hard to predict which way the giant iceberg ultimately takes. The chances are somewhat 50:50 that A-68A follows the fate of its smaller breakoff A-68C on a route around the southern end of the island until it reaches the open waters of the South Atlantic heading into warmer waters, where it could break apart much faster.

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113 Emperor Penguins at Halley Bay http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp113 Tue, 24 Nov 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp113 Watch this on video

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Emperor penguins are probably one of the most difficult animal species to reach, as they are true Antarctic penguins that spend the winter on the ice around the southern continent to hatch their young. They breed in large colonies, the largest ones being at Coulman Island in the Ross Sea and at Halley Bay in the Weddell Sea. Over the past 60 years that researchers have been observing the Halley Bay colony, between 14,300 and 23,000 pairs have flocked to the site’s sea ice to breed. But since 2016, breeding failures have been “catastrophic” and the penguins appear to have abandoned what was once a reliable haven.

In 2015 the strongest El Niño in decades began disrupting Halley Bay’s “fast ice,” that is anchored to the shore or ocean floor. Between April and December, the penguins depend on fast ice to provide stable ground for mating, incubating eggs and caring for chicks. But in 2016, the ice broke apart before the baby penguins would have developed the feathers they needed to swim. Thousands of them appear to have drowned. The ice failed to properly reform in 2017 and 2018, leading to the death of almost all the chicks at the site each season. And now, the colony at Halley Bay has largely disappeared.

The Brunt Ice Shelf at the colonies' edge is traversed by a crack. Previously stable for about 35 years, this crack recently started accelerating northward last year as fast as 4 kilometers per year.

Today the large Chasm 1 crack is only [within a few kilometers]((https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-09/formation-of-brunt-ice-shelf-iceberg-in-antarctica-captured/11370748?nw=0) of the McDonald Ice Rumples and the Halloween crack. If the cracks merge, the area of ice lost from the shelf will likely be at least 1700 square kilometers (660 square miles).

It seems that many of the adult emperor penguins have travelled elsewhere to find more reliable breeding ground. Satellite data shows that a colony of emperor penguins at the nearby Dawson-Lambton Glacier suddenly experienced a “massive increase” in numbers starting in 2016.

At the same time, scientists have been looking for new colonies for the last 10 years. Through satellite mapping technology they know have located 11 previously unknown emperor penguin colonies based on mapping the brown-red guano stains the birds leave on the ice. So it's literally the penguin poo seen by satellites that leads to the discovery of these previously unknown emperor colonies in Antarctica. There are now known to be 61 emperor penguin colonies scattered around the continent.

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112 The Largest Seasonal Event http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp112 Thu, 19 Nov 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp112 Watch this on video

Buy us a coffee: Chris: https://ko-fi.com/chrismarquardt Henry: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/aguycalledpaul

The world’s largest seasonal event is the change from summer to winter ice in Antarctica. Every year a magical event happens largely unnoticed by the general public. When the summer comes to an end, the already low Antarctic temperatures drop even further and start a process that is truly astonishing. When the water temperature drops roughly below a negative 1.7 degrees Centigrade the ocean starts freezing over despite its salty waters. By the end of the Antarctic summer, only about 3 million square kilometres (1.1 million square miles) of sea ice remain, largely in the Weddell Sea, in the Amundsen Sea off Ellsworth Land, off the probably windiest place on Earth - the George V. Coast and around Enderby Land. But during this world’s largest seasonal event, the ice undergoes a change in area from 3 million square kilometres to up to 18 million square kilometres (6.9 million square miles) in the winter. Unlike the Arctic—an ocean basin surrounded by land—the Antarctic is a large continent surrounded by an ocean. Because of this geography, sea ice has more room to expand in the winter. But that ice also stretches into warmer latitudes, leading to more melting in summer. Considering the permanent ice cover of the continent al year-round of about 14 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles) this means that the total ice cover doubles from summer to winter. In early spring the sea ice breaks up and retreats back to roughly 3 million square kilometres again.

Picks of the week: Marquardt International Pinhole camera and a documentary about Iceland's remote Eastfjords, feel free to check them out.

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111 Three New Penguin Species Discovered http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp111 Tue, 10 Nov 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp111 Watch this on video

It’s not so much heroic exploration but rather [scientific research that leads to the discovery of three new species of penguin](Their DNA alone is a dead giveaway, confirming these groups are not breeding with each other. This basic difference suggests all four species are now evolving independently of one another.The four groups of penguins look superficially very similar. But when we measured their skulls, bills, flippers, and legs we found that they were significantly different in size, with those living on the Antarctic Peninsula being smallest and those on the Falkland Islands largest.These physical and genetic differences are great enough that the former gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) is now recognised as four distinct species: P. papua from the Falkland Islands, P. ellsworthi from the Antarctic Peninsula, P. poncetii from South Georgia, and P. taeniata from Kerguelen Island.The four species inhabit distinct environmental conditions across a large range of latitudes. P. ellsworthi lives on the cold, icy Antarctic Peninsula at a latitude of around 65° south, in stark contrast to the milder conditions experienced by P. taeniata at 49° south. The four species also consume different diets, with the more southerly species eating more krill and fewer fish.). First described in 1781, the gentoo penguin was considered one species with two subspecies, one that lives in the Falkland Islands (Pygoscelis papua papua) and one that lives in the South Shetland Islands and Western Antarctic Peninsula (Pygoscelis papua ellsworthi).

Now it seems that one species has been split into four. Despite sharing roughly the same appearance, in habitats not so far apart, the gentoo penguin appears to have divided itself into four populations that have little to do with one another, according to new research.

For the first time, scientists have shown that these penguins are not only genetically distinct but that they are also physically different too. Gentoos tend to stick close to their home colonies, and over hundreds of thousands of years have become geographically isolated from each other to the point where they don't interbreed with each other, even though they could easily swim the distance that separates them. And that's essentially the concept of a species: an interbreeding group reproductively isolated from other such groups.

Using genome data and measurements from museum samples, researchers found clear differences in the genes and morphology of gentoo penguins. The differences are great enough that the authors think both recognised 'subspecies' should be elevated to their own species, while two new species should also be added. They look very similar to the untrained eye, but when we measured their skeletons we found statistical differences in the lengths of their bones and the sizes and shape of their beaks.

Their DNA alone is a dead giveaway, confirming these groups are not breeding with each other. This basic difference suggests all four species are now evolving independently of one another.

The four groups of penguins look superficially very similar. But when we measured their skulls, bills, flippers, and legs we found that they were significantly different in size, with those living on the Antarctic Peninsula being smallest and those on the Falkland Islands largest. These physical and genetic differences are great enough that the former gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) is now recognised as four distinct species: P. papua from the Falkland Islands, P. ellsworthi from the Antarctic Peninsula, P. poncetii from South Georgia, and P. taeniata from Kerguelen Island. The four species inhabit distinct environmental conditions across a large range of latitudes. P. ellsworthi lives on the cold, icy Antarctic Peninsula at a latitude of around 65° south, in stark contrast to the milder conditions experienced by P. taeniata at 49° south. The four species also consume different diets, with the more southerly species eating more krill and fewer fish.

Tyler J, Bonfitto MT, Clucas GV, Reddy S, Younger JL. Morphometric and genetic evidence for four species of gentoo penguin. Ecol Evol. 2020;00:1–11.

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110 Loki's Castle http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp110 Tue, 03 Nov 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp110 Watch this on video

In 2008 a Norwegian-lead expedition to the seafloor of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway brought to light an extraordinary finding: The northernmost deep-sea hydrothermal vents within the Arctic Circle. Dissolved sulfide minerals that solidify when vent water as hot as 300 °C (570 °F) hits the icy cold of the deep sea have, over the years, accumulated around the vent field in what is one of the most massive hydrothermal sulfide deposits ever found on the seafloor. The accumulation of the chimneys assembles the shape of a fantasy castle what led the scientists the name it Loki's Castle, referring to a Norwegian god renowned for trickery.

At a depth of around 2,352 metres (7,717 ft) the cluster of five hydrothermal vents, also called black smokers, the whole deposit is about 250 metres (825 ft) in diameter at its base and about 90 metres (300 ft) across on the top and might turn out to be the largest such deposit seen on the seafloor. Given the massive sulfide deposit, the vent field must surely have been active for many thousands of years.

The more spectacular findings, however, is that scientists discovered a new group of Archaea, the Lokiarchaeota (or "Loki" for short), and identify it as a missing link in the evolutionary lineage of eukaryotes or all complex cell organisms. In this context, the discovery of the Lokiarchaeota, with some but not all of the characteristics of eukaryotes, provides evidence on the transition from archaea to eukaryotes. Because of that, some scientists think the vents would have been great locales for the origin of life on Earth.

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109 The Last Surrender http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp109 Wed, 28 Oct 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp109 Watch this episode on video

In summer 1944 one of the last manned stations (code-named Haudegen) was established on Svalbard at Wordiebukta, Rijpfjorden, Nordaustlandet. A party of 11, led by geographer Dr Wilhelm Dege, collected and transmitted weather data from 14 September 1944 to 5 September 1945; the party also explored and mapped the ice-free corridor extending south across Nordaustlandet to the head of Wahlenbergfjorden and much of the north coast from Kapp Loven east to Finn Malmgrenfjorden. World War Two ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of the German high command on May 7th, 1945 in Reims. What no one realises is that a tiny, forgotten outpost of the Third Reich was holding out in the eternal daylight of the Arctic summer, over 3200 kilometres (2000 miles) away from the ruins of Berlin. Wilhelm Dege later wrote the book "War North of 80: The Last German Arctic Weather Station of World War II."

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108 Shooting the Northern Lights http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp108 Tue, 20 Oct 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp108 Watch this episode on video

It's Aurora season and capturing this amazing phenomenon in the ionosphere isn't as difficult as you think. Chris and Henry look at photos and discuss their experiences and stories around the pictures. The most important things to watch out for is to dress warm (because it's cold), watch stray light, expose long, use a tripod if you can, include something nice in the foreground, maybe even a reflection in water and if you're on a ship, time the waves and find a fix foreground.

Get in touch! Got feedback? Did you miss a topic we should cover? Do you want to get get a deeper insight or an update on a previous topic? Email us or find us online at curiouslypolar.com, on Twitter, on Insta

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107 It's Gone! http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp107 Wed, 30 Sep 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp107 Watch this episode on video

Once a thick and resilient structure, Arctic sea ice is now thinner and more vulnerable to the seasons than ever before, according to new NASA research. 2020's Arctic sea ice cover shrank to the second-lowest extent since modern record-keeping began in the late 1970s. An analysis of satellite data by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that the 2020 minimum extent, which was likely reached on Sept. 15, measured 3.74 million square kilometres (1.44 million square miles).

