Heart cloud. The first day of Hurricane Season 2011 brings a fast moving surface low
tracking west-southwestward near 20 mph. This image was taken by GOES-East at 1315Z on June 1, 2011.
Russia has submitted a revised application to the United Nations to extend its share of the Arctic continental shelf.
Though the 2001 application was rejected, Moscow is now confident that it has provided enough data to back up its claims.
“Russia has presented its application to extend its territory on the Arctic continental shelf and it was registered. The work we have done to gather material is extensive,” said the Russian Minister for Natural Resources and the Environment Sergey Donskoy.
He added that the documents had been well received by the UN commission, which will now look at Russia’s application.
Moscow's application to extend its share of the Arctic continental shelf has been registered by the United Nations.
The claim was made at a session of the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
Moscow’s first bid in 2001 was rejected due to a lack of scientific proof.
Russia has been aiming to prove that its claims are in fact correct ever since. "From 2002 to 2014, nine geological and geophysical expeditions took place in the central part of the Arctic Basin, using atomic-powered icebreakers, as well as research submarines," Donskoy said. The UN commission could start studying the documentation provided by Russia later this month, Donskoy noted, adding it could be between two and four years before a decision is made. The minister also added that Canada, Denmark and the US, who also have borders with the Arctic region, did not oppose the UN consideration of Russia’s proposals.
Territorial claims on the Arctic shelf
Moscow is currently abiding by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The convention says the Arctic countries are entitled to a 200-nautical mile economic zone over the continental shelf abutting their shores.
Currently, Russia claims to areas outside the established 200-mile economic zone.
The zone covers the geomorphological shelf of the Russian Arctic marginal seas, a part of the Eurasian Basin (Nansen and Amundsen basins, the Gakkel Ridge) and the central part of the Amerasian basin as part of the Makarov basin and the Complex of Central Arctic submarine elevations.
Moscow’s revised bid covers an underwater space area of about 1.2 million square kilometers and goes beyond 350 nautical miles from the shore.
It includes claims for the Lomonosov Ridge, the Mendeleev-Alpha Rise and the Chukchi Plateau.
“In particular, the revised application includes the areas of the southern end of the Gakkel Ridge and the Podvodnikov Basin,” the ministry said in a statement posted on Facebook.
The Podvodnikov Basin is another name given to the Wrangel Abyssal Plain, as named by the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO).
Russia is trying to prove that these ranges are actually a continuation of the Russian continental shelf. If the UN rules in its favor, Moscow will be entitled to the exclusive rights to develop vast resources, the volume of which, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources, may reach five billion tons of untapped oil and natural gas reserves – worth as much as $30 trillion.
“All collected data confirm the continental nature of the Lomonosov ridge, Mendeleev-Alpha Rise, Chukchi Plateau, as well as a continuous extension of these elements from the shallow shelf of Eurasia,” the statement said on Tuesday.
Russia Arctic control to expand?
Canada, Denmark, Norway also submit claims to territory
On Tuesday, Donskoy also raised the question of the maritime delimitations in the Arctic Ocean, which are still pending.
In particular, several disputed areas in parts of Amundsen Basin, the Lomonosov Ridge, Makarov-Podvodnikov Basins and Mendeleev Rise are also claimed by Denmark as an extension of Greenland. In December, Denmark filed a claim for the territory of approximately 895,541 square kilometers of the Arctic seabed – an area 20 times larger than Denmark itself – after 12 years of research and over $55 million worth of investments. In addition, there are unresolved issues of maritime delimitation between Russia and Canada in the areas of Makarov Basin and Mendeleev Rise. According to international law, if the UN does not issue recommendations on the maritime demarcation, the countries themselves could delimit the disputed territories bilaterally.
However, Russia could face problems further down the line even if the UN eventually rules in its favor, due to current geo-politics, says Conn Hallinan, a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus. “I think you have to see this as part of a wider global issue. The fact is that the Russians are being demonized right now. I think you have to see this Arctic push back by the United States as part of that whole process, which is to try and isolate Russia internationally because Russia represents an independent force in the world and the United States does not like that,” Hallinan told RT.
