“If there is a pan of ice that hits the shorefast ice from the North, it can take off a sheet of ice, and you can go with it.” The serious expression of the 67-year-old whaling captain made it impossible to mistake the potential risk associated with the ancient tradition of spring whale hunting from …[Read More]
With the equinox this Sunday, it is officially the end of summer in the Northern hemisphere and in particular the end of the melt season in the Arctic. These last years, it has typically been the time to write bad news about record low sea ice and the continuation of the dramatic decreasing trend (see …[Read More]
Many polar scientists who have traveled to Svalbard have heard several times how most of the stuff there is the “northernmost” stuff, e.g. the northernmost university, the northernmost brewery, etc. Despite hosting the four northernmost cities and towns, Svalbard is however accessible easily by “usual-sized” planes at least once per day from Oslo and Tromsø. …[Read More]
The EGU Cryosphere blog has reported on several studies of Antarctic sea ice (for example, here and here) made from high-tech satellites, but these records only extend back to the 1970s, when the satellite records began. Is it possible to work out what sea ice conditions were like before this time? The short answer is YES…or …[Read More]
Living Planet Symposium Between the 9th and 13th May, Prague played host to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) fourth Living Planet Symposium. The event, the largest in its history with over 3300 attendees, brought together the earth observation community across multiple disciplines to discuss significant scientific results and the future developments of earth observation missions. …[Read More]
