Sadly, we missed the world premiere of Vincent Ho’s Arctic Symphony. The good news is, it’s available online! Here’s what the Winnipeg Free Press had to say about the piece, which debuted February 6th with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra:

The Arctic Symphony is a mature and atmospheric work that firmly establishes Ho among North American composers of note. It is a beautifully thought-provoking way to promote the message of climate change.

To write the piece, Ho traveled to the Canadian Arctic aboard a research vessel as an ‘Artist on Board’ through the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study. Ho recalls,

“I was taken on board a state-of-the-art research vessel, the CCGS Amundsen, where I was introduced to studies conducted by many of the world’s leading arctic research scientists. I was also taken to Inuit communities to learn about their culture and how the current state of the environment has impacted their way of life. The goal was to provide me with first-hand experience of the Northern region while gaining a better understanding of climate change (from both the scientific and the cultural perspective) so it may inspire the composing of a large-scale symphonic work. During my limited time there, I spent my days and nights observing the landscape. Though the information given to me from the scientists and local Inuit communities was invaluable in broadening my perspective, I ultimately felt that the musical work had to be my own interpretation of the region. Writing it from any other perspective (let it be from the scientists’ or Inuit point of view) would be creatively disingenuous and unrepresentative of my connection to the North. As well, I found myself developing a spiritual connection with the environment, and for good reason: I was in a vast open area; I was constantly being subjected to the environmental conditions of the region; and I was continually surrounded by nature’s angelic beauty, untouched by utilitarian society. I therefore felt that the music needed to express this spiritual connection that had formed.”

You can listen to the symphony here, as part of the CBC’s streaming Concerts on Demand, or visit the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study’s website to view video of Ho discussing his experiences in the Arctic.

via Review of ARCTIC SYMPHONY:  | Vincent Ho.

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Over on our Facebook fan page, Gaia posted an article about NASA’s Operation Icebridge, which is tracking changes in the size and thickness of the earth’s polar ice. The mission’s second year kicks off today, when NASA aircraft will arrive in Greenland.

“NASA’s IceBridge mission is characterizing the changes occurring in the world’s polar ice sheets,” said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The mission’s goal is to collect the most important data for improving predictive models of sea level rise and global climate change.”

Utilizing NASA’s unique capabilities, the mission provides scientists with detailed data on the changing face of polar ice, providing an unprecedented breadth and depth of information.

Read more:

Mission Page: Icebridge

NASA Press release

NASA TV (airing video and information about all NASA missions, including Icebridge)

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Scientists testing drilling equipment for a future study of Antarctic ice shelves discovered something they didn’t expect: A “shrimp-like” creature — a Lyssianasid amphipod, for those of you keeping score at home — swimming in the dark water 600 feet below the ice.

“Everybody was just gaga over this amphipod,” says team leader Robert Bindschadler, a polar scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “He put on quite a show,” swimming around and nestling up against the cable carrying the underwater camera.

“There’s a lot of life even in places you wouldn’t think of any.”

In the video below, you can see the creature as it encounters the cable, investigates, and continues on its way as the camera sinks further beneath the ice.

Shrimpy surprise from Science News on Vimeo.

ViaScientists Surprised To Discover Shrimp Deep Beneath the Antarctic Ice – Science – io9.

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I don’t know about you, but every spring, the switch to daylight savings wreaks havoc on my internal clock — for days, I’m out of sorts, eating at odd hours and feeling sleepy all morning long.

Arctic Reindeer have it so much easier. Most of us mammals have an internal clock, where hormones rise and fall throughout the day in a regular cycle. This circadian rhythm helps us know when to wake up and go to bed, and, though influenced by daylight and darkness, keeps a fairly regular 24-hour clock, even in the absence of light/dark stimuli.

Not so the reindeer. These animals live in a land where summer days stretch on indefinitely, and winter nights last for days on end. New research conducted by the University of Manchester in England shows that, while the Arctic Reindeer sleep regularly — after they eat, approximately eight to ten times a day — and are affected by levels of light and dark, they lack the internal clock that keeps animals in southern climates on a regular schedule.

Our findings imply that evolution has come up with a means of switching off the cellular clockwork,” [study author Andrew] Loudon said. “Such daily clocks may be positively a hindrance in environments where there is no reliable light-dark cycle for much of the year.”

Because the Earth is tilted on its axis, the Arctic is pointed toward the sun during the summer months, which keeps the sun perpetually above the horizon during this time. During the winter, the opposite is true, and the Arctic is plunged into months of darkness. The same is true of the Antarctic.

Instead, light and dark signals that come during the year’s two equinoxes (fall and spring) could be enough to jumpstart certain processes in the reindeer, such as the annual reproductive cycle, the researchers say.

via MSNBC: Body Clock of Arctic Reindeer Ticks Differently

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The State of the Arctic Conference is meeting this week, March 16 – 19th, at the Hyatt Regency in Miami, FL. Convened “to review our understanding of the arctic system in a time of rapid environmental change,” the conference will include presentations and discussions featuring Arctic experts from around the globe.

State of the Arctic from ARCUS on Vimeo.

A collaboration between the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) and the Arctic System Science (ARCSS) Program communities, the National Science Foundation Division of Arctic Sciences, and several other sponsors and partners from around the globe, the conference seeks to provide a forum for creating a better understanding of the current state of the Arctic, as well as a more complete understanding of the changes taking place in the Arctic today. It also hopes to “translate research into solutions,” connecting researchers with funding, and exploring solutions to the problems created by climate change.

I’m looking forward to reading about (and hopefully finding some online video of) the talks that come out of the conference — it looks like a historical lineup!

