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Russian Explorers To Cross Arctic Using Amphibian Vehicles
Moscow (AFP) Dec 14, 2006 A team of Russian explorers will travel 7,000 kilometres (4,350 miles) across the Arctic next year in amphibian vehicles to document the region's history and environment, mission members said Thursday. "It's the most difficult stage" of a project called Polar Ring, expedition leader Vladimir Chukov, a veteran Arctic explorer with a thick grey beard, told a news conference in Moscow. The expedition, which began in the town of Salekhard in northern Siberia in 2002, aims to complete a tour of the the Arctic in four stages by 2009, taking in Russian, Danish, Canadian and US territory. The crossing in four vehicles from Russia to Canada via the North Pole is planned for February-June 2007. Expedition members will log the journey on a website, arctic.izvestia.ru, through satellite link-ups. "The changes to the planet's environment are most visible in the Arctic," said Ilya Freidovich, a scientist who is taking part in the expedition. "These processes, unfortunately, are taking place very quickly and irreversibly," Freidovich said, referring to global warming and the melting ice caps. He said ice samples would be collected every 30-40 kilometres of the route. A study published by US scientists this week found that the shrinkage of Arctic sea ice could accelerate dramatically in coming decades, leaving the planet's most northerly ocean virtually devoid of ice in summer by 2040. But Chukov sounded a more cautious note on the effects of global warming, saying there should be no "panic". Drastic changes in the Arctic environment "won't be felt tomorrow or even in 20 years' time", he said. A video of the journey so far shows the explorers encountering the remains of a Soviet prison camp, ice caves created in Soviet times to store food reserves in case of war, native reindeer herders, polar bears and cranes.
Source: Agence France-Presse Related Links Beyond the Ice Age 
Don Pettit Goes To Antarctica
Huntsville AL (SPX) Dec 15, 2006Readers of Science@NASA may remember six fun months in 2002-03 when astronaut Don Pettit circled Earth onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Don was the expedition's science officer--and more than that, he was infected with a mischievous sense of experimentation. |
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The newspaper reported that about 170 polar bears, which are a protected species, have been stranded along Russia's Arctic shore during unseasonally warm temperatures. "Every year the ice forms later. For example, right now the ice is not thick enough to support the polar bear and the animal is being forced to look for food where people are," Anatoly Kochnyov, an expert with the Pacific Fisheries and Oceanography Scientific Institute, was quoted as saying. Locals in far-flung villages have been warned not to go out at night or to leave their vehicles when traveling, while rubbish tips have been masked with oil to cover the scent, Izvestia said.">