ARCTIC: Arctic Ocean is melting & more – 12th Mar 2024

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 12th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

The only place to start is with the official confirmation on Friday the 8th that Sweden has officially become the newest member of NATO. Sweden applied two years ago in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and became the thirty-second member of the military alliance. With this addition, all seven non-Russian Arctic nations are now in a defensive pact that hopes to protect the Arctic from war.

Canada is one of NATO’s founding members but has not spent the NATO goal of two percent of GDP on defense in decades. However, this is set to change. On Thursday the 7th, Bill Blair, Canada’s defense minister, announced that the country will double its defense budget to $30 billion US dollars by twenty twenty-six in response to Russia and China increasing their military presence in the Arctic. Blair noted that the Arctic used to provide a natural barrier for Canada but as the Arctic melts, suddenly Canada’s northern border needs investment in its defense.

Speaking of the melting Arctic, a new report provides the most worrying prediction for the future of the Arctic Ocean ever published. The University of Colorado released a report in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment on Tuesday the 5th that predicts the Arctic Ocean could become ice-free within the next few years, a decade earlier than previously thought. An ice-free Arctic is inevitable due to climate change, but the report states the amount of time the Arctic is without ice will hugely vary depending on global carbon emissions. The report notes that sea ice is very resilient and will return quickly if we are able to cool the earth down, so there is always hope for returning the Arctic Ocean to its ice-filled state.

Want to know more about this? Check out the Ocean Update. Link in the show notes!

As the Titanic will testify, how fast ice moves in the sea is just as important as anything else. A new paper published on Tuesday the 5th in The Cryosphere by York University looks to measure how fast ice will move in the future. For decades, ice has been getting thinner, lighter and moving faster. This has been bad news for ships which run the risk of fast moving ice damaging or destroying them, but the report suggests that toward the end of the century ice will suddenly slow down. Since at some point the ice will get so thin that it will lack the mass to generate speed. Captains should still be wary as over the next few decades, ice is still predicted to speed up every year before it eventually relaxes.

Sweden’s NATO accession isn’t the only good news for the Nordic nation. The Swedish Transport Authority confirmed on Wednesday the 6th the first iron ore train completed a test run on the train tracks that have been under repairs since December. The mine owners LKAB are finally able to export iron ore from the Malmbanan mine. LKAB says they have lost over $500 million US dollars in revenue due to the months of delays. LKAB has demanded the Swedish government build an additional train line into the Arctic to act as a redundancy in case of future disruptions.

On Wednesday the 6th, the Norwegian government announced a resolution regarding a controversial new wind farm. Nord-Fosen Siida, The Indigenous Sami community, took legal action in twenty twenty-one against Roan Vind, a state energy company, for constructing a wind farm on Sami land without consultation, reducing their grazing land for reindeer.

Following years of negotiations, the parties reached an agreement The wind farm will continue operating on Sami land, with the local community receiving about $900,000 US dollars annually for the next twenty-five years. After this period, Nord-Fosen Siida will hold the right to veto the wind farm's operation, while the federal government will allocate a new area of land for the Sami's reindeer raising needs. This agreement enables renewable energy production to continue while honoring the cultural heritage of Norway's Indigenous Sami nation.

A different Norwegian wind farm is getting the green light though. As reported by Reuters, the Goliat Vind project in the Barents Sea is still being planned but on Friday the 8th the project received $200 million US dollars from the Norwegian government in funding. The plan is to build by the Arctic town of Hammerfest and supply all their energy needs while also powering any nearby offshore gas and oil platforms. With the Norwegian government seeking to expand deep sea energy production, they are looking to fund projects like Goliat Vind, making offshore energy production easier.

Russia's own energy needs might have a very bright future. The head of the national energy agency, Rosnedra, Evgeny Petrov, told an energy conference on Wednesday the 6th that Russia has only explored about ten to twenty percent of its Arctic seafloor. Russia’s current energy projects will last up to fifty years, but the government is confident the unexplored Arctic regions will yield massive amounts of oil, gas and rare metals to keep Russia an economic superpower in the world.

Heading to Greenland, a brewing storm over internet usage unfolds. In an interview with Signe Ravn-Højgaard, co-founder of the Think Tank for Digital Infrastructure, reported to The Polar Journal on Wednesday the 6th, Starlink, a satellite broadband system owned by Elon Musk, gains momentum in remote Greenlandic towns.

However, it faces a major obstacle: Starlink is currently illegal in Greenland. The government's ban aims to sustain costly nationalized broadband services, crucial for the small population. Yet, Højgaard contends that Starlink could be invaluable, serving as a national backup system and reaching remote communities lacking internet access. With main data cables requiring replacement by twenty thirty-three, the fate of Greenland's internet infrastructure hangs in the balance, with satellite technology potentially leading the way forward.

That’s not the only industry facing a struggle, in Alaska the state’s fishing industry is stuck in a terrible condition. According to The Alaska Beacon on Friday the 8th, a worsening local environment and poor economic conditions worldwide have resulted in huge job losses and many companies collapsing in Alaska. This is costing the state about $2 billion dollars each year. To combat the situation, the state senate has created a seafood industry task force, modeled on a salmon task force, which rescued Alaska’s salmon industry twenty years ago. The new task force will assess the situation and, by January twenty twenty-five, have a series of proposals to present to state lawmakers, in the hopes of rescuing Alaska’s faltering fishing industry.

Amidst fishermen's struggles, Alaskans cheered the start of the twenty twenty-four Iditarod on Monday the 4th. Controversial due to the over 150 dogs that have died historically in this extreme dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome, the drama escalated this year when racer Dallas Seavey encountered a moose attack, prompting him to shoot it dead to protect his team.

Even though Seavey followed state law by gutting the moose, inspectors deemed his field-dressing inadequate. Despite rectifying the situation and distributing the meat to a local village, Seavey faced penalties, including a two-hour head start for other racers in the next race. This incident marks one of the race's most dramatic moments, with hopes for a smoother remainder of the competition.

This isn’t the only cultural milestone beginning in the Arctic this week. The Arctic Winter Games kicked off on Sunday the 10th in the Mat-Su valley of Alaska. A week of traditional sports has invited Indigenous people from across the Arctic to compete. Great news is that all the athletes were able to process their passport and visa applications in time for the tournament, a worry for many in recent weeks. There are twenty teams from different Arctic regions competing in twenty-nine sports, with Greenland being the reigning champions.

If you want a daily summary of the day’s winners and losers, the official website of the competition publishes a newsletter each day. Link in the show notes!

And.. that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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