Affected by ice free seas, polar bears are increasingly visiting human villages and adding human waste to their diet. So what are Russian Arctic bears eating? Researchers decided to analyse bear poo to measure natural vs human waste sources of food. Arctic sea ice melt has left polar bears unable to feed on their natural…
Category: sea
Seasonal methane across northen Siberian waters
Siberian scientists recently analysed how much methane was stored in the Lena River, Tiksi Bay and .Lake Golzovoye because methane levels in water are not as well known. Between 2001-17 the atmospheric methane increased to 1932 ppb, recorded at Tiksi Hydrometeorological Observatory. They wanted to investigate the relationship between warmer water temperatures and increased methane…
Highway to bottom sediment – heavy metals in the Russian Far East waters
Heavy metal pollution in Peter the Great Bay and Lake Khanka affects both biological organisms and accumulating in bottom sediments (BS) of both freshwater and seawater. Russian chemists ecided to find out more about the impact on the surrounding ecology by analysing each heavy metal phase, how it appears, what it does and where it…
Surfing the Russian coast – an atlas of wind and wave energy
Russia’s coastline includes seas and oceans stretching along 40,000 km. Wave energy varies between 29kW/M – 35 kW/M (Myslenkov et al., 2023) The researchers investigated on and offline mapping and methodologies forecasting wind and wave movements. They developed an open-access atlas so that anyone can get updated wind and wave information. This is now available…
Economic vs climate strategy face-off in the Russian Arctic
Russian climate doctrine and strategy include climate change as one of the biggest 21st century challenges especially socio-economic development of the Arctic region with both opportunities and risks (Drachkova et al., 2023, Kremlin, 2020). The Arctic is warming twice as fast as other areas with reduced snow cover, reduced permafrost, increased precipitation. Sea ice is…
A regulatory shhh across Arctic coastal ecosystems?
Alongside the Arctic Ocean, the Barents, White, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi seas are marine ecosystems including seabeds, ocean floor and subsoils. Increases in drilling of the continental shelf increases environmental impact. Yakovleva noted the most common issues are emissions, oil / oil product spills, pollution, waste (including metals, radioactive, plastic etc ), and…
Dust detectors in the Aral Sea basin
The Aral Sea repeatedly appeared and disappeared over the last century but has now steadily decreased as the dust increased, resulting in desertification. There is still water in the north of the Aral Sea but the ‘desert’ lakebed in the middle has more dust and sandstorms than anywhere else in the world. Researchers used two…
Russian Climate Research 