Curiously Polar

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.