Combining satellite data and submarine sonars, the study reveals that 70 percent of today's ice cover consists of seasonal ice, the stuff that forms and melts within a single year, instead of thicker, established ice. While younger sea ice does grow faster, more coverage is not always better. Seasonal sea ice, no matter how extensive, cannot trump the durability of old age and volume.

With a flimsier foundation, Arctic sea ice will find itself increasingly beholden to the whims of the wind and weather. It will also melt far more easily come summertime and especially as global warming continues to heat up our seasons and our oceans.

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106 The Impact of Covid-19 on Polar Research http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp106 Tue, 11 Aug 2020 15:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp106 Video version of this episode

As COVID-19 sweeps the planet, measure to contain the virus are affecting research programs on both, the Arctic and Antarctic. While in the Arctic, travel restrictions of countries like Norway, Greenland, Canada and the US restricts resupply of existing projects on the Greenlandic icecap as well as in the Arctic Ocean, the far south is even more affected. Medical care in Antarctica being limited, most research programs have been put on halt and are going to have to take a gap year. And even though no project is being cancelled, no activities are being cancelled, it's all just being postponed, there are only a few years left to make some very significant changes to avoid the worst of climate change consequences, and science can’t afford to wait an entire year.

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105 New islands in the Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp105 Tue, 28 Jul 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp105 Video version of this episode

While the Arctic warms up to six times faster than the rest of the world according to the latest findings, the melting of glaciers leads to the discovery and/or formation of new islands. In 2019, Norwegian researchers discovered on satellite images that with the melting of the Bragebreen and Gimlebreen glaciers the previous Brageneset headland on the southwestern tip of Nordaustlandet has turned out to be an island of approximately 10km2. Similar cases emerged already in the Russian High Arctic where research vessels of the Russian Navy discovered new islands in the archipelagos Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land. The largest of the five new islands is 54,500 km2. In 2015-2018, more than 30 new islands, bays, capes and straits were found. And that is not the end of the story. Polish researchers have discovered changes to the map of Norway, which could result in the country’s largest Arctic island splitting in two. Radar soundings by Polish researchers show that Spitsbergen could split in two as the Hornbreen and Hambergbreen glaciers on the island retreat every year. This would create a new channel of water between the seas on either side of the island – effectively splitting the island. “The conclusion coming from the surveys is that the glacier bed is below sea level and no obstacles have been identified that might prevent connection of the Barents Sea and the Greenland Sea when glaciers have retreated,” Polish researcher Mariusz Grabiec says.The northern parts of the Barents Sea and Spitsbergen are among the places with the fastest temperature rise on our planet. Svalbard, the fastest-heating place on earth, is a live laboratory for everyone studying the dramatic effects of the climate crisis. While world leaders travel to New York on September 23 for the UN Climate Action Summit to find ways to limit the global temperature to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, temperatures on Svalbard have already risen by 4 °C. At Spitsbergen, the largest island on the archipelago, both permafrost and glacier are melting in a speed nobody could predict a few years ago. It will likely be not the last new islands to appear in the Arctic.

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104 100 Years of Svalbard Treaty http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp104 Tue, 14 Jul 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp104 Watch the video

This year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most remarkable international treaties - The Spitsbergen Treaty. Signed in times of tremendous turmoil right after World War I the 14 countries recognises the sovereignty of Norway over the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, at the time called Spitsbergen. Over the years, more than 40 states have ratified the treaty grant numerous rights to the signatory countries, such as access to Svalbard including the right to fish, hunt or undertake any kind of maritime, industrial, mining or trade activity. But the times of the celebrations are overshadowed by threats and gestures from parties who interpret the contract differently. And so it remains exciting to see where the next 100 years of the contract will lead, that taught lessons of territorial temptation and regulates the handling of the northernmost part of Europe.

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103 Voices of the North, pt. V - The Sound of the Far East http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp103 Tue, 30 Jun 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp103 Video version of this episode

The ‘shore of two oceans’ is home to an ancient, Paleo-Siberian group of Arctic natives. With roughly 16,000 people the Chukchi who live in the interior of the Chukchi peninsula have traditionally been herdsmen and hunters of reindeer, while those who live along the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukchi Sea, and the Bering Sea have customarily hunted sea mammals such as seals, whales, walruses, and sea lions. The Chukchi call themselves the Lygoravetlat, which means "genuine people." In their long, turbulent and changeable history, the Chukchi did not have many constants, and its cultural traditions, such as music and shamanism, have suffered particularly in recent history.

The Chukchi represent a kind of bridge between cultures and combine throat singing with drum dance, later also with classical singing. Their unbreakable link with the natural world is found over and over in Chukchi folklore. The rich tradition, nurtured by centuries of development, is made up of numerous tales of animals and people. What is unique for the Chukchi, however, is that only women practiced both the local form of throat singing and drum dancing in order to say goodbye to the men who set off on the hunt. But in addition to the state-organized ethnic folklore groups, there are also young, up-and-coming bands that integrate the traditional music of the Chukchi into contemporary music.

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102 The Greatest Ecological Disaster Since Exxon Valdez http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp102 Wed, 17 Jun 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp102 Watch this episode as a video.

In the beginning of June Russia has declared a state of emergency, just five days after a power plant fuel leak in its Arctic region caused 20,000 tonnes of diesel oil to escape into a local river, turning its surface crimson red. The Ambarnaya river, into which the oil has been discharged, is part of a network that flows into the environmentally sensitive Arctic Ocean. Built on permafrost that’s rapidly melting in a warming Arctic, the pillars that supported the plant’s fuel tank started to sink. Two days passed before local authorities learned of the spill from the Nadezhdinsky Metallurgical Plant. Even then, local officials only learned of the spill from social media. The plant is operated by a division of Nornickel, whose factories in the area have made the city of Norilsk one of the most heavily polluted places on Earth.

Open a map of the area

The surprisingly open media coverage of this incident gives an unprecedented insight into mining and drilling operations in the Russian Arctic and its connected threats for the fragile environment.

Environmentalists have said the river would be difficult to clean, given its shallow waters and remote location, as well as the magnitude of the spill. A World Wildlife Fund speaking to the AFP news agency described this as the second-largest known oil leak in modern Russia’s history in terms of volume.

The Russian chapter of activist group Greenpeace said damages to the Arctic waterways could be at least 6 billion rubles (over $76 million), and has compared the incident to Alaska’s 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. Its estimate does not include atmospheric damage due to greenhouse gases and soil pollution. The installed buoys will only help collect a small part of the pollution, leading us to say that nearly all the diesel fuel will remain in the environment. The clean-up effort could take between 5-10 years.

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101 Voices of the North, pt. IV - Microcosm of a Vanishing Culture http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp101 Tue, 02 Jun 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp101 Spread over an immense tundra and forest-tundra zone from the Kanin Peninsula on the European side to the Taimyr Peninsula on the Siberian side of the Russian North, the Nenets are one of 40 Russias indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East. Like their ancestors, they are still mainly nomadic people with their main subsistence coming from hunting and reindeer herding. Their shamanistic and animistic belief system, which stresses respect for the land and its resources, also intimately linked their song tradition with shamanistic ritual in the past. But the Nenet’s song is much more complex and contains several different types. Part four of our exploration of Arctic indigenous music.

Here's what kept Chris busy for the last weeks: PHOTO SENSEI - interactive video sessions with your favorite photographers and educators

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100 Voices of the North, pt. III - The beauty of Joiks http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp100 Tue, 19 May 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp100 Spread over a vast area, covering four countries, the Sámi people have inhabited the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Fennoscandia for over 3,500 years. To make up for past suppression, the authorities of Norway, Sweden and Finland now make an effort to build up Sámi cultural institutions and promote Sámi culture and language. Currently, the revitalisation of the Sami culture has grown strong and the Sami traditions have been reinvigorated by increasing awareness and conscious efforts to preserve the Sami culture as a unique and valued part of the Scandinavian societies. A characteristic feature of Sámi musical tradition is the singing of joik.

Joiks are song-chants and are traditionally sung a cappella, usually sung slowly and deep in the throat with the apparent emotional content of sorrow or anger. In a way, it is similar to the Inuit throat singing and isn’t at the same time. Using the voice and forming sounds deep in the throat might appear similar, the outcome and performance, however, is completely different. Joik, the singing tradition of Sami, is considered to be ancient with roots presumably in prehistoric times. It is unique to the Sami culture and particularly among European singing traditions. This singing tradition is characterized by a special vocal technology that utilizes nearly the whole range of the human natural vocal potential and was original without instrumental accompaniment. The use of words could vary from one region to another, from nearly none in the North Sami language area to long epic descriptions in East Sami in the Kola Peninsula. The melodies with regular rhythmic and melodic patterns could often be freely played with and improvised on. Additionally, joik could also be applied to story-telling.

There is a lot of research about joiks and there is even the theory, that the joik have had and possibly still has a role as a health-promoting and/or resilience factor within the Sami culture, giving the Sámi people a significant difference compared to other indigenous people in the Arctic. Usually sung a cappella, musical instruments frequently accompany joiks in recent years. Joik remains an integral part of Sámi culture because of its integrative quality. A joik connects the performer and his or her listeners, not only with each other but with their collective past by uniting it with present experience. As Richard Jones-Bamman has put it: Joiking effectively collapses time. Not all Sámi can perform joik, but knowledge of the genre is still a key symbol of Sámi communal identity. Even though its existence was long denied in public pronouncements, joik has continued to be practiced and heard.

For modern Sámi artists like Sofia Jannok the joiek philosophy remains the base of their work, they delicately blend the old vocal tradition with genres like pop, electronica, and jazz. As South Sámi singer Marja Mortensson has put it: “Joik is like a whole philosophy. It’s about the connection with nature and the people around you. When I joik, my head gets filled with images, and I feel that I travel – either to a place or into the soul of the person I am joiking.”

Check out this Spotify playlist with Sámi music.

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099 Voices of the North, pt. II - ULO, The World’s Most Successful Record Label http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp099 Tue, 12 May 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp099 In a vast but sparsely populated country music is more than just entertainment. This is even more true in a place like Greenland, the largest island in the world. Where traditional Inuit music like drum dance is mainly performed to entertain tourists today it is even more important to find ways to include those over 4,000 year old traditional elements within modern-day pop culture. And when the record label ULO released the rock band Sumé's first album Sumut in 1973 it singlehandedly kickstarted the local rock scene by uniquely singing in the Greenlandic language and using elements of traditional drum dances in the music. The label, that could be legitimately the world's most successful record label, is today Greenland's only major music label. Their least successful releases sell the equivalent of four times platinum in Europe. Their biggest seller was purchased by an estimated twenty percent of Greenland's total population, in numbers over 10,000 units to a population of only 56,000 people. That equates to twenty-five million sold copies in the states! That only can work because the people in Greenland love listening to their local music. Releasing between 10 and 15 records per year, the music scene in Greenland couldn't be any more diverse. Stretching over half the length of Africa, the biggest island in the world spreads its tiny population along a 44,000 kilometers (27,000 miles) long coastline with no roads between the settlements, far away from each other. Music has become the link between people all over Greenland. And music is the new medium of poetry. Rock and pop present thoughts and ideas to Greenlanders. That makes the country probably the hottest music market in the world - if you compare the sales numbers with the numbers of inhabitants.

