Tag: Arctic

Captain Scott s expedition ship found off Grenland

Summer students yesterday presented the results of seven weeks of intense and targeted work DNV's summer students yesterday presented the results of seven weeks of intense and targeted work to develop a realistic and suitable concept for a year-round Arctic oil spill response system, including requirements for people, vessels and equipment.DNV's summer project is an annual programme organised during the summer months for students in their final year of a master's degree programme. This year, ten students with varied cultural and academic backgrounds worked intensely on their project for seven weeks. The focus has been on developing an Arctic oil spill response system. "We know that the world needs more energy. And we know that much of this energy is located in unfriendly and vulnerable areas of the world. Adequate oil spill response systems are therefore of vital importance. These are complex issues that the world's leading scientists, researchers and engineers spend considerable time and resources on. So I am impressed by what these ten students have been able to process and produce during seven short summer weeks," saysDNV's CEO Henrik O. Madsen.Research shows that about 22-25% of the world's undiscovered petroleum resources are located in the Arctic. However, there ...

This promotional video explains how Shell engineers can control and cap an Arctic well blowout in less than 10 seconds.

Time ticking on Shell s offshore Arctic drilling

Tropical plankton invade Arctic waters

Two Shell's drilling ships and support vessels Two Shell's drilling ships and support vessels are leaving Seattle for Arctic waters, company's spokesman said.Curtis Smith says by e-mail that the the Kulluk and the Noble Discoverer on Wednesday morning began the process of departing and will be en route to Alaska's Dutch Harbor.The rigs will wait in the Aleutian Islands port until open water allows them to move north.The Kulluk is headed to the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast for exploratory drilling during the summer open water season.The Noble Discoverer will drill exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea off the state's northwest coast.Source: AP

Greenpeace demand the High Arctic be legally protected from companies and governments Greenpeace maintains that what happens in the Arctic affects us all. Besides acting as a planetary air-conditioner, the region is a bellwether for the health of our climate and the global ecosystem.As the ice melts and is replaced by large patches of dark, open water, even more of the sun's heat is absorbed and the melting increases. The frozen North is stuck in a vicious circle, with scientists talking about the sea ice entering a "death spiral."The Arctic is warming faster than any other place on Earth. Ice is disappearing at unprecedented levels and with it the habitat of species like the polar bear, while the way of life of the four million people who live above the Arctic Circle is changing forever.But rather than seeing this as a clear warning and spur to positive action, many governments and companies have taken a different, altogether more sinister, view: the retreating ice sheet is an opportunity to grab one of Earth's last unclaimed areas and to profit from finding the resources that are currently locked away deep beneath the ice.According to Greenpeace, as a consequence, we are now witnessing ...

$500,000 for damages caused by MV CLIPPER ADVENTURER The Canadian Coast Guard is seeking almost half a million dollars in damages from the cruise ship MV Clipper Adventurer and its owners.The coast guard, through the federal government, launched a lawsuit on Friday.The ship ran aground near Kugluktuk, Nunavut, in August 2010 after hitting an uncharted rock shelf. The Coast Guard's Amundsen ship had to rescue the 128 passengers after the Clipper Adventurer's crew was unable to dislodge the vessel.The lawsuit says the damages are to prevent, repair or minimize pollution from the ship's grounding. The Coast Guard said that when the ship was grounded, 13 tanks aboard were breached. Some of those tanks held fuel, freshwater and sludge.Another Coast Guard ship, the Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was sent to the site to monitor the salvaging of the ship and the potential pollution from the accident.The lawsuit claims the rock shelf was a known hazard to mariners since September 2007.The owners of the Clipper Adventurer filed a lawsuit against the federal government last spring saying they should have been given more information about the hazard.Source: CBC

Satellite observations analyzed data Recent years have brought unprecedented melting to Arctic sea ice, the white cap that covers the far north. Now, months before the sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent, this summer looks likely to follow suit, bringing unusually ice-free waters.Satellite observations analyzed by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center show the extent of the sea ice hovering below the baseline, the average between 1979 and 2000, for most of the spring and dipping particularly low in June."It definitely portends a low-ice year, whether it means it will go below 2007 (the record minimum in September), it is too early to tell," Meier said.The sea ice undergoes a seasonal cycle, spreading across the Arctic waters during winter and retreating in the warmth of summer. Historically, the ice - which provides important habitat for walrus and polar bears - reaches its minimum extent between the first week of September and around the end of the third week of the month, according to Walt Meier, a research scientist at NSIDC.Recent years rank as the lowest on record since continuous record-keeping began in 1979, and scientists blame a combination of natural weather fluctuations, such as wind patterns, and ...

WHOI Scientists A team of researchers, including scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), discovered a massive bloom of phytoplankton beneath ice-covered Arctic waters. Until now, sea ice was thought to block sunlight and limit the growth of microscopic marine plants living under the ice.The amount of phytoplankton growing in this under-ice bloom was four times greater than the amount found in neighboring ice-free waters. The bloom extended laterally more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) underneath the ice pack, where ocean and ice physics combined to create a phenomenon that scientists had never seen before.(Photo by Sam Laney, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)The study, published June 8 in the journal Science, concluded that ice melting in summer forms pools of water that act like transient skylights and magnifying lenses. These pools focused sunlight through the ice and into waters above the continental shelf north of Alaska, where currents steer nutrient-rich deep waters up toward the surface. Phytoplankton under the ice were primed to take advantage of this narrow window of light and nutrients."Way more production is happening under the ice than we previously thought, in a manner that's very different than we expected," said WHOI biologist Sam Laney, who was part ...