#Arctic

2017 could be a watershed year for many countries, as various territorial disputes threaten to boil over amidst a climate of global uncertainty.

Russia’s A2/AD “bubbles” around the Baltics, the Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arctic could dramatically constrain NATO’s freedom of movement.

Global and regional leaders met in Alaska at the 2015 GLACIER conference, trying to shape the future of the Arctic. That future will probably look like one of five existing models.

After five great years at the Foreign Policy Association, the Arctic Blog will be moving to a new, independent site at http://www.cryopolitics.com. I’ll continue to contribute to the FPA network occasionally at the U.S. Energy Independence, Food and Climate, and China’s Foreign Policy blogs. For all the latest on developments in the Arctic, however, please […]

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that more crude oil is being sent by sea and inland waterways as a supplement to railways and pipelines. Since 2010, the amount of oil shipped on barges from the Midwest down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico has increased 13 times. Much of this […]

Finland has a smaller profile in the Arctic than its neighbor to the west, Norway. Whereas Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg declared at last week’s Arctic Frontiers conference that the Arctic will continue to be “most important foreign policy area” for her country, Finland’s most important foreign policy area is arguably Russia, with which it […]

Although last week’s Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway focused on the activities of “humans in the Arctic,” from sleeping habits to snowmobile accidents in Svalbard, top politicians still made headline appearances. The Prime Minister of Norway, along with Greenland’s Prime Minister and Finland’s Foreign Minister, spoke on Tuesday, the second day of the conference. […]

Arctic Frontiers, an annual conference on development in the Arctic intended largely to bring together policy makers, scientists, and academics, took place for the ninth year in a row in Tromsø, Norway. The theme of this year’s conference focused on “Humans in the Arctic.” The more prosaic, but no less important, conference theme contrasted with […]

On January 8, in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper presided over the groundbreaking ceremony of the extension of the Dempster Highway to Tuktoyaktuk, on the Arctic Ocean’s coastline. The extension will lengthen the highway 137 kilometers, finally bringing an all-weather road to Tuk. The existing road, which opened in 1979, stretches 730 […]

The Chinese icebreaker Xue Long‘s rescue of the passengers aboard the stranded Russian research vessel MV Akademik Shokalskiy has made headlines around the world. Since December 24, the Russian ship has been stuck in pack ice near Antarctica’s Cape de la Motte, approximately 1,700 miles south of Tasmania. MV Akademik Shokalskiy was about midway through the month-long Australasian Antarctic Expedition, run by the University of New […]

“We do not give up the North Pole. Canada’s claims to the North Pole are no more than ambition.” So declared Russian polar explorer and scientist Artur Chilingarov on December 11, whom President Vladimir Putin named a “Hero of Russia” after he famously planted his country’s flag on the seabed underneath the North Pole in 2007. […]

I attended the American Geological Union (AGU) Fall Meeting this week in San Francisco. It’s billed as “the largest worldwide conference in geophysical science,” with over 20,000 attendants. There was a vast number of talks on the cryosphere, which I’ll try to cover over the next few days. One session I attended, “Frontier Science from Extended Continental […]