Check out the Sounds of Greenland on Spotify.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
098 Voices of the North, pt. I - The Story of Aakuluk Music http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp098 Tue, 05 May 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp098 Donate and help us keep the lights on.

If there is one thing that cultures around the world have in common then it’s music. Music helps us to express emotions, to celebrate, to mourn. We connect memories with certain songs, couples have "their" song, films without music are hard to imagine nowadays and even in a time when films didn't have their own sound, pianists played a suitable score in the cinemas. But at the same time music is very much connected to each culture itself, to traditions and language. With the upcoming episodes we would like to shed a light on the music culture of the circumpolar north.

The first part of this mini series takes a look into the music of Nunavut, probably the largest Inuit territory. In a culture that lives in small communities, was largely nomadic, and is cut off from the outside world for most of the year, music plays an even bigger role. Traditional Inuit music has been based on drums used in dance music as far back as can be known. When you travel along the different Inuit cultures from Greenland to Canada and Alaska towards Russia, you will find the basics of the drum dances in all the cultures and the same applies for the second base of traditional Inuit music, a vocal style called katajjaq, Inuit throat singing. Mostly performed as a duet, this form of throat singing mimics the natural world. Wind, ice, sea and bird sounds dominate.

This traditional form of singing was only recently threatened with extinction. The colonisation of the Arctic has almost everywhere caused the nomadic peoples to be settled and the language of the colonial power to be spoken primarily at school, Danish in Greenland, English in Canda and Alaska. This effectively prevented the transfer of this purely oral form of expression. Fortunately, however, today we find a lively Inuit culture everywhere in the circumpolar Arctic. And as the Inuit languages see a new rise so does the throat singing. And it’s amazing to see that it’s not only part of today’s Inuit musical pop culture but being adopted by people all around the world. At the German University of Music FRANZ LISZT in Weimar two throat singers from Nunavut, Kiah Hachey and Karen Flaherty, are joined by three electronic music artists, Paul Hauptmeier, Martin Recker and Sergio Valencia. Inuit throat singing usually doesn’t include any form of instrumentation and the two guys simply create environments for the audience to encapsulate and experience the throat singing. They place the wonderful singing into an environment, space if you wish that allows you to ground and reference the throat singing and chanting.

As music has become a huge part in Western culture it always has been in Inuit culture. Inspired by traditional throat singing and contemporary artists, young Inuit musicians offer a modern take on Inuit life. And in 2016 the band members of the band The Jerry Cans founded Nunavut’s first record label. The alt-country band The Jerry Cans started the label because they found it very challenging to navigate the music industry from Iqaluit. When in 2016 Aakuluk Music started its business in Nunavut's capital Iqaluit it was a first-timer. The first label in Nunavut, the first step to build up an infrastructure we take for granted in Western cultures. But up north, things are different. Today, Aakuluk Music’s mission is to record, market and distribute music sung in Inuktitut and originating from Inuit traditions, building hope through music and community, and preserving the territory's distinct culture. And a few more record labels, like Hitmakerz, followed since then.

Check out Aakuluk Music's sounds on Spotify.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
097 About Kings and Emperors – Penguins of the Antarctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp097 Tue, 28 Apr 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp097 If you think of the Antarctic, you almost inevitably think of what is probably the most symbolic animal in the south - penguins. Living almost exclusively south of the equator - the Galapagos penguin is found on the edge to the Northern Hemisphere - those curious fellas might look a bit awkward when they waddle around on land. But as soon as you experience them in water you realise, those aquatic flightless birds are perfectly adapted for a life in the ocean. They have evolved into the most efficient swimmers and divers of all birds and some species spend 75% of their time at sea — the most of any birds.

As the coldest, driest, and windiest place on Earth, Antarctica is mostly a huge, lifeless desert. Its largest land animal is a wingless midge, Belgica antarctica, whose adults live about a week and we talked about already in a bit more detail in Episode 84. But most people wonder, why’s the midge the largest land animal of Antarctica? Shouldn’t it be the penguin? Here starts the first misconception. Even though most people will experience penguins on land, mainly during their breeding season, they are no land animals. And although they cannot fly, they are birds. Penguins are the most common birds in the Antarctic. Living in colonies with populations larger than some cities, and surviving in the harshest of conditions, it is no wonder that penguins are seen as the emblem of Antarctica. However, of the 17 different species of penguin, only two (Emperor and Adélie) make the Antarctic continent their true home, although others (Gentoo, Chinstrap and Macaroni) breed on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, where conditions are less harsh. King penguins and Magellanic penguins only breed on the warmer more northerly subantarctic islands or the southernmost tip of the Americas.

But the real home of all penguins is the cooler waters of the Southern Hemisphere. In the whole of Antarctica, the ocean is the really productive, biodiverse realm. There are loads of species and very high abundance in places. And that’s where penguins find their food. Antarctic waters brim with krill, a tiny crustacean that feeds large whales, including blue, humpback, and minke whales, as well as penguins. Penguin wings are stiff, short flippers to propel them underwater — they literally fly through the sea. Their legs are set far back in the body, and together with the tail form an underwater rudder to their perfectly streamlined bodies. Their cruising speed in water is about 10km per hour. To catch their breath and to save energy while swimming, they leap clear of the water every few meters.

They are excellent divers, descending to depths of over 250 meters, though most of their dives will be in the top 10 meters. Unlike flying birds, their bones are dense to make diving easier. Underwater they are every bit as fearsome to their prey as lions are to theirs!

Although no one knows for sure where the name ‘penguin’ comes from, there are a few theories about it. It could come from the Welsh ‘pen gwyn’, which means ‘white head’, or from the Latin ‘pinguis’, referring to the fat or blubber of the bird. The name penguin was first given to another type of bird, the auk (also a large, flightless, black and white bird). However, it seems it’s quite a task to pronounce the word itself, even for skilled actors and speakers like Benedict Cumberbatch.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
096 Deception Island http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp096 Tue, 14 Apr 2020 11:35:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp096 » Donate here! - The Coronavirus crisis has had (and continues to have) a significant impact on our income. To help us keep the lights on, we're asking you to support us, if you can. THANKS to Katie for the support and thanks to everyone else who supports us in these tough times.

Today's episode takes us on a small tour to what is probably the most exciting geological feature on the edge of the South Shetland Islands offshore the Antarctic Peninsula and one of the most incredible islands on the planet - the active volcano Deception Island. Named by American sealer Nathaniel Palmer on account of its outward deceptive appearance as a normal island, Deception Island reveals itself rather to be a ring around a flooded caldera once, the narrow entrance of Neptune's Bellows is passed. Being a focal point of the early sealing and whaling industry in the Southern Ocean, Deception Island served also as the basis for Robert Wilkins' first Antarctic flight in 1928. But first and foremost, Deception Island is an active volcano, the flooded caldera of which enables us today to sail into the most protected natural harbour in the Antarctic. Deception Island is one of the most active volcanoes in Antarctica, with more than 20 explosive eruptive events registered over the past two centuries. Recent eruptions (1967, 1969, and 1970) and the volcanic unrest episodes that happened in 1992, 1999, and 2014–2015 demonstrate that the occurrence of future volcanic activity is still valid. The ring-shaped island is the exposed portion of an active shield volcano 30 km (17 miles) in diameter, produced more than 10,000 years ago by an explosive eruption, that is responsible for the largest known eruption in the Antarctic area. The active volcano is home to a wide variety of wildlife, the density of it in some parts being literally staggering. Deception Island on the map

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
095 Iceberg A-68a http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp095 Tue, 07 Apr 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp095 Support us: IBAN: NL98BUNQ2042785806 BIC/SWIFT BUNQNL2AXXX » Credit Card » iDEAL » SOFORT » Bancontact

In March, Henry had the chance to make a rare encounter: At the edge of the Weddell Sea, in Powell Basin, the world's largest existing iceberg presented a once-in-a-lifetime experience. With a surface area of 5,800 square kilometres, twice the size of Luxembourg, larger than Delaware and weighing one trillion tonnes, it is one of the largest recorded icebergs, the largest being B-15 which measured 11,000 square kilometres before breaking up. The calving of A-68 reduced the overall size of the Larsen C shelf by 12 percent. With a speed of currently up to 5 nautical miles per day the iceberg is moving away from the Antarctic Peninsula into the warmer waters of the South Atlantic.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
094 Covid19 and the Polar Regions http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp094 Tue, 31 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp094 Support us: IBAN: NL98BUNQ2042785806 BIC/SWIFT BUNQNL2AXXX » credit card » iDEAL » SOFORT » Bancontact

