Arctic Winter & more – 9th Jan 2024

Góðan daginn from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 9th of January twenty twenty-four A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Let’s start the week in Scandinavia where Norway, Sweden, and Finland are feeling the effects of an Arctic winter. A cold snap is battering the region. On Wednesday the 3rd, northern Sweden recorded its lowest temperatures in twenty-five years when temperatures fell below minus forty degrees Celsius, or minus forty Fahrenheit. The effects have been damaging and even deadly. Across Scandinavia, there have been power outages, traffic and transportation disruption, school closures, and unfortunately a mother and son in Finland died on Thursday the 4th after being caught in an avalanche. As a result of the cold, Finland has recorded its highest-ever power usage figures and the Finnish Economic Affairs Ministry has warned residents that power bills might be twenty times higher than normal during this difficult period.

This winter is proving difficult for some Indigenous communities in Canada too. Michael Yellowback, Manto Sipi Cree Nation Chief, reported on Thursday the 4th that grocery stores in his nation are facing empty shelves with food deliveries unable to access the remote communities. There are no all-weather roads leading to the Manto Sipi Cree Nation, and during winter, the community relies on airborne shipments of food. However, when poor weather makes flights unsafe, such as in the past few weeks, the Nation is cut off from the rest of Canada. The Spokespeople for First Nation communities have asked the federal government to invoke the Emergency Measures Act to get supplies to communities and provide funds to build all-weather roads.

Russia’s natural gas extraction projects in the Arctic Ocean will be one of the most important topics of twenty twenty-four, especially their newest project, Arctic Liquid Natural Gas Two (or LNG2). US sanctions against Russia in November twenty twenty-three caused the project to have serious delays, but LNG2 has just received a major boost. On Saturday the 6th, two heavy lift vessels departed from China carrying prefabricated modules for its Arctic LNG 2 project in order to complete construction and get the gas extraction running. This shows that although the US and EU have sought to disrupt Russia’s energy industry, Russia’s cooperation with China remains a viable workaround to meeting their ambitious energy targets.

As the Arctic becomes more important to security and military actions, local governments need to develop security plans. On Thursday the 4th, the Canadian territory of the Yukon formally introduced its new Arctic Security Council at a media event. The territorial government said the council’s role is to "study risks across the Yukon security landscape and identify opportunities for the Government of Yukon to work with the Government of Canada to enhance security across the territory."

Also on Thursday the 4th, The Canadian federal government announced in a press release that almost $200 million Canadian dollars, about $150 million US dollars, are being allocated to critical infrastructure and transit projects across Nunavut. Some of the funds will be used to provide safer drinking water to areas such as Pond Inlet, Arctic Bay, and Grise Fiord, to complete a new senior care facility in Rankin Inlet, and to improve public transportation in Pond Inlet and Resolute Bay. Renewable energy will power all these projects and provide modern infrastructure to remote communities, which have historically lacked federal support.

Across the border in Alaska, fishermen have received foreboding news. On Thursday the 3rd, CBS News announced that, for the second year in a row, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled Alaska’s snow crab fishing season. In twenty twenty-two, a massive ocean heat wave killed 90% of the snow crab population, around 10 billion crabs. Since then, regular surveys have taken place but the crabs have shown no signs of recovery, and the industry has been shut down to give the snow crabs a chance of recovering.

As Alaska adapts to a changing climate, the state must consider new energy solutions. As part of a US-wide investment totalling $450 million dollars announced on Thursday the 4th, the federal government granted $10 million dollars to researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks to study a project that could capture carbon emissions from a new coal power plant and inject them in a depleted natural gas field near Anchorage. The project aims to produce energy while preventing carbon emissions from reaching the atmosphere. Skeptics of the project point to the only operational carbon capture project in Saskatchewan, Canada, which stored less carbon than predicted while also suffering regular mechanical failures.

The whole federal project will affect every state in the US. To know more about where the funds are being allocated, follow the link in the show notes!

Just before Christmas, a train derailed in the Iron Ore train line north of Kiruna in Northern Sweden. Since then, all Iron Ore traffic has been stalled. Initially, the track was expected to be cleared by the 9th of January but on Friday the 5th the Swedish Transport Administration postponed the clearance date to the end of January. The mining company LKAB extracts iron ore extraction in the region and revealed it is losing 100 million Swedish Krona, about 10 million US dollars, a day. The biggest challenge to the line restoration is the freezing weather, it is simply too unsafe to work outdoors. The Iron mines are still operating and there will be a large backlog of iron ore to be transported once the line is cleared.

Turning our attention to Iceland where the government has brought the issue of whaling once again to the national courts. Last summer the fisheries minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir decreed that the whaling industry would be indefinitely postponed to address animal welfare concerns. In September, the government lifted this ban with new regulations to improve welfare during hunting. The story took another turn when, on Saturday the 6th, the government ombudsman declared that the initial ban was enacted illegally. Kristján Loftsson, the CEO of Iceland’s only active whaling operation called Hvalur, has, in response, declared he will sue the government for the revenue it lost during the enforced ban, and Svavarsdóttir might have to move to a different ministry or face calls to step down.

Iceland’s population is expected to reach a huge milestone quicker than anticipated. According to newspaper Sermitsiaq, on Monday the 8th, Iceland will reach 400,000 inhabitants within six months. In two thousand eight, a forecast predicted that this figure wouldn’t be reached until twenty fifty. Federal agency Statistics Iceland predicts these figures and believes that many factors including better health, increasing immigrations, and lower death rates are among the reasons why Iceland is growing so quickly.

Taking a short boat trip to Greenland, where a new kind of ancient predator has been discovered. As reported in a paper published on Tuesday the 3rd in Science Advances, in a series of expeditions to Northern Greenland led by the Korean Polar Institute to Peary Land, scientists have uncovered a brand new variety of gigantic carnivorous worms that might be some of the earliest carnivorous animals on Earth. The creatures have been named Timorebestia meaning “terror beasts,” were previously unknown and are likely to have been an apex predator in the oceans of the Early Cambrian period about 500 million years ago.

Although Scandinavia has been having a cold time recently, the tourist industry in northern Norway is so hot right now. This has been attributed to the doubling of direct flights since twenty eighteen from various destinations to Tromsø, Norway’s Arctic capital, increasing from ten to twenty direct regular flights. The industry has now surpassed its pre-COVID levels after the pandemic decline, with an income from tourism close to 2 billion Norwegian krone, about 200 million US dollars. Experts believe the trend will keep increasing.

Aaand that's it for this week!

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