CRYOPOLITICS - Original news, photos & maps from the Arctic

COP27 puts ‘loss and damage’ on the agenda. Where do Arctic communities fall?

“We are trying to hand over our expertise to the Arctic”: An interview with Estonian President Alar Karis

Arctic Circle 2022: A NATO admiral, Chinese diplomat, and Faroese metal band walk into a concert hall

The US is using a mine in Greenland to counter China

Russia’s war in Ukraine pushes China to reorient Arctic plans

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Climate Change

COP27 puts ‘loss and damage’ on the agenda. Where do Arctic communities fall?

Discussions of compensating Arctic communities for loss and damage are not on the table at COP27, whose focus is on…

Geopolitics

“We are trying to hand over our expertise to the Arctic”: An interview with Estonian President Alar Karis

On the sidelines of the Arctic Circle conference, I sat down with Alar Karis, President of Estonia. The Baltic state…

Geopolitics

Arctic Circle 2022: A NATO admiral, Chinese diplomat, and Faroese metal band walk into a concert hall

Arctic Circle 2022 gathers sans Russians but with a NATO admiral, Chinese officials, and a Faroese metal band, proving that…

Travel & Photo

Life on an Arctic farm, interrupted only by Norwegian jets

This summer, I found myself on a farm in the Norwegian Arctic solely in charge of 16 horses, 12 goats,…

Central Asia’s collapsing water tower

Remembering a trek through Central Asian highlands where glaciers look like spilled milk - and where they irrigate actual dairy…

Fieldwork Friday: Snow globes and screens

As the pandemic lingers on and the possibilities for doing fieldwork, particularly in the social sciences, remain remote, I thought…

A night at the volcano

An essay accompanied by photos and maps on the 3 times I tried to see flowing lava at Iceland's Fagradalsfjall…

Asia & the Arctic

A Chinese sailboat is circumnavigating the Arctic

Chinese artist-sailor Zhai Mo (翟墨) has just set sail from Shanghai to embark on a four-month journey around the Arctic…

China & the Arctic – A View to 2050 | Hong Kong and online

This symposium will leverage Hong Kong’s historic position as a meeting place between East and West to bring together social…

Musk ox diplomacy: When the US sent two Arctic animals to China

While a population of musk ox may have survived in southern Siberia and Mongolia, the animals don't seem to have…

China reveals Arctic geopolitics to be above Pompeo’s pay grade

Pompeo’s swashbuckling fantasies aside, geopolitical competition in the contemporary Arctic is not about who controls swaths of continents or oceans.…

Maps & Satellite Imagery

Could NASA’s newest satellite witness an ice-free Arctic Ocean?

Landsat 9 will continue NASA's important work documenting 50 years of changes to the Earth's surface from space. But for…

Cross-polar flights leave trails of pollution in their wake, hurting the Arctic.

Russia’s extension of US overflight rights hurts the Arctic

Every week, hundreds of flights on U.S. airlines pass through Russian airspace. Only a handful of these flights actually start…

New European satellite provides crystal-clear view of Arctic

Featured image: Ice flowing out to sea near Ilulissat, Greenland In June of last year, a satellite called Sentinel-2 rocketed into space.…

Seen from space: Canadian highway to Arctic Ocean nears completion

Featured image: The Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway seen from space with NASA’s Landsat-8 satellite. A few days ago, The Washington Post ran a story…