Arctic sea ice is currently receiving increasing attention, both in relation to technological problems associated with resources development and shipping (Walker and Penney, 1973), and to basic research questions. The polar pack ice in the Beaufort Sea, for example, is the focus of the Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment (AIDJEX) (Untersteiner, 1974), while an analysis of physical links between the characteristics of polar surfaces and climate is to be the crux of the United States contribution to the Polar Experiment (POLEX) (Weller and Bierly, 1973; National Academy of Sciences, 1974). A general discussion of sea ice, with emphasis on pack ice, has been presented recently by Wittman and Burkhart (1973), but another aspect of the sea ice regime deserving separate attention, particularly in the light of Arctic offshore oil developments, is the landfast or fast ice, ie that part of the sea ice which remains attached to the shore (see “Sea ice terminology”). This paper attempts to provide a broad picture of fast ice characteristics in the context of our field experience in the eastern Canadian Arctic.

Two giant icebergs are moving westwards along the coast of Antarctica in the Weddell Sea. They were conspicuous throughout the 1967–68 season in ESSA-3 satellite photographs supplied by the United States National Environmental Satellite Center to the British Antarctic Survey. The two icebergs were first unmistakeably seen during orbit No 4699 on 11 October 1967 and last clearly seen before the winter during orbit No 6408 on 24 February 1968. The leading iceberg, which is roughly 45 km by 100 km, was last seen moving out to sea westwards from a position about 100 km north of Halley Bay station. The second, some 70 km by 100 km, was parallel with Riiser-Larsen Ice Front in long 21°W, and separated from it by only a few kilometres of open water. Although there were periods of weeks in which there was no movement, presumably owing to the grounding of the icebergs on shoals, both moved some 500 km along the coast in four months.

This paper examines the behaviour of ions of chemical elements in freezing and thawing soils and in ice, and analyzes the mechanisms and laws that govern the transfer of ions. Data are given on the ionic permeability of frozen soils and ice. The features characteristic of the interaction of frozen soils with salt solutions are described.

Insurance is an important component of shipping costs, albeit minor when compared to capital, crew or fuel. If the literature of Arctic shipping agrees that insurance premiums are likely to be higher for Arctic shipping, no study so far has tried to assess the cost of Arctic shipping insurance premiums, nor what specific demands insurance firms might formulate before agreeing to give coverage to a shipping company, thus presenting obstacles to entry in the Arctic shipping market. We first present insurance policies and costs as they are discussed in the literature on Arctic shipping. We also sketch out how their risk-assessment process was influenced by the IMO (International Maritime Organization) and classification societies. Then we outline the results of a survey conducted between 2012 and 2013 with insurance firms on their Arctic shipping policies.

Large tabular icebergs derived from the glaciers which drain the north fringe of Greenland's Inland Iceoccur in many North Greenland fjords. Many have undulating surface topography resembling that of the ice islands calved from Ellesmere Island ice shelves. Semi-permanent sea ice in North Greenland fjords often prevents the escape of bergs, except in exceptional summers several decades apart, when the fjord ice melts completely and some bergs may reach the Arctic Ocean. Other possible sources for ice islands are small ice shelves and local glaciers along the north coast of Greenland.

Surface winds are responsible for the two main types of feature observed on the Antarctic plateau: (a) sastrugi, produced by katabatic (gravity) winds, and (b) snow dunes, which are raised by blizzard winds. The two are often associated in the sense that the severest patches of sastrugi seem to be eroded out of dunes deposited by a previous blizzard. However, sastrugi are by no means limited to this; they may occur more or less continuously, merging one into the next over a wide area of plateau.

This paper examines the international response to India's 1956 proposal to raise the ‘Antarctic Question’ at the United Nations. It focuses in particular on the uneasy alliance that developed between the British Commonwealth and Latin America in opposition to the Indian proposal. Although Great Britain, Argentina, and Chile were bitterly disputing the sovereignty of the Antarctic Peninsula region, they shared a common desire to keep the southern continent off the agenda of the United Nations. This ability to work together for common goals, despite their differences, set an important precedent for the Antarctic Treaty that would be signed in 1959. In this way, opposition to the Indian proposal, more than the proposal itself, played an important role in the history of Antarctica in the 1950s. Latin American opposition to the proposal helped to fragment any ‘anti-imperial’ coalition that might have developed in Antarctica. This fragmentation helps us to place the Antarctic Treaty System into the framework of post-colonial studies.

