ARCTIC: Earthquakes Strike Kamchatka & more – 5th Aug 2025

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 5th of August twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Earth-shaking news came from the Arctic this week. On Tuesday the 30th of July, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that three massive earthquakes struck Russia’s northeastern Kamchatka Peninsula. One quake reached a magnitude of eight point eight, making it the joint sixth most powerful earthquake ever recorded.

The U.S. Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration immediately issued tsunami warnings for Alaska, while national authorities from Japan to South America issued further alerts across the Pacific. Thankfully, the remote location of the earthquakes and tsunamis meant evacuations in Russia, Alaska, and Japan were carried out in time. However, Reuters reported on the 30th that only one fatality occurred, when a woman in Japan died during evacuations. What could have been a devastating Arctic disaster instead ended as a testament to northern emergency services.

Kamchatka had yet more to come, as the Russian Emergency Ministry announced on Sunday the 3rd of August that one of its volcanoes, the Krasheninnikov, erupted the prior night for the first time in more than 500 years. The ministry believes this event may be linked to the earthquake, but the eruption should pose no threat to populated areas in the region.

To watch a video of this historic eruption, take a look at the link in the show notes.

This wasn’t the only groundbreaking news in the north. Over in Greenland, the European Space Agency reported on Wednesday the 31st of July that they have discovered a massive crater within the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Agency believes this crater formed as part of a sub-glacial flood in twenty fourteen, which erupted 24 billion gallons (90 billion liters) of meltwater with such force that it burst through the largest ice sheet outside of the Antarctic.

The existence of lakes beneath the Greenland ice sheet is a new discovery, and this event shows that we have much to learn about what is going on under the ice.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods are all changing the Arctic landscape significantly, but beavers might just be the biggest driver of environmental change in the whole north. In a paper published on Wednesday the 30th of July in the journal Environmental Research Letters by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, scientists predicted that beavers will be moving northward, higher into the Arctic as the climate warms. Satellite images show that beaver ponds in Alaska have more than doubled from two thousand three to today, reaching over 11,000.

Beavers are ecosystem engineers, with their damming habits felling forests, creating new floodplains, and much more. Scientists worry that this new wave of beavers will create an environment where the Arctic can never return to its prior state, once they turn the north into their own paradise.

Changes in the Canadian Arctic are causing harm to its marine animals. Canadian broadcaster CBC reported on Tuesday the 29th of July on new research published by the Oceans North acoustic monitoring program which studied the impacts of increasing shipping on narwhals in Nunavut's Eclipse Sound, northern Canada.

The study found that narwhals are sensitive to sounds around twenty kilometers (around twelve miles) away and that when exposed to ship noises, they stop echolocating and try to escape to a quiet area. Narwhal numbers in Eclipse Sound decreased by ninety percent in the last twenty years, while shipping increased exponentially during that same time.

The study says that existing ship noise regulations are inadequate to protect one of the most iconic and unique Arctic animals.

Ocean regulations need to change regarding carbon pollution too. A report released on Wednesday the 30th of July by the organization Pacific Environment highlights the need to curb black carbon emissions caused by growing Arctic marine traffic. The number of ships moving into the Arctic has risen by almost forty percent since twenty thirteen, but most of these vessels currently use residual fuels, which produce high concentrations of black carbon when burned.

Black carbon has a warming impact up to 1,500 times higher than CO2. It has also caused serious health problems for Arctic communities, increasing rates of heart disease and respiratory illness.

The report calls for all Arctic ships to be required to use cleaner fuels. If they want to travel in the Arctic, they have to be responsible in keeping it clean and safe.

Not helping the increasing marine traffic in the north is the growing militarization of the Arctic. A NATO spokesperson told Defense News on Friday the 1st of August that NATO has deployed a maritime task group to northern Norway to boost its maritime presence in the Arctic and High North. This task group will conduct anti-submarine sweeps in the region to ensure undersea infrastructure remains safe, having been targeted in recent years by Russian and Chinese vessels.

Russia’s expanding Arctic ambitions are largely funded by its liquefied natural gas (or LNG) industry across the north. With three facilities currently active, Sergey Tsivilev, the Russian Energy Minister, announced expansion plans on Thursday the 31st of July. He revealed that Russia intends to build several new LNG facilities, including the Ust-Luga project, Obsky, Murmansk, and Arctic LNG-1, by twenty fifty. All of which will be located in the Russian Arctic.

In twenty twenty-four, Russia produced about 38 million tons of LNG, according to government export statistics. Under current expansion plans, this figure will have jumped to 100 million tons by twenty thirty and 175 million tons by twenty fifty. This could make Russia the largest LNG-producing country in the world by a significant margin.

Let’s move over to the US, where rural and indigenous communities are suing the government. On Thursday the 31st of July, Alaskan news agency, The Daily Yonder, reported that a coalition of nonprofits, tribes and local governments from across the country is suing the federal government over the cancellation of almost $3 billion US dollars in environmental grants for disadvantaged communities.

Many small Alaskan communities have joined this coalition, with their homes and lives now threatened regularly by melting permafrost, flooding and erosion. The prior Biden administration approved billions of dollars of funding to give to at-risk communities, but the Trump government swiftly cancelled this funding.

The lawsuit will hold its first hearing on Tuesday the 5th of August.

Alaska’s Indigenous advocates are taking on the government in other ways too. As reported by the news agency, The Alaska Beacon, on Thursday the 31st of July, native tribes from Alaska and across the US have gathered in Nevada in support of their LGTBQ+ community members. In January, Trump signed an executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female. Yet Indigenous Americans have recognized the term Two Spirit as a distinct gender outside of male or female since pre-colonization times.

The attending Indigenous tribes came together to assert their right to sovereignty within their lands, which extends to healthcare decisions within a community, including gender affirming care for trans people.

Finally, over to Greenland, with some sports news, as according to the website of the Greenlandic Football Federation, the twenty twenty-five national league kicked off on Monday the 28th of July, and finished on Sunday the 3rd of August. Eight teams from across the country gathered in the capital city, Nuuk, and played twenty games over six days to decide the newest national champion.

The final game was a real David vs Goliath match. Greenland’s most successful club, B-67, faced up against IT-79, who have only ever won a single title in their history. In bad news for the underdog fans, B-67 won the game by two goals to one and claimed their sixteenth league title.

To watch the final, follow the link in the show notes.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Did you know that we do lots of other updates? We’ve got non-country updates: Apart from the Arctic show, we’ve got the Ocean and Multilateral Updates, and country updates, with a selection of nations from across the world.

Check the full list with the link in the show notes.

Adjo