The coronavirus pandemic is literally everywhere. But if it affects us who live in rather stable conditions in Central Europe or the Americas, how does it affect the indigenous people in the Arctic? Are Indigenous at much greater risk amid coronavirus pandemic, since water shortages, insufficient healthcare, overcrowded housing make native groups especially susceptible to the virus? Most local communities in the Arctic, however, prohibited travel into the territories quite early, trying to avoid the virus of getting in. As experts say, "It is imperative to keep the virus out". The pandemic not only affects daily lives but also scientific research when coronavirus concerns force Arctic mission to cancel research flights of the largest research expedition of all times. Luckily one continent remains untouched by the coronavirus: Antarctica.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
093 South Georgia http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp093 Tue, 24 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp093 Being one of the cruelest, most gorgeous wildernesses on earth, South Georgia is a chunk of the Andes that wandered into the southern Atlantic some 50 million years ago. The 170 km spit of land is so isolated that it creates its own weather system, but despite—or perhaps because of—its ruggedness, it’s also a holy grail. Located 1,300 miles east of Tierra del Fuego in the South Atlantic Ocean, a combination of underwater topography and converging currents produce rich seas that support some of the most populous seal, penguin, and seabird colonies on the planet. Today, other than the extraordinary wildlife, the island is home to only a British Government Office, a postmaster, some museum staff and scientists.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
092 Icebergs Blue and Green http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp092 Tue, 17 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp092 Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/ 091 The Big Thaw http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp091 Tue, 10 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp091 Thwaites Glacier, sometimes referred to as the Doomsday Glacier, is an unusually broad and fast Antarctic glacier flowing into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea. For the first time now, scientists of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration have recorded unusually warm water beneath the Florida-sized glacier that is already melting and contributing to a rise in sea levels. The researchers, working on the Thwaites Glacier, recorded water temperatures at the base of the ice of more than 2 degrees Celsius above the normal freezing point. Critically, the measurements were taken at the glacier’s grounding line, the area where it transitions from resting wholly on bedrock to spreading out on the sea as ice shelves. That is significant because the Thwaites, along with the Pine Island Glacier and a number of smaller glaciers, acts as a brake on part of the much larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Together, the two bigger glaciers are currently holding back ice that, if melted, would raise the world’s oceans by more than a meter over centuries, an amount that would put many coastal cities underwater.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
090 Ema Kuhn - A Life in Antarctica http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp090 Tue, 03 Mar 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp090 Ema Kuhn is passionate about the Polar Regions. Always fascinated with life and nature, she decided at age 13 to become a biologist and dedicated 18 years to scientific research. Twelve years of her academic career were devoted to studying life in freezing and cold environments. An expert in Antarctic ecosystems, she has published several research papers and has a particular interest in how life adapts and evolves in cold environments. Her academic life gave Ema the opportunity to participate in 8 scientific expeditions to Antarctica, including the Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctic Plateau (at 84°00' S/79°30' W), McMurdo Sound and Dry Valleys. Considering Antarctica her "home, sweet home" she is passionate about sharing her knowledge and introduce people to the mesmerizing beauty of this place. In this episode, she is sharing some of her passion with us.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
089 Dome A - The heights of China's ambition in Antarctica http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp089 Tue, 25 Feb 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp089 China's aim to declare a special managed area at the ice sheet’s highest point is a test of Antarctic governance. China has become more and more active in Antarctica in recent years – both in research and in the international framework of agreements known as the Antarctic Treaty System that has successfully seen the frozen continent devoted to peace and science for decades. Establishing an ASMA around the Kunlun Station in the area known as Dome Argus (Dome A), the highest place on the Antarctic ice sheet would essentially give China a greater say in the activities conducted in the area. China is a consultative party to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the creation of an ASMA around Kunlun would serve as a symbolic achievement to showcase China’s influence in the ATS. The proposal was first raised in 2013 – the year President Xi Jinping took office, where from outset he emphasised the importance of the emerging economy playing a key role in global governance. The proposal for Antarctica reflected what has been a general shift in Chinese diplomacy under Xi, from an attitude of “keep low” to “being active” in the international arena. While China’s enthusiasm is clear, several countries oppose this proposal, with the stand-off holding implications for future Antarctic governance. Legally speaking, China argues its proposal for Dome A is to protect the important environmental value of the area. Opponents however believe that an ASMA is essential only when more than one country is conducting activities in the same area, where coordination is required to avoid negative effects for the environment. So far, China is the only country to operate in the Dome A area. Nevertheless, behind polite, diplomatic debates, some alarmist views bluntly reveal that there is a fear China might consolidate its presence in a large area around Dome A.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
088 Hidden Under the Ice: Lake Vostok http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp088 Tue, 18 Feb 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp088 Deep, dark and mysterious, Lake Vostok is one of the largest subglacial lakes in the world. Once a large surface lake in East Antarctica, Lake Vostok is now buried under more than 3.7 kilometers (2.4 miles) of ice near Russia's Vostok research station. Covered with ice for millennia, cut off from light and contact with the atmosphere, Lake Vostok is one of the most extreme environments on Earth. The lake has been ice-covered for at least 15 million years. Lake Vostok is one of the largest lakes on Earth in size and volume, rivaling Lake Ontario in North America. The lake itself is 230 km (143 miles) long, 50 km (31 miles) wide and as much as 800 meters (2,625 feet) deep. Lake Vostok sits near the South Pole in East Antarctica. The presence of a large buried lake was first suggested in the 1960s by a Russian geographer/pilot who noticed the large, smooth patch of ice above the lake from the air. Airborne radar experiments by British and Russian researchers in 1996 confirmed the discovery of the unusual lake. Lake Vostok harbors a unique ecosystem based on chemicals in rocks instead of sunlight, living in isolation for hundreds of thousands of years. The types of organisms the scientists found suggested they derived their energy from minerals present in the lake and sources from the underlying bedrock. Life in Lake Vostok doesn’t just exist — it thrives. Over 3500 different species have been identified, including a whole group of totally novel organisms. Lake Vostok is one of the easiest subglacial lakes to detect due to its size, yet most of its secrets remain.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
087 Magical Diamond Dust http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp087 Tue, 11 Feb 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp087 While Antarctica is considered one of the most inhospitable places in the world by its ice and harsh conditions, the low temperatures on the ground provide some of the most breathtaking weather phenomena. Names like Brockenspectre, Green Flash or Halo arouse curiosity, but really exciting is the magic sounding diamond dust. Although there are low levels of precipitation in Antarctica, meteorological wonders abound and diamond dust is one of them! The air temperature in Antarctica is often low enough for water vapour to condense directly out of the atmosphere and form tiny ice crystals which then fall. On a sunny day these catch the sunlight and shine like a sprinkling of diamonds in the sky, hence the name diamond dust. If the crystals are orientated in exactly the right way they can give rise to brilliant halos. Diamond dust is also responsible for beautiful optical phenomena like sun dogs, halos and light pillars. CP 061 Ice and Flames: Those Mysterious Arctic Volcanos. Throwing hot water in the air

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
086 A Sheer Incredible Piece of Ice http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp086 Tue, 04 Feb 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp086 The single biggest mass of ice in the world, containing about 90 percent of the planet's freshwater ice and around 60-70 percent of the total freshwater on earth, covers about 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. But the continent is divided: In East Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on a major landmass, while in West Antarctica the bed can extend to more than 2,500 m below sea level. While the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is relatively stable, scientists claim that if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt, it would raise global sea levels by about 5 meters/16 feet. At the same time, the landmass of Antarctica would rise out of the ocean. Several ice shelves surround especially the western Antarctic. The Ross Ice Shelf - a floating tongue of ice that extends off the continent's main landmass - encompasses more than 510,000 square kilometers and is the largest ice shelf that has ever been discovered. All in all, one can say that the largely unknown seventh continent deep in the south is truly a sheer incredible piece of ice.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
085 Deathly Hollows: How to Find the Coldest Place on Earth http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp085 Tue, 28 Jan 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp085 The icy turtle shell of East Antarctica provides the perfect ground for the coldest place to find on Earth. A hundred little pockets of exceptional cold scattered across the highest parts of the ice sheet. The coldest spots were in shallow depressions in the ice, little hollows where the surface isn’t perfectly smooth. That’s probably because cold air sinks into these depressions as it sinks into a river valley or a canyon. During the long, dark polar winter temperatures are reached scientists think they are about as cold as it can possibly get in our corner of the solar system.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
084 Meet the Natives: The World's Toughest Animal http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp084 Tue, 21 Jan 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp084 Being Antarctica’s largest native purely terrestrial animal, the Antarctic midge (Belgica antarctica) has the smallest genome in the insect kingdom. The holder of two Guinness Book of World Records entries spends more than half its life frozen. A better understanding of how it does survives freezing temperatures of up to -40 °C could have implications for human health.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
083 The Mysterious Blood Red Flow http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp083 Tue, 14 Jan 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp083 In 1911, during an expedition to the McMurdo Dry Valleys, geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor discovered a strange phenomenon on a remote glacier in East Antarctica: The lily-white ice of the glacier was being stained a deep red by water flowing from deep within the glacier. Taylor had believed it was due to algae discoloring the water, however that hypothesis was never verified.

For many years the source of the red color remained a mystery, as the mean temperature is 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-17 degrees Celsius) and little glacial melting can be seen at the surface. But in 2017 scientists of the University of Alaska Fairbanks announced that they had discovered the cause.

The deep red coloring is due to oxidized iron in brine salt water, the same process that gives iron a dark red color when it rusts. When the iron-bearing saltwater comes into contact with oxygen the iron oxidizes and takes on a red coloring, in effect dying the water to a striking deep red color - and its name, Blood Falls.

Roughly two million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water that contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a place with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of “primordial ooze.” The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron. After that, something eerily magical happens with the by-products. The iron in the water interacts with them to restore the sulphates, basically recycling the sulphates for the microbes to break down into oxygen over and over again. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

Furthermore, the scientists mapped the path of the water that feeds the five-story tall falls and explores how water can exist under the ice, unravel the inner workings of glaciers.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
082 Deep Freezes: Drilling for Earth's Climate Archive http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp082 Tue, 07 Jan 2020 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp082 Given that the coldest ever land temperature was recorded in Antarctica (−89.2°C at Russia’s Vostok Station in 1983), it can be hard to imagine Antarctica as a warm, temperate paradise. But Antarctica hasn’t always been an icy land locked in the grip of a massive ice sheet. In fact, Antarctica was once almost as warm as Melbourne is today.

Researchers have estimated that 40-50 million years ago, temperatures in Antarctica reached up to 17°C. Scientists have also found fossils showing that Antarctica was once covered with verdant green forests and inhabited by dinosaurs!

Ice sheets have one particularly special property. They allow us to go back in time and to sample accumulation, air temperature and air chemistry from another time. Ice core records allow us to generate continuous reconstructions of past climate, going back at least 800,000 years. By looking at past concentrations of greenhouse gasses in layers in ice cores, scientists can calculate how modern amounts of carbon dioxide and methane compare to those of the past, and, essentially, compare past concentrations of greenhouse gasses to temperature.

The large Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have huge, high plateaux where snow accumulates in an ordered fashion. Slow ice flow at the center of these ice sheets (near the ice divide) means that the stratigraphy of the snow and ice is preserved. Drilling a vertical hole through this ice involves a serious effort involving many scientists and technicians and usually involves a static field camp for a prolonged period of time.

Shallow ice cores (100-200 m long) are easier to collect and can cover up to a few hundred years of accumulation, depending on accumulation rates. Deeper cores require more equipment, and the borehole must be filled with drill fluid to keep it open. The drilling fluid used is normally a petroleum-derived liquid like kerosene. It must have a suitable freezing point and viscosity. Collecting the deepest ice cores (up to 3000 m) requires a (semi)permanent scientific camp and a long, multi-year campaign.

Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica are mainstays of modern climate science. Traditionally, scientists drill in places where ice layers accumulate year after year, undisturbed by glacial flows. The long layer cake records from deep sites in the center of Antarctica reveal how greenhouse gases have surged and ebbed across hundreds of thousands of years. But because heat from the bedrock below can melt the deepest, oldest ice, the approach has not yielded ice any older than 800,000 years, from a core drilled at Antarctica’s Dome C in 2004.