Russia has dropped rocket stages fuelled with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) into the Barents Sea and the North Water Polynya—areas of considerable ecological importance—on ten occasions since 2002. The stages come from SS-19 intercontinental missiles that have been re-purposed for launching satellites. UDMH is a highly toxic chemical that has caused widespread health and environmental damage in Kazakhstan and Russia as a result of its extensive use there as a rocket fuel. Not all of the fuel on-board is consumed during a launch and the residual fuel tends to escape the incoming stages and form aerosol clouds that drift over large areas. This dropping of the rocket stages is of considerable concern to the Inuit of Canada and Greenland, who only learned about the practice in 2016. It is also a violation of several treaties as well as customary international law. At least two more launches of UDMH-fuelled rockets on the same trajectory are currently planned—even though alternative non-toxic rocket systems exist.

Although there are a number of distinct audiences (for example students, hunter and trapper organisations, and co-management agencies) for traditional environmental knowledge, little work has been done in analysing how indigenous knowledge can be best communicated to these different groups. Using examples mainly from northern Canada and Alaska, we explore the challenge of collecting and communicating different kinds of traditional environmental knowledge; the media types or communication modes that can be used; and the appropriateness of these kinds of media for communicating with different audiences. A range of communication options is available, including direct interaction with knowledge holders, use of print media, maps, DVD/video, audio, CD ROM, and websites. These options permit a mix-and-match to find the best fit between kinds of knowledge, the intended audience, and the media type used. This paper does not propose to replace traditional methods of communication with technology. Rather, we examine how technology can serve community and other needs. No single option emerges as a clear best choice for communicating indigenous knowledge. Nevertheless, various media types offer avenues through which northern people can meet their educational, cultural, and political needs, and build cross-cultural understanding.

In a joint Nordic effort, a high-quality climate data set for the Nordic Arctic is established. The data set consists of monthly values from 20 stations in Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroes, and the Norwegian Arctic. The data set is made available on the web. Ten climate elements are included, and most of the series covers the period 1890–2000. The data series illustrate the large climatic contrasts in the Nordic Arctic, and demonstrate that parts of the region have experienced substantial climate variations during the last century. Despite increasing temperatures during recent decades, the present temperature level is still lower than in the 1930s and 1950s in large parts of the region. The pattern of long-term precipitation variations is more complicated, but in parts of the region the annual precipitation has increased substantially. At Svalbard Airport and Bjørnøya the annual precipitation has increased by more than 2.5% per decade during the twentieth century.

Variations in atmospheric circulation can account for most of the long-term positive trend in precipitation in the Norwegian Arctic, and also for the positive temperature trend from the 1960s. The positive temperature trend before 1930 and the negative trend during the following decades, are, however, not accounted for by the circulation models.

There is strong contemporary interest in the application of traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) of physical environments and land-use patterns in northern Canada. This interest relates to land claims, land-use planning, cultural preservation, resource management, and environmental monitoring. The application of TEK to land and resource management is critically examined and a typology relating scale, user group, and the transformation of knowledge is developed. Of the many challenges facing the incorporation of TEK in resource-management initiatives, perhaps the greatest is the recognition of the appropriateness of scale. The conclusions reached in this paper reaffirm the notion that scale and context are key components in maintaining the validity and integrity of TEK. The primary role of TEK appears to be with providing the most valid and intelligible interpretations of local geographies and prescribing locally appropriate resource-management strategies.

While studying the distribution, within Antarctic regions, of the vascular plants now known from South Georgia, numerous discrepancies were found between the accounts of various authors. The present paper is an attempt to clarify the situation, and has been compiled from the most recent known papers dealing with the flora of each area. Only taxa reported as native have been included in the “Check List” but species reported as aliens have been listed in the section headed “Notes on floras”.

