The Economist just posted an interesting article about the scientific research taking place in Ny-Ålesund, a village on the High Arctic island of Spitsbergen

The village logs some 14,000 researcher-days a year: the scientists normally come and go on twice-weekly flights from Longyearbyen, about 110km away, except for those who arrive on research ships, or on the vessels that bring in provisions and fuel to replenish the stocks in the rather rusted tanks that stand up above the jetty. A few dozen of them spend the winter up here. “The midnight sun is one thing,” one of the select few boasts, “but the full moon at noon is rarer and finer.”

The article highlights how this small village, at the near-top of the world, is at once isolated from and connected to the world below, drawing researchers from around the world and generating data that speaks to our shared environment, where no single country or individual is ever truly isolated from the larger world.

The Arctic is the world’s attic: a lot of junk lofted high into the atmosphere farther south ends up there. And the facilities for studying it all, especially those high above the settlement in the laboratory at the summit of Mt Zeppelin, away from any local disturbances, are exquisitely sensitive. Some of these instruments form part of the world’s network for monitoring carbon dioxide levels. Others monitor methane, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and all sorts of particles. Some bottle up air for yet more meticulous examination far away, in Britain, or in Boulder, Colorado. Kim Holmen of the Norwegian Polar Institute says some of his equipment could detect a cigarette at 2km. Through their careful monitoring he and his colleagues connect themselves to conflagrations a great deal farther away than that, picking up industrial pollutants and forest fires from all parts of Eurasia.

via Green.view: The connected Arctic | The Economist.

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The big news out of Antarctica this year is of the discovery of the remains of plane used in early explorations of the continent.

Over on the Mawson’s Hut Foundation Blog, heritage carpenter Mark Farrell wrote briefly of his January 1st discovery:

The change in the appearence of the ice due to melt has been a fascination and wonder with me while I have been at Cape Denison. On New Year’s Day while out walking after a day’s work on the Magnetograph Hut, I noticed that the previously dangerous ice edge of Boat Harbour had in some places melted to rock and made acess to the waters edge quite safe. With the spirit of adventure all around I continued to walk along the rock until I noticed it, waiting to happen. I thought to my self, I think I should tell someone about this!

Team member Tony Stewart elaborated on the discovery’s significance:

The biggest news of the day is that we’ve found the air tractor, or at least parts of it! Bloggers will have noted that Tony and Chris have more than a passing interest in this aircraft, and have been searching with a plethora of electronic gear (ground penetrating radar, a metal detector, a magnetometer and an ice auger) hoping to uncover its final resting place. After the blue moon yesterday and a huge high tide overnight, we had a very low tide this evening, the lowest we’ll have all season and only 10 cm higher than the lowest possible tide here at Commonwealth Bay.

With visitors from the Orion due here in 2 days, our heritage carpenter Mark Farrell was wandering along the rocks on the edge of Boat Harbour looking for a suitable landing place, when he noticed some metal among the rocks in the water. He was pretty laid back about the find, calmly walking into Sorensen Hut to mention that he’d found something in the water that looked like the air tractor. Tony and Chris have never geared up so quickly, and hot footed it over to Boat Harbour with Mark. Michelle Berry, Jody Steele and Peter Morse weren’t far behind and together we examined the parts sitting in a few centimetres of water. With the tide already on the rise and higher tides ahead, we photographed the objects then brought them back to the lab immersed in sea water, until a plan can be made for their conservation.

Built in 1911, just 8 years after the Wright brother’s first flight, it was first aircraft from the famous Vicker’s factory, and the first aircraft taken to either polar region. Due to wing damage, it never flew here, but was converted into an ‘air tractor’, which the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition used to tow gear up onto the ice dome in preparation for their sledging journeys.

Chris Henderson said “It vindicates our continuing search: many people have said it was blown out to sea or taken away by the ice. It doesn’t matter that the various pieces of equipment weren’t successful – what matters is that the facts showed it should still have been where it was left – and it was. ”

The find draws attention to the work of the Mawson’s Hut Foundation, which is dedicated to the study and preservation of Antarctica’s polar exploration heritage. Do yourself a favor and poke around a bit on their blog — the air tractor is just the tip of the fascinating archeological work being done down below!

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Over on the Discovery Channel’s Earth Live Blog, Dr. George Divoky, a participant in International Polar Year’s Polar-Palooza outreach program and a scientist who has been studying Cooper Island’s Black Guillemot population for more than 30 years, describes some of the changes he’s seeing in the Arctic:

When presenting to school groups one of my tasks is to ask ”what is wrong with this picture?” as a PhotoShopped image of a polar bear walking behind some penguins appears on the screen. This summer, though not as incredible as the penguin/polar bear pairing, I find myself looking at the images obtained over the past month on Cooper Island and thinking “what is wrong with these pictures?” But I know that the images of polar bears walking around the colony, sleeping on the beach and approaching the campsite, things I could never have imagined before 2002,are the product of habitat degradation rather than any image manipulation.

When Dr. Divoky talks about polar bears “approaching the campsite, he isn’t kidding! The video below was taken by his camps’ motion-sensitive cameras at 3:30 AM.

Dr Divoky set up alarms to alert him to bears’ presence after bedtime, but that hasn’t prevented bears from doing damage to Black Guillemot nests and snacking on fledgelings. Sadly, these sorts of changes in animal behaviour are one of many everyday impacts of global warming already in evidence in today’s Arctic.

via Is It a Bird or a Bear? – Earth Live: Cooper Island.

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