Scientists from Princeton University retracted an ice core drilled in Antarctica that has yielded 2.7-million-year-old ice, an astonishing find 1.7 million years older than the previous record-holder. Bubbles in the ice contain greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere at a time when the planet’s cycles of glacial advance and retreat were just beginning, potentially offering clues to what triggered the ice ages. That information alone makes the value of the sample incredible. [U794u53qxugp27yz581iEvyq2brib2or8wot34d]

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
081 A Polar Year http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp081 Tue, 31 Dec 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp081 In our first review of the year we look back on 36 episodes, on current events that have occupied us this year and dare a small outlook for another year of Curiously Polar.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
080 Curiously Polar Christmas Special http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp080 Tue, 24 Dec 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp080 Stricken by surprising, it is again time for perhaps the most wonderful time of the year. But one person is busy these days like never before. And every year we ask each other, where does he live? While every child knows, he lives at the North Pole and popular literature describes Santa's home amid coniferous forests, several places in the Arctic claim to be the official home of Santa Claus

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
079 The Guardian Climate Pledge http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp079 Tue, 17 Dec 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp079 While more than 11,000 scientists just officially declared a Global Climate Emergency, the wording has become more aggressive to underline the urgency linked to it. Respectable major media outlets like The Guardian and the New York Times have not only adopted this new wording, referring to a climate crisis and global heating rather than climate change and global warming, but also the way of "visually communicating the impact the climate emergency is having across the world."

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
078 The Conundrum of Time http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp078 Tue, 10 Dec 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp078 Time can be a tricky conundrum in Antarctica. There are such extreme cycles of day and night, with close to 24 hours of light in the summer and the opposite in winter. And as you move towards the south pole, lines of longitude get closer and closer together until they meet. The result is that the normal indicators we use to help tell the time aren’t particularly helpful. For scientists working in Antarctica, they generally stay in the time zone of the port they departed from, but this can mean that neighbouring stations are on very different time zones if they come from different countries. To add to the confusion, Australia’s Mawson, Casey and Davis stations are all on different time zones! For travelers on expedition cruise ships, we generally stay on Ushuaia time - unless we’re traveling to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. Then we adjust to their local times, changing as we travel south.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
077 Under the Ice - the Seventh Continent http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp077 Tue, 03 Dec 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp077 While the Grand Canyon is largely considered to be the planets biggest natural rift, scientists discovered another trench on Antarctica that could rival one of America's mightiest natural features. The unnamed canyon was found during a 2010 expedition and extends 100 kilometres, is more than 9 kilometres wide and reaches depths of more than 1,6 kilometres. Scientists speculate that it could be even larger, but further exploration is required to learn the true boundaries of this massive rift.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
076 IPCC SROCC http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp076 Tue, 26 Nov 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp076 Show notes: The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) was approved at the IPCC's 51st Session in September 2019 in Monaco. The 1,300-page report by 104 authors and editors representing 36 countries referred to 6,981 publications.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
075 John Kerry: The Political Perspective (Arctic Circle Assembly Special) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp075 Tue, 19 Nov 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp075 Rarely before has a statesman such clear words about the climate crisis found, as John Kerry at the award ceremony of the Arctic Circle Award 2019. As a laudator Iceland's former president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson spoke of an urgent need for an open, democratic, accountable dialogue , where the young activist has the right to ask questions and present views as the prime minister and distinguished leaders of business and science. The former U.S. Secretary of State received the award for his leadership on climate change and in his keynote speech he clearly stated what this meant for him. In the following Q & A session, he answered plenary questions to conclude, "If there's anything that's important, it's you. Everybody's got to be a citizen here. We can't let them fake it or avoid it."

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
074 Sara Olsvig: Indigenous People in the Arctic (Arctic Circle Assembly Special) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp074 Tue, 12 Nov 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp074 Far too often, changes in the Arctic are viewed from the outside, mostly from a geopolitical or economic perspective. We talked to Sara Olsvig, Head of Programme for UNICEF in Greenland, about local perspectives on urgent issues and current changes.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
073 Anja Sommerfeld: MOSAiC (Arctic Circle Assembly Special) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp073 Tue, 05 Nov 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp073 The largest research expedition to the Arctic of all times and one of humanity’s greatest efforts to understand how melting at the pole will affect the rest of the planet has been 5 years in the planning and is being lead by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) aims at a breakthrough in understanding the Arctic climate system and in its representation in global climate models. In order to achieve this, the research icebreaker Polarstern will be frozen into the Arctic sea ice and starts drifting with the transpolar drift through the North Pole to the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. The Polarstern serves as the basis for more than 300 scientists. The sheer scale of this expedition is enormous: 600 experts, 390 days, 60 research institutions, 19 nations, 5 icebreakers, € 140 million estimated overall costs. Expedition head Markus Rex calls the Arctic “the epicenter of global warming.” Nowhere on Earth is changing as fast as there, where temperatures are an estimated 7°C higher than they were 150 years ago. We met Project manager Anja Sommerfeld at the 2019 Arctic Circle Assembly, where she gave us a closer look at the mission. You can find a recording of the satellite telephone call with expedition leader Markus Rex here. For German speakers there is episode 160 of Resonator podcast out there with an interview with Expedition Leader Markus Rex.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
072 Peter Wadhams: Arctic Sea Ice (Arctic Circle Assembly Special) http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp072 Tue, 29 Oct 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp072 Out of a lack of global awareness and, as a result, a lack of effective governance, former Icelandic president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson initiated in 2013 the open Arctic Circle Assembly, bringing together decision-makers from politics, economy, science, education, and society. This year we had a chance to meet a few participants, so we decided to start a little mini special containing four episodes. We kick off this mini special with an interview of Peter Wadhams, Cambridge University's Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group and the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist, with 46 years of research on sea ice and ocean processes in the Arctic and the Antarctic. Being "a world authority on sea ice" he published his most recent book "A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic", a passionate, authoritative overview of the role of ice in our climate system, past, present and, scarily, the future.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
071 The Wealth of the Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp071 Tue, 01 Oct 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp071 The warming climate grant an easier access to resources and commodities of the Arctic and thus trigger a run on just those. The otherwise seemingly calm Arctic is thus developing into the center of a new power poker - not only between the five Arctic riparian states, but also new players in this geopolitical Monopoly. The estimated value of resources and commodities on one hand, and control over the newly accessible transit routes on the other, raise questions about who will play a major role in the Arctic in the near future and who will benefit from its exploitation.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
070 The Nansen Legacy http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp070 Tue, 24 Sep 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp070 Fridtjof Nansen set out to explore the Arctic Ocean with the research vessel Fram 126 years ago. His team of explorers and scientists returned from the ice three years later with new knowledge that changed our concepts and understanding of the Arctic Ocean. Since then, the Arctic has changed substantially. Changes in temperatures, sea ice, water masses, habitats, and ecosystem processes are pronounced in the marine environment. Processes leading to the changes are interconnected. The Nansen Legacy is a collaborative project between ten Norwegian research institutions with Arctic marine expertise, and with competence and perspectives including education, management and contact with different user groups, involving more than 130 scientists.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
069 Whaling Revisited http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp069 Tue, 17 Sep 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp069 People have been whaling for thousands of years. In 1946, several countries joined to form the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Originally an industry body, the IWC’s purpose is to prevent overhunting of whales. However, the work of marine conservational ngo’s lead to a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. Many species of whale have benefitted from the IWC’s moratorium. Despite the general moratorium, limited whaling is permitted to indigenous cultures. Today, people are much more aware of the role of whales in the marine ecosystem, and the role of the IWC has also changed radically. What started as an industrial body turned into a forum for the protection and conservation of marine life.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
068 Disappearing Cultures http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp068 Tue, 10 Sep 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp068 The history of Greenland is interwoven with change. Always dependent on weather and climate, Greenland seems not to offer much to its settlers. And yet, over the centuries, people have settled in the thin coastal strip of Greenland. Little is known about the settlement flows of the Inuit, which originated from North America. But scientists manage to put together the puzzle from many individual finds. Today we know about trade between Norse settlers and Inuit. We know that the Vikings at some point just disappeared from Greenland. And we know the colonization history of Greenland, which is closely linked to the colonial power of Denmark. But what impact does this have on the current Greenlandic Inuit culture and will it experience a similar fate as the earlier cultures and simply become extinct over time?

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
067 Greenland Is Melting http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp067 Tue, 03 Sep 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp067 After tormenting Europe for weeks, this year's heatwave is melting Greenland’s ice sheet at an unprecedented rate. As air temperatures over the ice rise, over half of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet had softened to slush. The result of this brutal setup is a summer melt season so intense that it’s on track to tie or break the record for the most water loss ever recorded. End of July, scientists recorded temperatures above 0°C at Greenland’s summit at over 3.000m altitude. This is only the third time temperatures have been recorded above freezing, but the second time this summer. These unusually high temperatures are accelerating ice loss from Greenland's Ice Sheet, which covers 80% of the island. By end of July, the area of the Greenland ice sheet showing indications of melt hit a record 56.5 per cent. On August 1st, thanks to 22°C, 12 billions tons of ice melted in just 24 hours, some 217 billion tons melted in the month of July, accumulating to an estimated 248 billion tons that have been lost so far this year, just on track of 2012’s record loss of 250 billion tons. The problem of melting polar ice creates a nasty positive feedback loop that meddles with the planet’s ability to cool off. Since ice is reflective, it does a good job at bouncing solar radiation back into space. However, with less ice, more of this heat energy is soaked up by the Earth and becomes trapped in the atmosphere.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
066 Search and Rescue in Svalbard http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp066 Tue, 27 Aug 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp066 Not only increasing tourism, but also more extreme fishing trips are putting rescue workers and the local infrastructure in the Arctic more and more to the test. We talk to Irene Kastner, a local from Longyearbyen, about her experiences in local Search & Rescue teams and also talk about the trawler “Northguider”, who ran aground in Hinlopen Strait in December 2018.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
065 The Majestic Greenland Shark http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp065 Tue, 20 Aug 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp065 As The New Yorker puts it: “Greenland sharks are among nature’s least elegant inventions. Lumpish, with stunted pectoral fins that they use for ponderously slow swimming in cold and dark Arctic waters, they have blunt snouts and gaping mouths that give them an unfortunate, dull-witted appearance.” And they can get incredibly old. Despite its poisonous meat, in Iceland Hákarl is even considered a local delicacy.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
064 The Arctic is on Fire http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp064 Tue, 13 Aug 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp064 Thinking about the Arctic, we usually have ice in our minds. But fires have been part of the regular summer program in the Arctic tundra for years. However, this year puts everything in the shade. Along with record temperatures, there is a devastating picture of large-scale circumpolar fires around the globe. And while Western media describe unprecedented fires in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Scandinavia in particular, fires larger by far in Arctic Russia are hardly noticed. It took weeks for the Russian government to declare a state of emergency for the affected areas. The development can hardly be stopped now, since the greenhouse gases contained in the thawing soil of the tundra further fuel the fires and escape into the atmosphere, making more such mega blazes likely in the coming years through a so called positive feedback loop.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
063 Recognice http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp063 Tue, 06 Aug 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp063 The Icelandic glacier Ok gained notoriety since a plaque on its foot indicates that the glacier has lost its status as such years ago. The badge is designed to raise awareness of the melting ice masses. The Zurich based glaciologist Jochem Braakhekke has created the project Recognice to bridge the gap of raising awareness of our beautiful cryosphere and the scientific community by inviting ordinary citizens to upload their vacation pictures of frozen water in any form into the database of recognice.org and share it with the scientists who can later use it for their research.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
062 Sea Ice Changes in the Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp062 Tue, 30 Jul 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp062 It seems that sea ice in the Barents Sea has been back to normal this winter. But appearances are deceptive. The southern extent of the sea ice towards Svalbard this summer indicates that multi-year ice has drifted from its regular northern position to much warmer southern latitudes around Svalbard were it has no chance to mature but eventually will melt quickly.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
061 Ice and Flames: Those Mysterious Arctic Volcanos http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp061 Tue, 23 Jul 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp061 The Arctic is usually associated with eternal silence, permafrost, and infinite snow-covered flat expanses. In reality, its diverse landscape includes deserts, rivers, hills, mountains and even volcanos. Although relatively scarce, volcanos are truly unique. Research expeditions from various countries have uncovered much about these volcanic systems, but they hold many more secrets that are yet to be found. The most recent discovery dates back to the year 2008 and unveiled a previously uncharted underwater volcanic range near Svalbard.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
060 Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp060 Tue, 16 Jul 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp060 The largest ship ever to fly an American flag, the SS Manhattan busted its way north in search of heavy ice for a commercial route to move the recently discovered North Slope oil away from Prudhoe Bay in superships even larger than the Manhattan.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
058 Cruise Ships to the North Pole http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp058 Tue, 02 Jul 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp058 With the continued melting of Arctic sea ice and the further opening of the Arctic Ocean to maritime traffic, cruise ship tourism is the latest economic sector forecasted to experience a boom in the region over the coming years. Cruise ship operators around the world are adding to their existing fleets of ice-capable expedition cruise ships.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
057 Who owns the Northwest Passage http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp057 Tue, 25 Jun 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp057 For centuries, the Northwest Passage represents the desire for faster trade routes. Global warming and the associated decline in sea ice are accelerating ambitions to use this sea route economically. In particular, the United States of America, however, sees the sea route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as an international maritime route and want to enforce this view.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
056 The Whiskey War http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp056 Tue, 18 Jun 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp056 Far in the Arctic North, halfway between Greenland and Canada, lies the barren and desolate Hans Island in the middle of the 22-mile wide Nares Strait. The uninhabited half-square-mile island, possessing no apparent natural resources, is a bizarre sliver of territory for two countries to fight over. Due to international law, all countries have the right to claim territory within 12 miles of their shore. Peter Takso Jensen, the Danish Ambassador to the US, has said that "when Danish military go there, they leave a bottle of schnapps. And when Canadian military forces come there, they leave a bottle of Canadian Club and a sign saying, 'Welcome to Canada.'"

