Ships Traveling the Thawing Arctic are Leaving Garbage in Their Wake
Following another year of stark climate impacts in the Arctic, scientists warned Tuesday of a new scourge hitting the region: marine trash.With the region warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, sea ice that has long blanketed the Arctic Ocean is disappearing, opening new routes to shipping. Scientists began noticing the trash bobbing in the icy water or piling up on Alaska Bering Strait-area beaches last year.“That’s a direct result of increased human maritime activities…
GPS, Ice Profiling Sonar Used in Sea Level Variation Study
ASL Environmental Sciences said that Dr. David Holland of New York University, in collaboraon with Dr. Natalya Gomez at McGill University, is leading an invesgaon of sea level variaons in the Disko Bay region of western Greenland.According to a statement from the company with over 40 years of experience in oceanographic, acoustic, remote sensing and ice research products and scientific consulting services, a shore-based system compares the direct arrival of GPS signals to the signals reflected off the sea surface to obtain sea level.The presence of sea ice and icebergs complicate the measurements. A shore-mounted camera provides information…
Arctic Standards Development Moves Ahead
Improving and updating Arctic design standards for material, equipment, and offshore structures for the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries. Seventy representatives from seven countries met for two days in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in early October to further the creation of standards for resource development in the Arctic. The countries represented included Canada, UK, France, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, and Russian Federation. It was the third annual…
Icebergs across the North Atlantic
From the first voyages across the North Atlantic, icebergs have been a major threat to shipping interests. The most famous disaster was the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. On her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, the vessel struck an iceberg approximately 400 nautical miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. Less than 3 hours later the Titanic sank beneath the surface, taking with her over 1500 passengers (http://www.titanicuniverse.com/). There were many other ship-iceberg accidents before the Titanic.