Russia’s military aspirations in the Arctic
Since 2012, Russia has been undergoing a process of re-establishing military bases in its Arctic regions, which also includes introducing mobile nuclear power plants.
Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russian troops will be deployed in the Arctic by 2018, equipped with all the necessary high-tech weaponry in a number of bases across the polar region.
Washington is closely watching Moscow’s activity in the Arctic region, according to US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Russia deploys S-400 missile defense systems in Arctic
“Economic riches tend to attract military interest as nations seek to ensure their own rights are protected. And we know, because we track it, that these countries – like Russia, China, and others – are active in the Arctic,” Kerry said.
Meanwhile, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency said that “containing Russia’s presence in the Arctic is crucial to the interests of the US.”
Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart was testifying on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, providing an annual assessment of top global threats. “The Russians intend to increase their ability to control the Arctic regions. They have built airbases, they are building missile defense capability – both costal and naval missile defense capability and they are doing that for economic and military reasons,” Stewart said.
“In the absence of something that counters that, they will continue to expand, so I think it is imperative that we have the willingness and the ability to be able to push back their control or dominance of the Arctic region.”
Ordinary merchant ships will not be able to take an ice-free shortcut from China to Europe until at least 2040, report predicts
It will be decades before big cargo ships link China and northern Europe by taking a shortcut through the Arctic Ocean, a report predicts. Climate change,
retreating summer ice and the prospect of shorter journey times and 40%
lower fuel costs has led Russia, European governments and some
industries to expect a major ice-free shipping lane to open above
Russia, allowing regular, year-long trade between the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans within a few years.
But, says the Arctic Institute in a new paper,
low bunker fuel prices, a short sailing season and continuing
treacherous ice conditions in the Arctic even in summer months means it
could be 2040 at the earliest before it is commercially viable for
ordinary merchant ships to pass through what is known as the northern sea route.
Until then it will remain cheaper to send trade between Europe and the east via the Suez canal, it says.
The conclusions of the report were backed this month by the powerful
Danish Shipowners’ Association, which includes 40 major shipping
companies such as Maersk, the world’s largest. Denmark has the eighth
largest fleet in the world and would stand to gain the most in Europe if
the northern sea route opened.
“We have gone from hyper-optimism to total realism. The world economy
was developed on the basis of a high oil price. The northern sea route
seemed viable [a few years ago] but now it’s not the case. The route has
vast potential but it will take a long time to open up,” said Anne H.
Steffensen, director of the association at a meeting of Arctic country ministers and industry in Tromsø.
Russia has tried to open up the Arctic to international traffic by
offering icebreaker service and better port facilities.
But cargo in
transit along the northern sea route dropped from 1.3m tonnes in 2013 to
300,000 tonnes in 2014.
Last year only 100,000 tonnes was transported
between Asia and Europe on the route.
However, there was a big rise in
the number of vessels going to and from Russian Arctic ports.
The Arctic Institute report, which compares the costs of building
ice-reinforced ships suitable for the northern sea route, to existing
costs of using the Suez canal, includes fuel prices, wait times, lengths
of journey, canal fees and different sea conditions.
It concludes that
trade is unlikely to open up the northern route for decades.
It expects the Arctic sea ice to be too thick and treacherous for
many years, requiring expensive ice breakers and strengthened hulls.
“The Arctic navigation season is currently too short and ice
conditions are too unpredictable for liner shipping to be feasible.
Arctic liner shipping will only become a viable alternative to the
contemporary shipping lanes if global warming continues to melt the ice
cover along the North-west passage and the Northern sea route.
“It is highly unlikely that large-scale containerised cargo
transports will appear in the near future. The question then arises:
when, if ever, will the ice conditions allow for continuous and
economically feasible container transport along the route?”
The greatest potential for the use of ice-reinforced container ships
was found if the speed of global warming increased and the price of fuel
is high.