The western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a hotspot of rapid recent regional ‘climate change’. This has resulted in a 0.4°C rise in sea temperature in the last 50 years, five days of sea ice lost per decade and increased ice scouring in the shallows. The WAP shallows are ideal for studying the biological response to physical change because most known Antarctic species are benthic, physical change occurs mainly in the shallows and most research stations are coastal. Studies at Rothera Station have found increased benthic disturbance with losses of winter sea ice and assemblage-level changes coincident with this ice scouring. Such studies are difficult to scale up as they depend on SCUBA diving – a very spatially limited technique. Here we report attempts to broaden the understanding of benthic ecosystem responses to physical change by replicating the Rothera experimental grids at Carlini Station through collaboration between the UK, Argentina and Germany across Signy, Rothera and Carlini stations. We argue that such collaborations are the way forward towards understanding the big picture of biota responses to physical climate changes at a regional scale.

The following report is based on work done in conjunction with the Canadian “Operation Hazen-Tanquary” at Hazen Camp (81° 49'N, 71° 18'W), Ellesmere Island, NWT, in the summers of 1966, 1967, and 1968. Hazen Camp offers an excellent high Arctic site because of the extensive facilities available and because the botany and entomology are comparatively well known and some insect-flower relationships there have already been considered. Furthermore, the Lake Hazen trough, sheltered by mountain ranges to the north, enjoys less cloudy and more benign summers than most high Arctic localities. These factors contribute to the support of a biota that is relatively rich for the high Arctic, even though the ecosystem is considerably simpler than in the low Arctic. There are only about 75 species of Dicotyledoneae and about 250 species of Arthropoda to consider, which makes it possible for one man to investigate such a broad ecological problem as insect-flower relations.

This paper considers the role of the Arctic Council (AC) and its relationship to the future or even futures. Factors such as sea ice thinning and melting permafrost, alongside globalisation, have been cited as consequential in transforming the Arctic region. While we might be cautious about the novelty of change per se, there is a need for further debate about how the ‘future’ is imagined and put into practice. Exploring different logics, including precaution, pre-emption and preparedness, consideration is offered on how the AC attempts to anticipate the future. The contentious role of observers is investigated by way of an example, and it is concluded that there is more work to be done in terms of how different futures are assembled, mobilised and put into practice.

The changing surface geometry of the glacier Midre Lovénbreen on Svalbard was investigated using LiDAR data acquired on 9 August 2003 and again on 5 July 2005. The data were processed to generate Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of unprecedentedly high spatial resolution (2 m) and accuracy (better than 0.15 m). Comparison of the two DEMs allowed the mass balance of the glacier to be determined as more negative than −0.62 m yr−1 water equivalent, about twice as negative as the value estimated from in situ measurements. Comparison of the DEMs also showed that the area of the glacier decreased by around 0.3%, and the position of its margin retreated by around 14 m, from 2003 to 2005. It was also possible to track the motion of fine-scale features in the surface geometry such as meltwater channels, and hence to determine the glacier's surface velocity, in some areas. Typical average speeds were around 1–2 cm per day.

This report is intended to summarize activities in radio echo sounding since the introductory paper which appeared in the Polar Record four years ago (Evans, 1963 a). The field work since that time is discussed in rough chronological order, with references to the sources of more detailed information and an assessment of the principal results.

Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands was the site of some of the earliest commercial activity to be carried out in the Antarctic with the early 19th century hunting of Antarctic fur seals. Nearly a century later it was the site of the most extensive anchorage for the reconstructed ships and ocean liners used as non-pelagic whale processing factories. Deception was also the site of what is the only successful land based commercial activity in Antarctic history. The Hektor whaling station operated in Whalers Bay from 1912 until 1931. Most of the remains of the station have now been obliterated by the volcanic activity that occurred in the late 1960s and 1970. By the later part of the twentieth century Deception Island had become a regular stop for the growing Antarctic tourist cruise industry. No other place in Antarctica has been so thoroughly identified with commercial activity.