Tromso is living up to its image as Norway's Arctic capital, as I step off the plane into a flurry of snowflakes and a landscape of white. I first came up here to to the Arctic Frontiers gathering in 2007 to research and make contacts for a series of documentaries to mark the International Polar …
Continue reading Moving North – Arctic Frontiers in a changing world
The Arctic and the rest of the planet are heating up rapidly. Emissions are at a record high and fossil fuels in demand against the background of the energy crisis through Russia's war on Ukraine. Can 2023 bring a decisive shift in climate action?
Rarely have I heard the Arctic being mentioned so often in the media as in this hottest of summers. I wish the reason was a good one. Alas. The warming Arctic plays a key role in the development of the heat-waves currently disrupting life and livelihoods around the globe.
Durham University just hosted the UK Arctic Science Conference 2022. Interesting times, in the shadow of the Russia-Ukraine invasion and troubled relations between Moscow and the West. Still, international collaboration to research the changing Arctic is key.
Arctic permafrost is thawing, threatening northern communities and speeding up the climate change that is thawing it in the first place. Only rapid and substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can help avert catastrophe.
At the end of a year of fires, floods and other climate catastrophes, is the world coming to its senses? Or are we burning on regardless?
The situation for planet earth was looking bleak. There was more of those dangerous heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere than ever before (and the records could go back way beyond the bounds of human history, looking into the earth, the oceans and the ice.) The planet had become a hothouse. The ice at the poles …
Top scientists working on the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic climate change issued an urgent message. The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than ever, with catastrophic implications for global sea level and the world's weather – and only rapid and substantial action can slow the pace.
I was working through my Twitter feed, fretting about the incredible temperatures in the high north and researching my next blog post. Could geoengineering be the way to cool the Arctic and the planet? Should it? And was the current hype about it not distracting too much attention from the need for immediate and drastic …
Continue reading Tipping points: can a leaked report tip the scales to climate action?
The bi-annual Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council in Reykjavik, Iceland, on May 20th attracted a lot of media interest – not least because the new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was attending, alongside Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This is one arena where the two rivals and Cold War adversaries come together as …
The Ice Blog 