No one lives on the sea ice itself, but 5 million people live on the islands and
continental coastlines surrounding the Arctic Ocean. Aleuts, Indians, Inuits, Métis
and other indigenous people have had to adapt, over the last 200 hundred years,
their traditional ways in response to a fast-changing political and economic landscape.
But for these pan-Arctic people the relatively swift loss of the sea ice, and therefore
the peripheral areas of seasonal sea ice upon which they depend, will mean an abrupt
end to their way of life. The rapid melt is already depriving them of hunting platforms,
traditional travel routes, and food sources.
Enlarged expanses of open water also enable more freak, high-water levels (storm
surges). These dramatically increase the erosion of low-lying coastal areas, already
weakened as the stabilising permafrost is also melting in response to global warming.
An increasing number of Arctic settlements are under threat of flooding and destruction.
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Weather
Posted by
Gaby Dean
People living in the UK tend to be obsessed by the weather. But thousands of kilometres away from the prospect of decent shelter, let alone a hot bath, what the weather is doing becomes something of...more
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Saturday, 02nd May 2009
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Attention to detail
Posted by
Paul Deegan
It’s easy to think that staying focused on the big picture is the primary key to success when it comes to successfully completing an ambitious project like the Catlin Arctic Survey....more
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Thursday, 30th April 2009
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Ice Report
Posted by
Andy Pag
The results collected in the first month of the Catlin Arctic Survey point to an unexpected lack of thicker Multiyear Ice....more
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Tuesday, 21st April 2009
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Arctic Colours
Posted by
Dominic Hilton
The Arctic isn’t a place for vibrant colours. Day after day, vast expanses of pale light, white snow and ice-scapes and an endless blue sky stretch ahead of the three explorers......more
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Tuesday, 14th April 2009
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Polar bear hunting
Posted by
Dominic Hilton
The Polar bear is the largest land carnivore and has a reputation as the only animal that actively hunts humans. They spend most of their time on Arctic ice floes, feeding on seals....more
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Monday, 13th April 2009
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Drilling Observations
Posted by
Dominic Hilton
In the Antarctic, an ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands snapped, providing scientists with further evidence of rapid change in the region....more
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Tuesday, 07th April 2009
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Pain management
Posted by
Dr Craig McLean
Over the years the human body has been studied at length to explore our ability to deal with pain and how chemically we have defenses to enable us to tolerate high levels of pain....more
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Monday, 06th April 2009
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Hypothermia
Posted by
Gaby Dean
The Catlin Arctic Survey Team have now been working in temperatures of below -40 degrees centigrade for more than 30 days...their voices often sound slurred and they occasionally muddle their words....more
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Monday, 06th April 2009
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WWF Earth Hour
Posted by
Tori Taylor
With an estimated 50 million global participants in the WWF Earth Hour in 2008, this year is set to rise above last year’s figures with a billion people projected to take part....more
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Saturday, 28th March 2009
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