But even in this scenario, the cost per container was about
10% higher than going via the Suez canal route. Scientists have predicted
that ordinary vessels would be able travel easily along the northern
sea route, and moderately ice-strengthened ships should be able to pass
over the pole itself by 2050.
Russian authorities still sees a bright future for shipping along its
northern shoreline, but not as a busy international shipping route.
“It
is 100% sure that the northern sea route will be no alternative to the
Suez Canal,” Russia’s deputy minister of transport, Viktor Olersky, told
the Arctic Circle 2015 assembly.
Holland America Line, cruise liner for penguins (but in Antarctica)
Unusually high temperatures in January led to January seeing the lowest recorded extent of sea ice in the satellite record.
The ice extent averaged 13.53 million square kilometres (5.2 million
square miles), which is 1.04 million sq km (402,000 sq m) below the 1981
to 2010 average, according to the US government’s National Snow and Ice
Data Centre.
From The Guardian by John Abraham Taking the Earth’s temperature is a challenge, but a critically
important one if we are to better understand the nature of climate
change
Human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are
causing the Earth to warm.
We know this, and we have known about the heat-trapping nature of these gases for over 100 years.
But scientists want to know how fast the Earth is warming and how much
extra energy is being added to the climate because of human activities.
If you want to know about global warming and its future effects, you
really need to answer these questions.
Whether this year was hotter than
last year or whether next year breaks a new record are merely one
symptom of a warming world.
Sure, we expect records to be broken, but
they are not the most compelling evidence.
The most compelling evidence we have that global warming is happening
is that we can measure how much extra heat comes in to the Earth’s
climate system each year.
Think of it like a bank account.
Money comes
in and money goes out each month.
At the end of the month, do you have
more funds than at the beginning?
That is the global warming analogy.
Each year, do we have more or less energy in the system compared to the
prior year?
The answer to this question is clear, unassailable and unequivocal:
the Earth is warming because the energy is increasing.
We know this
because the heat shows up in our measurements, mainly in the oceans.
Indeed the oceans take up more than 92% of the extra heat.
The rest goes into melting Arctic sea ice, land ice, and warming the
land and atmosphere.
Accordingly, to measure global warming, we have to
measure ocean warming.
Results for 2015 were recently published by Noaa
and are available here.
A recent paper
by Karina von Schuckmann and her colleagues appeared in Nature Climate
Change, and provides an excellent summary of our knowledge of the energy
balance of the Earth and recent advances that have been made.
The
article describes the complexity of the situation.
The Earth is
continuously gaining energy from greenhouse gases, but there are also
natural fluctuations that cause both increases and decreases to the
energy flows.
For instance, volcanic eruptions may temporarily reflect some solar
energy back to space.
Natural variability like the El Niño/La Niña cycle
can change heat flows and how deep the heat is buried in the ocean.
The
energy from the sun isn’t constant either; it varies on an 11-year
cycle, but by less than 0.01%.
With all of this and more happening, how
do we know if an energy imbalance is natural or human caused?
How do we
separate these effects?
The
effort to separate human from natural effects is seen to be possible
when one considers how the imbalance is measured in the first place.
There are multiple complementary ways to make these measurements.
Each
technique has advantages and disadvantages and they have to be
considered together.
One way is through satellites that orbit the Earth.
These satellites
can measure the heat entering the atmosphere and the heat leaving the
system.
The difference between them is the imbalance.
Currently, the
longest operating satellite measurement for this is from Nasa and is
named Ceres (Clouds and Earth’s Radiation Energy System).
The difficulty
is that the energy imbalance is only about 0.1% of the actual energy
flows in and out, and while the changes can be tracked, their exact
values are uncertain.
Another way to measure the imbalance is to actually take the ocean’s
temperature.
Temperature tells us how much heat a system has. If the
temperature is increasing, it means the energy within the system is
increasing as well – the system is out of balance.
Not only do we have
to measure the ocean temperatures accurately, but there is a need to
measure the temperatures year after year after year exceedingly
accurately to much better than a 0.1°C margin.