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
055 Tikigaq/Point Hope: Life on Alaska’S North Slope http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp055 Tue, 11 Jun 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp055 This exhibition at the Polar Museum of the Scott Polar Research Insitute explores the long history of Point Hope, believed to be the longest continuously occupied settlement in North America, with over 2,500 years of recorded history. Follow us on Twitter.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
054 The Sinking of M/V Explorer http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp054 Tue, 04 Jun 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp054 Being the first cruise to sink in the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean, MS Explorer gained notoriety in 2007. Considered "perfect for ice navigation" she apparently got sank by solid ice, mistaken by the Captain for first-year ice. After drifting for 5 hours all 91 passengers, 9 guides and 54 crew were picked up by the Norwegian ship MS Nordnorge. Curiously Polar ep. 22. Follow us on Twitter.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
053 Arctic Council http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp053 Tue, 28 May 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp053 In May, Iceland took over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council of Finland. However, the work of the intergovernmental forum of Arctic states, Arctic indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants, founded in 1996, was disrupted at the ministerial meeting. The successful attempt on the part of the United States to prevent any mention of climate change in the usual final declaration has triggered an outraged international response. Just as critically received was the speech of the US Secretary of State. What does this mean for the future of the Arctic Council and the Arctic in general?

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
052 The Hot Heart of Antarctica http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp052 Tue, 21 May 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp052 Scientists have uncovered the largest volcanic region on Earth138 volcanoes, 91 of which have not previously been identified, two kilometers below the surface of the vast ice sheet that covers West Antarctica. And the fastest-melting glacier in Antarctica, the Pine Islan Glacier, might not only accelerate its speed because of a warming planet.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
051 King of the Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp051 Tue, 21 May 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp051 He is the undisputed King of the Arctic and at the same time the iconic symbol of climate change. No other animal stands as much for the challenges of our time, as the polar bear, whose habitat disappears year by year in an increasingly warming world. The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group lists the polar bear as a vulnerable species, citing sea ice loss from climate change as the single biggest threat to their survival. Scientists estimate there are currently about 23,000 polar bears worldwide in 19 distinct sub-populations.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
050 Arctic Winter Games http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp050 Tue, 14 May 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp050 What started 1969 as a forum for athletes from the Canadian and Alaskan North to compete on their own terms and own turf developed until today into an international biennial celebration of circumpolar sports and Indigenous culture. Today nine contingents from all over the Arctic participate in the Arctic Winter Games. The next games will be played in 2020 in Whitehorse, Yukon. The Ulu.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
049 Education in the Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp049 Tue, 07 May 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp049 Remote regions have always been faced with the challenge of providing infrastructure for its inhabitants. In particular, education is considered the key to the development of these regions. We take a look at the question, what education actually means in the Arctic environment, we look at education structures in the Arctic and what role they play for the indigenous people today.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
048 Air New Zealand Flight 901 http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp048 Tue, 30 Apr 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp048 When, on November 28, 1979, the fourteenth Air New Zealand sightseeing flight 901 to the Antarctic crashed on the slopes of Earth's southernmost active volcano, Mount Erebus, the full extent of the disaster was not yet in sight. With "an orchestrated litany of lies" airline executive and senior pilots tried to cover up evidence and disguise facts, blaming the two pilots for the crash. The investigation by New Zealand's chief inspector of air accidents lacked an understanding of the complexities and its investigation techniques were revealed as lacking in rigour, which allowed errors and avoidable gaps in knowledge did not expose the airline's attempt and instead reiterated the theory of human error. However, the airline's directors felt that the second investigation exceeded their competencies when they stated in their report that there was a conspiracy with which Air New Zealand intended to cover up the mistakes of ground personnel and successfully sued in court. Only in 1999, the second investigation report was submitted by the then Minister of Transport to the New Zealand Parliament. As of today, the crash remains Air New Zealand's deadliest accident, as well as New Zealand's deadliest peacetime disaster and the second largest disaster in Antartica.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
047 Climate Change Impact on Arctic Indigenous People http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp047 Tue, 23 Apr 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp047 For thousands of years, indigenous people have adapted to the hostile conditions of the Arctic to survive. Now they face major changes for their lifestyle, culture, traditions, and economic viability caused by climate change. For the indigenous people in the Arctic these are not just questions of culture and survival.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
046 The History of Arctic Expeditions http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp046 Tue, 16 Apr 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp046 Since time immemorial, the polar regions exert an indescribable fascination on us humans. For centuries, myths and legends were concentrated around the Arctic. It has been intrepid pioneers and adventurers who not only explored the Arctic, but also laid the foundation for such research areas as glaciology. The exploration of the Arctic plays a major role in today’s understanding of how weather develops, climate changes and everything is interconnected. Some of those explorers failed terribly, others came back gloriously. But even today, these pioneers are influencing us in our current research and expeditions.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
045 Tourism Impact on the Polar Regions http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp045 Tue, 09 Apr 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp045 Tourism is a growing activity in the Polar Regions. But what impact do we have traveling these remote and fragile regions? What challenges are connected to tourism here? There are serious concerns that tourism is promoting environmental degradation in the Polar Regions by putting extra pressures on land, wildlife, water, and other basic necessities, and on transportation facilities. But there are possibilities and options to reduce our footprint, like the German non-for-profit organization Atmosfair, that contributes to CO₂ mitigation by promoting, developing and financing renewable energies in over 15 countries worldwide.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
044 Sea Ice http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp044 Sat, 09 Mar 2019 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp044 Chris welcomes Henry Páll Wulff to the show. Henry is an expedition leader and an Arctic expert. In this episode they talk about sea ice.

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Henry Páll Wulff http://henrypall.com// me@henrypall.com/ https://www.facebook.com/henrypallcom// Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
043 Where on Earth Is Mario? A Quick Update http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp043 Thu, 09 Aug 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp043 Curiously Polar has been asleep for a couple of months. Here's finally an update. While Mario is at sea, changing jobs and far from the internet, he is collecting new stories and will return with a lot to talk about in the future episodes. In the meantime, check out Chris and his Arctic travels to Lofoten, Lofoten and Lofoten. All in Northern Norway and all above the Arctic Circle.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
042 Living in the cold http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp042 Tue, 27 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp042 Here is part 2 of our discussion about the effect of cold temperature to living in Polar areas. In this episode we concentrate on cars and what we are faced with during Arctic winter conditions, what we can expect and how to face some of the most common situations we might face when the temperatures stay below 0°C.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
041 Living in the Cold http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp041 Tue, 20 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp041 Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/ 040 New Polar Expedition Ships http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp040 Tue, 13 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp040 Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/ 039 Northeast Passage http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp039 Tue, 06 Mar 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp039 Northeast Passage is the name of the water route that connects Europe to the Pacific Ocean passing along the shouthern shores of the Arctic Ocean, north of the Asian Continent. It has been the subject of many exploration expeditions, among which the ones led by Willem Barentsz, and was finally navigated in its entirety in 1878 by Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld on the ship Vega. Nowadays the Northeast Passage is experiencing a lot of attention, due to a reduced ice cover, to technological edvances in shipbuilding and the economic incentives to find an alternative sea route joining the eastern Asian economies to Europe.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
038 Drake Passage http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp038 Tue, 27 Feb 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp038 The Drake Passage is the 800 km water passage between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica and that separated the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean. The Beagle Channel and the Strait of Magellan are the only two other waterways between the two oceans, but these were often more difficult to navigate for sailing vessels and this make the Drake the preferred option, with the Cape Horn as its most known landmark.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
037 Barents Sea http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp037 Tue, 20 Feb 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp037 The Barents Sea is a shallow basin of the Arctic Ocean. It is located north of the shores of northern Europe and it is the stretch of water one can admire from North Cape. It is notoriously difficult to cross because of the weather and the currents that often create unfavorable conditions for navigation, but it is also a very important area for ship traffic, fishing and oil and gas exploitation.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
036 Effects of the Long Winter http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp036 Tue, 06 Feb 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp036 [Disclaimer: This episode does not constitute medical advice] Winter and darkness have effects on people everywhere but living in the polar areas exposes the population to more extreme conditions with the drastic reduction or absence of sun exposure. The effects of not being exposed to a constant or nearly constant day/night cycle may cause winter depression/blues also called Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD that result in disruption of circadian rhythm with sleeping trouble, low energy and low immune function.

