Recent News
As Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson heads to Alaska on Wednesday for talks on Arctic issues, he finds himself in climate policy limbo, preparing for a meeting at which global warming will be front and center yet representing an administration that is still on the fence about fighting it.
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The author cautions that while the U.S. leadership role on the Arctic council may be ending, the U.S. should still stay engaged in the Arctic because "how countries respond to an opening ocean will determine whether it remains a zone of peace, or becomes an area of conflict."
[ More ]The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard issued a stark warning on Wednesday that Russia was leagues ahead of Washington in the Arctic. And while the warming Arctic opens up, the United States could be caught flat-footed while other geopolitical rivals swiftly step in.
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The Trump Administration's reliance on China for assistance with containing North Korea has led to a dramatic reduction in FONOPs in the disputed South China Seas to contest China's claims and ensure freedom of navigation.
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A new report from Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme suggests that the Arctic may be ice-free in summer within twenty years. The 90 authors of the rigorously peer-reviewed AMAP report state, “Extrapolations of recent observed data suggest a largely ice-free summer ocean by the late 2030s, which is earlier than projected by most climate models.”
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An increase in aggressive maritime behavior from the Russian Navy calls for a renewed committment to open communications and adherence to the maritime rule of law to avoid incidents escalating.
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The U.S. is closely watching the Russian buildup in the Arctic, the biggest since the fall of the USSR with Russia bolstering its fleet of nuclear-fueled icebreakers, reopening abandoned Soviet military bases and building a string of new ones.
[ More ]The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, suggests a huge assessment of the region. The warming is hastening the melting of Arctic ice and boosting sea-level rise.
[ More ]British scientists exploring an underwater mountain in the Atlantic Ocean have discovered a treasure trove of rare minerals which could be a boon for renewable energies that depend on rare earth metals but posing an uncertain risk to the fragile underseas environment.
[ More ]The Arctic is undergoing an astonishingly rapid transition as climate change overwhelms the region. New research sheds light on the latest example of the changes afoot, showing that parts of the Arctic Ocean are becoming more like the Atlantic. Warm waters are streaming into the ocean north of Scandinavia and Russia, altering ocean productivity and chemistry. That’s making sea ice recede and kickstarting a feedback loop that could make summer ice a thing of the past.
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