What really matters is
how the temperature is changing over long periods of time.
While it may sound easy to measure the oceans, it is actually quite
challenging.
The oceans are huge (and deep) and difficult to access.
The
need is for enough measurement locations at enough depths and with
enough precision to get an accurate temperature.
Argo Program: Deep sea probes (drifters) drift with ocean currents at a depth of around 2000 meters, surface every ten days and send their data on temperature and salinity to satellites. Afterwards they sink down again into the "tranquil depths".
The probes area part of the international ARGO program and measure the upper 2000 meters of the Earth's oceans.
The data is used by scientists, fishers and the military, for example for research on climate change, prediction of the seasons and "ocean weather".
This visualization shows the locations of the ARGO buoy array over time.
When the buoys are above water, the lines are brighter; when the buoys are under water, the lines are fainter.
The ARGO buoys measure ocean salinity, column temperature, and current velocities.
This version of the visualization uses a slow camera move. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
In recent years, we have relied upon a system of automated ocean measurement devices called the Argo fleet.
These devices are scattered across the globe and they autonomously rise
and sink (down to 2,000 meters) and record temperatures and salinity
during their travels.
Because of the Argo fleet, we know a lot more
about our oceans, and this new knowledge helps us ask better questions.
But the fleet could be made even better.
They do not measure the bottom
half of the ocean (below 2,000m depth) and they do not fully cover
regions near or under ice or near shores.
Argo buoy
Furthermore,
a 10-year trend is much too short to make long-term climate
conclusions.
We have to stitch Argo temperatures to other instruments,
which have been measuring the oceans for decades.
That stitching process
has to be done carefully so that a false cooling or warming trend is
not introduced.
Another way is through ocean levels.
As the oceans warm, the water
expands and sea levels rise.
So, just by measuring the changing water
levels, it is possible to assess how much heat the oceans are absorbing.
The drawback to this method is that oceans are also rising because ice
around with world is melting, particularly in Greenland and Antarctica.
As this melted ice water flows into the oceans, it too causes sea levels
to rise.
So, it’s important to separate how much of ocean level rise is
from heat-expansion and how much is from ice melting.
And another way is through the use of climate models, which are
computer simulations of the environment.
Very powerful computers are
used to calculate the state of the climate at millions of locations
across the globe, in both the oceans and in the atmosphere.
The
calculations use basic physics and thermodynamics equations to track the
thermal energy at each of the locations.
When CO2 rises, wet and wild planets may lose their oceans to space. (see Nature)
(demabg/iStock)
So, there are many ways to measure the Earth’s energy imbalance.
While all methods are telling us the Earth has a fever, they differ in
details and better synthesis of all the information is essential to
improve the knowledge of what Earth’s energy imbalance is.
Right now,
the Earth is gaining perhaps as much as 1 Watt of heat (a Joule per
second) for every square meter of surface area.
Considering how large
the Earth is, this is an incredible amount of heat being gained day and
night year after year.
This is over 1 zettaJoules (sextillion Joules)
per year.
What I like about this new paper is the recommendations for the
future.
Perhaps the most important recommendation is that we need to
continue to make accurate measurements of the Earth’s temperatures,
especially in the oceans.
We need to extend those temperate measurements
to deeper locations (below 2,000 m) and make measurements near shores,
in the Polar Regions, underneath ice, etc.
This will require a sustained
funding of our measurement systems and a long-term view of the Earth’s
changing climate.
Fully understanding where the excess heat is going in the Earth
system is a first step to making good predictions as to what its
consequences are for the future climate and the oceans.
It is an
essential activity to enable planning for the future. Dr von Schuckmann
summarized her work nicely when she told me, "Advancing our capability to monitor the Earth’s Energy Imbalance means increasing our knowledge on the status of global climate change - and the global ocean plays a crucial role. A concerted multi-disciplinary and international effort is needed to improve our ability to monitor this fundamental metric defining global warming."
Bonne projection
Werner projection