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Every year, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyzes data on global temperatures. This past year was one of the warmest on record, tying for second place, while the decade between 2000 -2009 was found to be the warmest on record.

NASA has posted a collection of articles, photographs, and videos exploring what climate change means for the earth, including the video above. Check the link for more images of climate change as seen from space, answers to common misconceptions about climate change, and other resources on the changes taking place across the globe.

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Last week, I posted a link to an article about Ann Daniels, one of the Arctic explorers heading to the North Pole as part of the Catlin Arctic Survey.

In this week’s Guardian, John Crace looks into the training Daniels and her fellow expedition members Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton endure before they can tackle the pole. Crace paints a vivid picture:

Six am on a sub-zero morning in Devon. A five-mile run in the dark, ending in a couple of hill sprints. Breakfast. Circuit training in the barn; beyond any pain threshold to physical exhaustion. Lunch. Ninety minutes dragging weighted tyres up and down a 1:6 hill. The only upside is that the mud has frozen over. It’s mindless, repetitive, punishing effort, not improved by an ex-marine shouting in your ear. Tea. A three-mile run, followed by more circuits. Die

The article also creates a nuanced and detailed portrait of the explorers. As I was reading, I was struck by how normal — and simultaneously how extraordinary — the explorers are. Everyday people, not superhuman, not Olympic athletes, aging (45 now, for God’s sake,” as Daniels readily admits), they tackle the pole, year after year, gathering data and working to mitigate climate change. Everyday heroes, exploring the Arctic.

Trial by ice – what it takes to be an Arctic explorer | Environment | The Guardian.

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The jawbone of a fully grown male polar bear, believed to be somewhere between 110,000 and 130,000 years old, is giving scientists a rare glimpse into polar bear evolution.

DNA from the jawbone, which was discovered in Svalbard by researcher Olafur Ingolfsson of the University of Iceland in 2004, shows that polar bears are a relatively young species, having split from brown bears approximately 150,000 years ago and evolved rapidly during the climate changes that took place during the late Pleistocene. As Ingolfsson notes, in an email quoted on the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog,

I think our find shows that polar bears have been around for a while, and they probably have survived situations in the past where the Arctic was warmer and there was less seasonal sea ice than today. . .

I want to stress that we should be concerned about the polar bears’ future. There are other risks out there, mainly from chemical pollution of the Arctic (heavy metals, pcbs, etc). Also, increased traffic (oil tankers) when/if ship lanes open up across the Arctic Ocean could constitute a major threat.

Polar bear fossils are rare, as the animals spend most of their lives on the sea ice, which means that their remains rarely end up on land. The DNA taken from the jawbone gives researchers a rare glimpse into the lives of ancient polar bears. It is also the oldest mitochondrial sample from a mammal sequenced to date.

Read more:

Science Daily: Ancient DNA from rare fossil reveals that polar bears evolved recently and adapted quickly

Arctic Update: Resilient Bears, Shrinking Ice — Dot Earth Blog, NY Times.com

Unis: Oldest remains of a polar bear ever discovered.

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Today on Talk of the Nation, researcher Robert Rockwell reported on the incursion of grizzly bears into the area around Hudson Bay, an area formerly the exclusive territory of polar bears.

The two bears are actually fairly close relatives — close enough to produce hybrid young, though those young are sterile. The two predators can co-exist fairly peacefully as well, since both, as top level predators, have evolved not to fight too much with other bears. This is because the bears can do so much damage to one another that infighting would would cause too much damage amongst the population — bears that fought each other regularly would have died out long ago.

At the same time, however, grizzlies create competition for the polar bears, and may even hibernate in the dens where polar bear mothers bear their young, threatening a new generation of polar bears.

Both species are federally protected in Canada, and it isn’t yet clear whether the grizzlies plan to stay in Hudson Bay. But for researchers, this is both an interesting and concerning development in the Hudson Bay ecosystem.

Read more:

Grizzlies Move Into Polar Bear Turf On Hudson Bay : NPR.

Science Daily: Grizzly Bears Move Into Polar Bear Habitat in Manitoba, Canada

Arctic Kingdom Expeditions to Hudson Bay

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Today on CNN, there’s an article up about Ann Daniels, a widely respected polar explorer (and British mother-of-four) who is embarking this week on a 500-kilometer trek up the Canadian sea ice toward the North Pole, part of the 2010 Catlin Arctic Survey.

On the way, Daniels and her team will be taking water samples and other field data on the changing Arctic climate, providing raw data for scientists studying the state of the Arctic today. This year’s survey will focus on ocean acidification as increasing levels of carbon dioxide are absorbed from the atmosphere.

Another side affect of climate change is an decrease in sea ice, and a corresponding increase in the amount of swimming Daniels and her team will have to do — through cold, dark water. And swimming in the Arctic winter sea, Daniels notes, is no easy task. Along with the cold, there’s the psychological element to swimming in the winter dark:

“Nothing from under the sea is going to jump up and eat you. But as a human being there’s that feeling of, ‘what is under here? It’s pitch black and anything can get me.’ Mentally you start imagining all kinds of things in the water,” she said from her home in Devon, southwest England.

Daniels notes that, in the 13 years since she started making regular trips to the pole, the amount of swimming has increased.

The first time I swam was in 2002 and steadily we’ve had to swim more and more as the years go on, and we’re certainly expecting this year to do an awful lot of swimming. We’ve got a flotation device to go around the sledge as well because we’re expecting more water than ever before.”

via Arctic explorer prepares for icy swim – CNN.com.

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