It is not well known what are the physiological bases of SAD, but it may be caused by low serotonin levels. Also the melatonin cycle plays a role in regulating the biological clock and is influenced by changes in daylight. Another factor that may contribute to the insurgence of the syndrome is [vitamin D](

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-red-light-district/201501/vitamin-d-and-seasonal-affective-disorder-symptoms) deficiency, which is due to low of UVB radiation exposure as the human body cannot produce it endogenously. In order to boost vitamin D one may want to resort to a targeted diet (including fatty fish, mushrooms, eggs) or treatment with special SAD Lamps. Some mammals are better adapted than others to living in the low light conditions in the Arctic: Video

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
035 The Svalbard Treaty http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp035 Tue, 30 Jan 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp035 The Treaty recognising the sovereignty of Norway over the Archipelago of Spitsbergen or Svalbard Treaty was signed in Paris on 9 February 1920, as part of the Versailles peace negotiations at the end of World War I. It came into effect by law in Norway on 14 August 1925 as "Treaty between Norway, the USA, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland and the British Overseas Dominions and Sweden with regard to Svalbard". The main points in the Treaty state that: Svalbard is a part of Norway; Tax and revenue exacted may only benefit Svalbard; The environment of Svalbard must be protected; There should not be any discrimination against citizens and companies from the signatory countries for residence and and access as well as running acitivities; Svalbard may not be used for military purposes. Presently the Svalbard Treaty has 43 registred parties: Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, India, Iceland, Italy, Japan, China, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, South Africa, South Korea, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, the USA, Venezuela, Austria.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
034 Fourty-Meter Ferns in Antarctica http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp034 Tue, 23 Jan 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp034 Some 280-20 million years ago there were forests in what is now Antarctica. The climate then was hotter than it is today and Antarctica was part of the supercontinent Gondwana, but it Antarctica was already above the Antarctic circle and these plants experienced total darkness for a part of the winter. During 4-5 months they were probably able to reduce their metabolism and hibernate. The Permian mass extinction, supposedly caused by high temperatures, changes in the carbon cycle, increase in atmospheric methane and volcanic eruptions, probably was also the cause of the disappearance of this forest together with 95% of all other terrestrial species and 70% of marine species on the planet.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
033 Twilight and Sweet Buns http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp033 Tue, 16 Jan 2018 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp033 The sun is presently returning to the Arctic marking the end of the polar night. In Tromsø the day of the sun (soldagen in Norwegian), 21 January, is marked by informal celebrations where children and employees enjoy sweet buns colored yellow with tumeric called solboller. But remember that the actual return of the sun depends on the definition of twilight and on the ground relief.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
032 Santa Lives at the North Pole, Correct? http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp032 Tue, 26 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp032 In this Christmas episode we would like to start by wishing all listeners and subscribers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We also try, admittedly with limited effect, to sort out some of the confusion around Santa Claus, his residence and whereabouts as well as some of the peculiarities of his reindeer and his mailboxes in Longyearbyen (Svalbard), in Nuuk (Greenland) and Rovaniemi (Finland).

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
031 The Antartctic Treaty http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp031 Tue, 19 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp031 The Antarctic Treaty was signed in Washington on December 1, 1959. Its goal is to ensure "in the interest of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue for ever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord." The treaty entered into force in 1961 and currently has 53 parties. According to the treaty Antarctica is a scientific preserve and military activity is banned. The headquarters of the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat are located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Within the treaty there are two important conventions: CCAS= Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals and CCAMLR= Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
030 The Quest for the South Pole http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp012 Tue, 12 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp012 Conquering the South Pole was probably the last great feat of the age of exploration. It is located in one of the most remote and inhospitable locations on earth. The nearest sea is 1,300 km away and it sits on top of a 2,700 m thick icy plateau. But Antarctica was also one of the last places to be discovered and investigated and the main events could be outlined as: 1820 Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen on the Vostok and Mikhail Lazarev on the Mirny are the first to report about Antarctica. 1821 John Davis and his crew are the first humans to set foot on Antarctica, but for a very short time. 1839-42 Charles Wilkes commands the U.S.Exploring Expedition that surveys large stretches of the coast of Antarctica. 1839-43 James Clark Ross commands an expedition that aims at determining the position of the magnetic South Pole, but from his circumnavigation and attempts to force the sea ice, it is determined that the continent is inaccessible by ship. 1901-04 During the Discovery Expedition, Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Edward Wilson reach 82°17′S on dog sleigh on 30 December 1902. Jan 9 1909 during the Nimrod Expedition Ernest Shackleton, Jameson Adams, Frank Wild and Eric Marshall reach 88°23'S, just 180 km from the South Pole, before having to turn back. 14 December 1911 Roald Amundsen, Olav Bjaaland, Oscar Wisting and Sverre Hassel are the first humans to reach the South Pole. 17 January 1912 During the Terra Nova Expedition Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson, Lawrence Oates, Henry Robertson Bowers and Edgard Evans also reach Pole but perish on the way back to the base. 1914 Ernest Shackleton endeavors a trans-Antarctic expedition but his ship Endurance is crushed by the ice and the resulting journey is a fight for survival. 1929 Richard E. Byrd with Bernt Balchen at the commands fly an airplane over the South Pole. 1956-57 during the International Geophysical Year the Amundsen-Scott base is established at the South Pole. 1989 Victoria Murden and Shirley Metz are the first women to reach the South Pole taking an overland route. 1989 Reinhold Messner and Arvid Fuchs are the first to reach the South Pole without animal or motor help. 2011 Christian Eide is the fastest and reaches the South Pole in 24 days. Announcement: New Photography-Podcast with Chris: The Future of Photography

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
029 Race to the North Pole http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp029 Tue, 05 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp029 Exploration of the Arctic is nothing new as humans have been curious about what lies north of the Arctic Circle for at least 2000 years. But it is only since the mid 1800's that purpose organized expeditions have aimed at reaching the North Pole. We summarize here some of the main names in this race and promise to examine a choice of them in separate episodes. William Edward Parry - Charles Francis Hall - George DeLong - Fridtjof Nansen - Salomon A. André - Amedeo di Savoia - Frederick Cook - Robert Peary - Richard Byrd & Floyd Bennet - Airship Norge - Airship Italia - USS Nautilus

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
028 Snowmobiles http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp028 Tue, 28 Nov 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp028 Polar areas are often covered with snow for a large part of the year and there snowmobiles can take the place of cars, small trucks and motorbikes. The evolution of the snowmobile begins with the adaptation of existing vehicles, like the Ford model T, to slide on the snow with skis under the front wheels. The invention of an adaptable caterpillar track, the Kégresse track allowed better traction than wheels and was the logical step towards the modern Ski-Doo and similar brands like the minimal Larven. Future development of the concept include higher power, increased safety, greater comfort and a quieter and less polluting engine.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
027 Pollution in the Arctic http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp027 Tue, 21 Nov 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp027 Some of the volatile man-made chemicals that are produced and used in temperate areas are transported to the polar areas by the natural circulation of water and air. Among these we have the Persistent Organic Pollutants abbreviated as POP's. Once arrived in the colder zones in the Arctic or the Antarctic these substances condense and are absorbed in the environment. On the ground or in the water these molecules often enter the food chain and bioaccumulate in the body or organisms throughout their life cycle as well as they are passed on to the next level through the food chain increasing in concentration: a phenomenon called biomagnification. Among these substances there are some which are directly poisonous in higher concentrations, but there are also others which are mimicking natural hormones. By taking the place of the original body molecules, and disrupting thus physiological functions, these endocrine disruptors can modify organ functionality like the reproductive cycle or body growth with dire consequences for the organism and the population.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
026 Ny-Ålesund 78.56°N http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp026 Tue, 14 Nov 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp026 In Svalbard there are few inhabited places and Ny Ålesund is one of them. The settlement which originally was a coal mining town has now become the main field hub for polar reseach.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
025 Salmon Farming and Aquaculture http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp025 Tue, 07 Nov 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp025 Aquaculture is a very lucrative business and salmon farming is definitely one of its most prominent sectors. In this episode we discuss salmon farming as it is practiced in Norway.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
024 Marine Mammal Sex http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp024 Tue, 31 Oct 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp024 Marine mammals face considerable challenges to reproduce. Pinnipeds have the possibility to exit the water and most of them reproduce on the dry while cetaceans and sirenians never exit the water and must copulate and give birth in the liquid medium facing problems like hydrodynamics, the absence of a stable support and no limbs to help keeping the partner close to oneself. Strategies differ among the species and the variety of solutions is amazing.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
023 The Big Magnetic Flip http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp023 Tue, 24 Oct 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp023 In a previous episode we have mentioned that the magnetic field of the Earth through goelogical time has undergone variations in intensity and even reversals with the north magnetic pole migrating to close to the south pole and vice versa for the south magnetic pole. How do we know this and what consequences for life on the planet could it have had?

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
022 Ships: From Wooden Vessel to Nuclear Icebreaker http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp022 Tue, 17 Oct 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp022 What kind of ship is adapted for polar voyages? The early voyages of discovery have been made using wooden ships and the technology evolved up to Nansen's Fram. Nowadays metal hulls are the norm and the vessels are classified in a system of "ice classes". Icebreakers are a world apart and they have their own classification. Some of them are very large and have considerable engine power that allows them to navigate through the polar ice at all seasons . With the opening of the northern routes more commercial ships will be built to an ice class and some are already in service

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
021 Why Greenland Is Called Greenland http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp021 Tue, 10 Oct 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp021 ..and why is Iceland called Iceland?

