ARCTIC: Korean Vessel Helping Russia & more – 3rd Sep 2024

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 3rd of September twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

The billion-dollar chess game between the US and Russia over the natural gas industry intensified. After the US imposed more sanctions last week, Russia quickly countered. On Thursday the 29th of August, news agency G-Captain reported that the world’s largest floating gas storage barge, a South Korean vessel, docked with a sanctioned Russian gas carrier in the Arctic Ocean. The Korean barge, free from sanctions, can maneuver globally, helping Russia sell its gas more efficiently. Even though the barge is likely to face future US sanctions, Russia continues to find new ways to sidestep restrictions.

The expansion of the Arctic energy industry has been largely due to the melting of Russia’s north coast and the opening of the northern sea route to traffic. On Monday the 26th of August, Reuters reported a new milestone was reached when an Azerbaijani oil tanker completed its journey from China to western Russia via this northern sea route. This is the first vessel not from Russia or China to make the trip, showing that international shipping is now a viable option across the Arctic Ocean.

Economic competition from Russia isn’t the only concern for Europe, though. On Monday the 26th of August, Reuters reported that security services from seven countries, including Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, held a meeting with Norway’s highest energy company executives to warn them of the increasing threat of sabotage from Russia. Norway has taken over from Russia as Europe’s primary source of natural gas and both the continent’s security services and the ones across Europe believe Norway’s gas and oil industries are at risk of suffering physical and cyber attacks by their jealous neighbor in the north.

Speaking of Norway, a report from the country’s National Forest Assessment, released on Friday the 30th of August, highlighted impressive strides in forest restoration. The country now boasts over 1 billion cubic meters of forest cover, a ten percent increase in just the past decade. Over the last century, Norway has more than tripled its forest size, thanks largely to a nineteen sixties initiative that had children planting nearly 100 million spruce trees. Warmer conditions over the last twenty years have accelerated the growth of these young trees, driving the recent spike in forest size. Even though the report notes that the trees are now less effective at absorbing carbon dioxide, this achievement still marks a significant win for Norway's forests.

Alaska also made good environmental progress this week. On Tuesday the 27th of August, the Biden-Harris Administration confirmed it finalized the decision to reinstate federal protections for 28 million acres (or over 100 thousand square kilometers) of public lands across Alaska. The prior Trump government unlawfully ended the protections for this land in twenty twenty, but this vast swathe of Alaska is now back under federal protection. In the days following the announcement, the Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission and the Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition, representing tens of Alaskan tribal communities, celebrated the news, hoping that their lands will be allowed to heal from mining and fishing that has damaged the environment they rely on.

But Alaskans received discouraging news from a report released on Friday the 30th of August by Alaska’s Department of Education, revealing that two-thirds of school students are not proficient in reading, math, or science. Despite lowering proficiency standards after similar results last year, there was no improvement, suggesting a decline in student outcomes. While younger students showed some progress in twenty twenty-four, performance among teenagers aged thirteen to sixteen dropped. Officials from the Department of Education and Early Childhood did not respond to inquiries from the news agency The Alaska Beacon on the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student performance.

Over the border in Canada’s North Western Territories, the investigation into the federal government's response to the record wildfires of twenty twenty-three was released on Wednesday the 28th of August. According to the report, the local and federal governments were unprepared for the magnitude of devastation that burned across Canada. The report has many recommendations to ensure another unprecedented year of fires can be dealt with effectively. Among the over forty suggestions are new wildfire modeling software, and more mental health support for firefighters.

Canada’s Inuit were handed a legal victory this week. A lawsuit launched in twenty twenty-one by an Inuit advocate group against the government of Nunavut finally progressed on Friday the 30th the August, when a Nunavut court ruled the lawsuit could now move to a formal trial. The lawsuit alleges that Inuit students are being discriminated against at the hands of the local government by not being able to receive an education in Inuktut, their mother tongue. The language has been disappearing from Indigenous communities with Statistics Canada reporting in twenty twenty-one that only about half of Nunavut's population said their mother tongue is Inuktut, compared to sixty-five percent in twenty sixteen. If the lawsuit succeeds, children across Nunavut will have the chance to learn and speak their native tongue throughout their childhood.

An unprecedented event in the Arctic is the sudden influx of jellyfish into the northern ocean. Warming seas are welcoming to jellyfish and scientists have been concerned about how this will affect the environment. A new study released on Tuesday the 27th of August by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany has revealed that fish in Greenlandic waters consume jellyfish much more frequently than previously thought. Almost sixty different species of jellyfish were recorded in the stomachs of fish, showing that they are becoming a regular prey choice for Arctic fish, though the reason for this is still a question for the team behind the study.

That wasn’t the only discovery deep in the Arctic Ocean. On Friday the 30th of August, a study led by the University of Helsinki discovered promising antibiotic candidates within microbes deep below the sea near Svalbard, Norway. Finding new antibiotics is considered crucially important for medicine as bacteria are evolving to be resistant to modern antibiotics. Most current antibiotics have been derived from microbes in soil, but the ocean has barely been searched for medicinal microbes.

In more discoveries, on Wednesday the 28th of August, NASA released a report detailing their search for a mystery electrical field on Earth. Svalbard is home to the northernmost rocket range in the world and NASA used this site to launch rockets into the polar atmospheric winds to study their electrical fields. The rocket has recorded the first successful detection of Earth’s amEarthar electric field —a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields. This field was first hypothesized in the sixties, and NASA believes it is one of the main drivers behind the formation and movement of the atmosphere. Now the ambipolar field has finally been discovered, NASA hopes to learn how it has shaped the history and future of planet Earth.

To learn about this important discovery, check out NASA’s report with the link in the show notes.

Finally, a beloved and unique resident of the Arctic passed away this week. On Saturday the 31st of August, the port of Stavanger in Norway confirmed that the beluga whale known as Hvaldimir had died. Hvaldimir, which is a portmanteau of the Norwegian word for whale, and Vladimir Putin, first came to Norway in twenty nineteen. Arriving on Norway’s Arctic coast, he was very friendly and was wearing a camera harness labeled as equipment of St. Petersburg. Since then satellite images have revealed Russia operates a military base on the coast where it trains beluga whales to spy on other Arctic nations. Hvaldimir was a friendly spy, however, enjoying the attention of people and moving from fjord to fjord across the whole of Norway. He even moved to Sweden for a while before taking his final days in Stavanger port.

To know more about this whale's amazing life, follow the link in the show notes!

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

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