Here are some of the stories from around the Arctic that we've been following this week:
An Arctic cruise gets more attention
As the planned sailing of the 1,000-passenger cruise ship Crystal Serenity through the Northwest Passage draws closer, coverage of the voyage has increased -- with a focus on whether the infrastructure currently in place could handle a disaster, should one befall the ship. "If the entire ship -- all 1,000 passengers, all 600 crew -- require search and rescue, for instance, if the ship sinks, then that would actually break the Canadian search-and-rescue system," a University of British Columbia researcher told CBC News. In the U.S., a disaster training exercise will be conducted at Nome, one of the ship's early ports of call -- but scheduling problems prevented it from being conducted before the ship arrived. It's not only questions about rescue readiness that are getting attention. NPR asked Nome Mayor Richard Beneville about the prospect of the ship's crew and passengers temporarily boosting the population of the town by 50 percent (he welcomes it).
More mixed messages on Arctic oil's future
Though Finland's not a oil-producing country, researchers there are working to figure out how best to clean up a spill in pack ice. While U.S. and Canadian efforts have focused on burning the oil in place, Phys.org reports, Finns are experimenting with a system of skimming and suction that might hold more promise in thicker pack ice. The future of oil production in the region remains far from certain, however. While Russia's Gazprom recently gained a foothold in the Norwegian waters of the Barents Sea, Royal Dutch Shell has pulled out of the next round of leasing in Norway's Arctic. And in the U.S., activists are working to halt the next program of Chukchi and Beaufort sea leases before they get going.
Further reading:
- This year's Arctic sea ice isn't the only ice showing the effects of unusual episodes of warm weather. New research shows heat waves in July 2012 were linked to "exceptional" melting on Greenland's ice sheet, leading climate modelers to worry they've underestimated the effects of such warm spells.
- Is climate change forcing the Inupiat subsistence hunters around Kotzebue Sound to compete with killer whales over a dwindling population of belugas?
- If all goes according to plan, a team of researchers will freeze a ship -- with themselves aboard -- into the icepack, drifting through the winter to make observations of sea ice during one of its more poorly understood phases.