In one of those “naked underneath all those clothes” enticements, the sun revealed itself to Longyearbyen on Tuesday for the first time since late October – if 27 minutes of “exposure” behind a lot of clouds and mountains counts.
Photo of Andreas Eriksson at Longyearbyen’s self-test station courtesy of Longyearbyen Lokalstyre
A total of 15 positive cases were registered in Longyearbyen during the past week, bringing the total for the year to 87, according to the city’s weekly update released Monday. It notes no people have been hospitalized this year, but a relatively high number of new cases is likely at least in the short term.
Two years after the beginning of Svalbard’s peak tourism season was destroyed by declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the archipelago is beginning the season with a renewed sign of optimism as nearly all virus-related travel rules for travel from the mainland are no longer in effect, the Norwegian government announced this week.
The summary of their four-month sea voyage is suicidally depressing, in the sense of portraying an imminent future of humans hastening their widespread life-ending pattern of destruction. But they also found hope in a few moments, such as a brief encounter with ten blue whales that convinced the researchers Earth’s biggest creatures are making a slow recovery that may have larger implications.
Yeah, it’s yet another climate study predicting a hellishly gloomy Svalbard by 2100. But instead of triggering heartburn by focusing on impacts such as dead polar bears this study warning about the doubling of local glacier melting invokes cool back-to-the-future concepts such as “space-for-time substitution.”
Or, as the scientists explain more simply, “they studied development patterns of hundreds of glaciers over relatively short periods of time rather than a single glacier over a very long period of time. The method is useful because the glaciers exist in a very wide variety of climates.”
A total of 13 COVID-19 cases were detected among residents and visitors in Svalbard during the first week of 2022, including four of the Omicron variant, with local officials saying they expected cases to continue to rise and they’ve lost control of the ability track the path of local cases.
One of two subsea fiber cables providing communications capabilities to Svalbard from mainland Norway is severed, posing a potential threat to virtually cut off the archipelago from the outside world although capabilities are currently operating normally on the lone remaining cable, officials said Sunday.
Photo Marcel Schütz, right, discussing his new appointment as Switzerland’s first honorary consul in Svalbard, by Michael Wenger
Marcel Schütz is among those recently questioning the Norwegian government’s approach to policy regarding foreign residents in Svalbard, but his importance from his homeland’s perspective made history this week as Switzerland appointed him the first local honorary Swiss consul during a ceremony in Longyearbyen.
Photo of Lenin bust in Barentsburg by Wikimedia Commons
“Russia isn’t about to annex Svalbard,” but is planning a hostile takeover of sorts in the waters surrounding it, according to a polar geopolics expert.
That means in addition to boosting its archipelago activities such as tourism and research, there will be more “sabre rattling” in the form of warships sailing closer, louder diplomatic protests and other actions while remaining inside the boundaries of the Svalbard Treaty.
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URGENT PLEA – Icepeople’s website and editor need help NOW to avoid homelessness
It’s crazy enough being someone from “elsewhere” in Svalbard – help ensure this “other” at least has a home for his newspaper and himself!
There have been some moments of true desperation during our 13-year history. This is one of them.
Icepeople is again facing an immediate existential crisis due (of course) to hardships largely inflected by the pandemic. In short, 1) the website needs $22 U.S. (190 NOK) to stay online for another month and 2) the editor needs any and all help possible to avoid homelessness in the middle of polar winter (not that it’s legal here any other time of the year).
So if you appreciate Icepeople for its unique stories about Svalbard and/or critical news during these critical times, as well as its features about the more colorful aspects of life here (today’s feature about the upcoming Polarjazz festival is for the event that first drew our editor’s attention to Svalbard way back in 2008) please do whatever you can during what are admittedly incredibly harsh times for many.
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Nuggets of knowledge about the north from other normal newsies
Tuesday, March 10
Scanning Electron Microscopy image of typical deep-sea (bathyal) ostracod species from the study sites. Image courtesy of The University of Hong Kong.
Meltwater pulses (MWPs) known as abrupt sea-level rise due to injection of melt water are of particular interests to scientists to investigate the interactions between climatic, oceanic and glacial systems. Eustatic sea-level rise will inevitably affect cities especially those on coastal plains of low elevation like Hong Kong. A recent study published in Quaternary Science Reviews presented evidence of abrupt sea level change between 11,300–11,000 years ago in the Arctic Ocean. During the last deglaciation, melting of large ice sheets in the Northern hemisphere had contributed to profound global sea level changes. However, even the second largest MWP-1B is not well understood. Its timing and magnitude remain actively debated due to the lack of clear evidence not only from tropical areas recording near-eustatic sea-level change, but also from high-latitude areas where the ice sheets melted. The study presented evidence of abrupt sea level change between 11,300–11,000 years ago of 40m–80m in Svalbard. High time-resolution fossil records indicate a sudden temperature rise due to the incursion of warm Atlantic waters and consequent melting of the covering ice sheets. Because of the rebound of formerly suppressed lands underneath great ice load, the sedimentary environment changed from a bathyal setting at the study sites. This is the first solid evidence of relative sea-level change of MWP-1B discovered in ice-proximal areas.