The European name of Greenland is most probably due to a marketing maneuver to encourage settlement, even if during the Viking settlement the climatic conditions of the island were at an optimum and therefore it was probably greener than what we observe presently. Iceland though had several names before a permanent Viking settlement and was a victim of a similar but negative marketing strategy.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
020 Aurora - Northern Lights http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp020 Tue, 03 Oct 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp020 Auroras, Northern or Southern Lights are a spectacular phenomenon that attract a large number of tourists to the polar areas. They were known since antiquity but the phenomenon was attibuted to supernatural powers. In fact they form in a circle around the magnetic poles when the charged elementary particles in the solar wind are captured byt the magnetic field of the earth and are directed towards the upper levels of the atmosphere and ionize elementary gasses like hydrogen and oxygen. The probability of Auroras apperaring in the sky can be predicted by analyzing the variations in the solar wind and in the magnetic field of the Earth. Auroras have been observed also on other planets. in the solar system. Real time aurora on video. Chris' Aurora photo from the ship.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
019 Compass and Navigation http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp019 Tue, 26 Sep 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp019 The magnetic compass has been the most important instrument used for navigation since the beginning of the European voyages of discovery and until satellite positioning was introduced. The principle of functioning is dependent on the magnetic field of the Earth. It is not a recent invention and a form was used for divination in China since 200 BCE. It was used for navigation first in the 11th century in China and probably it was introduced from there to Europe in the 12th century through trade routes. The of the compass for navigation is testified by the effort put by nations to measure the magnetic field of the planet, to determine the position of the magnetic north pole and to investigate its yearly movement. One of the famous expeditions to pursue such investigations was the Franklin voyage in search of the Northwest Passage. The Vikings who navigated areas close to the magnetic pole, which makes the magnetic compass unusable, most probably used a sun-based compass, that could also be used to determine variations in latitude during a voyage, and they might even have been able to use this system in conditions of bad visibility usign a crystal of calcite as polarizing filter. The next revolution for polar navigation came with the invention of the gyrocompass. Nowadays navigation is greatly symplified and made accessible to private and professional users through satellite systems like GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO and BeiDou which can be accessed using dedicated receivers or apps on mobile devices.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
018 Dogsledding http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp018 Tue, 19 Sep 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp018 Dog power has been used for thousands of years and, in the Arctic, it has survived practically unchallenged until the present, whereas in temperate and tropical areas other animals have taken the place of dogs in helping humans move about. Nowadays dogs are still used for transportation in several areas, but there is also a boom in the recreational use of dogs as tractors, and not only for pulling sleds. Wikipedia links: Dog sled, Sled dog, Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, Will Steger (homepage). Help make this podcast sound better with a donation to the MARIO MICROPHONE FUND.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
017 Ice photography http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp017 Tue, 12 Sep 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp017 During travels to polar areas we usually encounter a lot of ice: icebergs, the pack, growlers, glaciers and icicles just to name a few. It is only natural for us modern people to take pictures of these impressive formations to share our experience with friends and family. But taking pictures of ice is tricky and there are several technical aspects to take into consideration before deciding which strategy to employ to capture the awe we feel when admiring these natural phenomena. Help make this podcast sound better with a donation to the MARIO MICROPHONE FUND.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
016 Midnight Sun and Polar Night http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp016 Tue, 05 Sep 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp016 The Midnight Sun or Polar Day is one of the spectacular characteristics of Polar Areas. Similarly, the Polar Night originates from the same physical characteristics of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun. Both the Polar Day and the Polar Night influence our circadian rhythms and, among other effects, present opportunities to enjoy for an extended period of time the moments when the sun is just above or just below the horizon. These are the moments when the colors of the sky are particularly beautiful. Help make this podcast sound better with a donation to the MARIO MICROPHONE FUND.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
015 Walrus http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp015 Tue, 29 Aug 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp015 Walruses are some of the most peculiar marine mammals of the Arctic and surprisingly present in the cultural heritage of most Europeans even if the vast majority of people would not be able to define their characteristics to a great detail. In this episode we explore and introduce some of the peculiarities of this species without any pretense to make this a rigorous scientific presentation. Help make this podcast sound better with a donation to the MARIO MICROPHONE FUND.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
014 Which glacier did the Titanic iceberg come from? http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp014 Tue, 22 Aug 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp014 Everybody knows the story of the Titanic and of the tragic accident that cost hundreds of lives. Digging into the details of this fatal event we can trace the most likely origin of the iceberg that sank this ship to a particular glacier in West Greenland. The Jakobshavn Glacier is a spectacular fast-flowing glacier fed from the Greenland Ice Cap that produces some of the most impressive icebergs in the Arctic. Currents in Baffin Bay move some of these blocks of ice south and out into the North Atlantic where they sometime reach major shipping lanes before melting away. Help make this podcast sound better with a donation to the MARIO MICROPHONE FUND.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
013 Whaling http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp013 Tue, 15 Aug 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp013 Whaling is an ancient human activity that has had a great influence on the marine environment with effects ranging from the reduction of several species to the brink of extinction to modifications in the ecosystem. By the 19th century Europeans had managed to reduce the numbers of right whales in their coastal waters to such low numbers that this activity practically ceased on the Old Continent. The Norwegians were instrumental to the industrialization of whaling and the extension of this activity to the high seas and to the southern ocean in the 20th century. As a consequence of inefficient management regimes several species of large whales have risked extinction and are slowly recovering after drastic conservation measures implemented in the late 1980's. But whaling is still practiced in several areas and not necessarily for commercial purposes. Management regimes have been set in place for the large majority of whale populations (The International Whaling Commission and here), but threats to conservation are widespread and difficult to eliminate. Help make this podcast sound better with a donation to the MARIO MICROPHONE FUND.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
011 Blue Ice http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp011 Tue, 01 Aug 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp011 Glacier fronts and icebergs sometimes appear blue or present veins of beautiful blue ice. The blue color is determined by the large ice crystals and the absence of air bubbles. When snow falls on the ground it accumulates in layers containing a lot of air. As the snow compresses and ages the air is squeezed into smaller bubbles and ultimately the air can be squeezed out of the ice. This is what produces the blue color in glacial ice at any latitude. Blue ice photo by Chris Marquardt

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
010 Arctic Wildlife Photography http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp010 Tue, 25 Jul 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp010 Taking pictures is one of the important activities of visitors of the Arctic and this presents challenges for both humans and equipment. However, in most situations and with just a few tricks and inexpensive extra gear it is possible to use standard cameras and take home the memories of a lifetime. To avoid battery problems, it's advisable to keep a spare battery warm by storing it close to your body, then swap if your camera's battery goes low. Some wildlife requires focal lengths of 600mm or more and in general a zoom lens will come in handy. Some of Chris Marquardt's Arctic Photography

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
009 Snow Shoes http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp009 Tue, 18 Jul 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp009 Most of the year polar areas are covered with a coat of snow which makes it challenging for humans to explore. Some of us are expert skiers, but the equipment is often bulky. Snowshoes are a very practical alternative even for those who are not initiated to this kind of gear as generally people quickly learn the basic techniques. Snowshoes are not a modern invention and the contemporary models build on a long tradition originating from different part of the Arctic.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
008 How to Count Whales http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp008 Tue, 11 Jul 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp008 A frequent question from the interested laymen is: “how many whales are there?”. The answer is not trivial and it is of utmost importance, not only for purely academic reasons, but also for the management and conservation of the different species. For example, it is essential to know the abundance of a species at different point in time to be able to determine if there is a decline or an increase that would indicate a potential large variation in ecosystem characteristics. From the mark-recapture technique to line-transect sampling we try to summarize and describe the most important techniques for determine the numbers of cetaceans.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
007 Bearded Seals and Hydrophones http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp007 Tue, 04 Jul 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp007 Bearded seals are a pan-arctic species and derive their name from their long whiskers. These hairs often curl as the seals get dry after a long haul out on land or on ice. Their fur is almost homogeneously grey with different tones around the eyes and nose. In Svalbard, in particular, where they find their benthic food in the mud from eroded basaltic rocks, they get tanned by the reddish sediments over most of their head. A particular characteristic of male bearded seals is their underwater singing during the breeding period in the spring. These calls make one wonder about the origins of the belief in the singing of mermaids and can be heard through the hull of a vessel. Having a hydrophone at hand surely improves the quality of the performance. These instruments are fairly simple devices for listening to the multitude of fascinating underwater sounds.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
006 Svalbard Global Seed Vault and Permafrost http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp006 Tue, 27 Jun 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp006 During Spring 2017 the Svalbard Global Seed Vault experienced flooding that potentially could have damaged its contents. The Vault exploits the low underground temperatures made possible by the permafrost that covers the ground surrounding it and should ensure the seeds deposited in the vault (video) survive catastrophes.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
005 Climate Change and the Polar Regions http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp005 Tue, 20 Jun 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp005 Climate change is a concept we encounter very often on different media and even in day-to-day conversations. As visitors to the Arctic we are brought to witness recent, dramatic glacial front retreats such as the one that revealed Blomstrandhalvøya and the variability in sea ice extent and thickness. Another term that is often used in connection with climate change is Albedo. Among the effects of climate change we have variations in sea level, the breaking off of large tabular icebergs from ice shelves such as the Larsen C shelf and changes in global ocean circulation. Curiously, variations in ocean circulation have been monitored by dedicated and opportunistic means, such as rubber ducks.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
004 Arctic and the Antarctic explained http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp004 Tue, 13 Jun 2017 05:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp004 We all know the terms Arctic and Antarctic, but how are they defined? As a matter of fact both concepts have several definitions and it is important to understand which one is valid when engaging in conversations or trying to understand scientific data. In this episode we explore some of the aspects that define the two concepts both geographically (e.g. arctic circle) and climatically.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
003 Noorderlicht http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp003 Sat, 03 Jun 2017 07:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp003 The S/V Noorderlicht is a two-masted, ice reinforced, steel schooner built in Germany in 1910. It has served as a lighthouse in the Baltic, as a pilot station and as a club bar before being renovated and transformed into a sailing expedition ship. In the past 20 summers it has roamed the waters of the Spitsbergen archipelago introducing guests to this magnificent part of the Arctic. It has also spent several winters iced-up in a Spitsbergen fjord serving as one of the most unique guesthouses on this planet.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
002 Barentsburg http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp002 Fri, 02 Jun 2017 07:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp002 At the entrance of Isfjord on the west coast of Spitsbergen we visit the coal mining village of Barentsburg founded on a site used in the early 20th century as a whaling station and named after the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz. The coal mine was first exploited by the Dutch company NeSpiCo in the 1920s. Since 1932 it is has been owned and run by the Russian mining company Trust Arctickugol and has at times been the most populous settlement in Svalbard. Nowadays the population is about 500 and the the town has been largely renovated but it still bears witness to the Soviet heydays with its bust of Lenin and several monuments with slogans about communism and the greatness of the Soviet Union.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/
001 Introduction to Curiously Polar http://curiouslypolar.com/curiouslypolar/show/cp001 Thu, 01 Jun 2017 07:00:00 +0000 curiouslypolar-cp001 In this first episode we introduce this podcast series. Chris and Mario are onboard the S/V Noorderlicht cruising along the West coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago. The time is the end of May and winter is loosening its grip from the land and the sea. The pack-ice is receding and the separation between water and rocks becomes visible in spite of the sub-zero temperatures and the snowstorms. Birds arrive to the nesting grounds from far and wide and wait impatiently for the snow and ice to melt and reveal the solid ground on which they will build their nests. Reindeer roam eagerly between barren patches and graze as much as possible from timid vegetation popping up between the stones. Polar bears take advantage of the last remains of the pack-ice to hunt seals before the thaw and the first whales profit of the large krill and small fish shoals.

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Mario Acquarone mario.acquarone@gmail.com/ https://facebook.com/mario.acquarone/ Chris Marquardt https://chrismarquardt.com// chris@chrismarquardt.com/ https://facebook.com/chrismarquardtphotography/