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Home → August, 2009

Monthly Archives: August 2009 − News & Stories


CO2-sto­rage under­ground in Advent­da­len

The idea to mana­ge a »CO2-free« Spits­ber­gen in the not too far future has suf­fe­r­ed seve­ral set­backs alre­a­dy, but is still being fol­lo­wed. So far, three rese­arch dril­lings to search for sand­stone lay­ers sui­ta­ble for CO2-sto­rage in depths of seve­ral hundred meters under ter­rain had to be aban­do­ned becau­se of tech­ni­cal pro­blems. A fourth attempt will be star­ted soon near the old airst­rip in Advent­da­len.

BThe next dril­ling will take place near the old nor­t­hern light obser­va­to­ry in Advent­da­len.

CO2-storage underground in Adventdalen

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

Arc­tic Oce­an pos­si­bly sea­so­nal­ly ice-free as ear­ly as 2030

The­re has been a year-round ice-cover on the Arc­tic Oce­an sin­ce appro­xi­m­ate­ly 15 mil­li­on years. New rese­arch results indi­ca­te that this rela­tively young, but for the Arc­tic extre­me­ly important eco­sys­tem might get lost again as soon as around 2030. It has to be expec­ted that the Arc­tic Oce­an will be com­ple­te­ly ice-free during the sum­mer and that sea ice is redu­ced to a sea­so­nal cover during the win­ter and spring.

The tooth of cli­ma­te chan­ge is nag­ging on arc­tic sea ice.

Arctic Ocean possibly seasonally ice-free as early as 2030

Source: Nalân Koç, nor­we­gi­sches Polar­in­sti­tut

Ban on ente­ring carst cave

Karst caves exist due to water that cir­cu­la­tes through water-solu­b­le rock types such as lime­s­tone. DN (Nor­we­gi­an direc­to­ra­te for natu­re admi­nis­tra­ti­on), that has recent­ly gai­ned a repu­ta­ti­on for various attempts to for­bid pret­ty much any­thing that other peo­p­le might enjoy in arc­tic natu­re, has made a pro­po­sal to put a ban on ente­ring karst caves. The fact that the­re are no karst caves known in Spits­ber­gen is of no hin­der. If the­re were any, they would cer­tain­ly be inte­res­t­ing, so why not for­bid ente­ring them, just in case…

Old mine for marb­le, a crystal­li­ne car­bo­na­te rock, in Kongsfjord.
Could be a cave, who knows?

Ban on entering carst cave

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

Groun­ding of Rus­si­an ship at Bjørnøya IV

All oil deri­va­tes (die­sel, lubri­ca­ti­on oil) has been remo­ved from the Rusi­an free­zing ship Petro­za­vodsk, that ran aground near the sou­thern tip of Bjørnøya on 11 May. Ope­ra­ti­ons were com­ple­ted on 05 August. Smal­ler spills of oil from the wreck did not cau­se any envi­ron­men­tal dama­ge, accor­ding to field bio­lo­gists.

The Rus­si­an owner com­pa­ny is theo­re­ti­cal­ly obli­ged to remo­ve the wreck, but is unli­kely to do so as actu­al cos­ts are expec­ted to exceed tho­se that the com­pa­ny legal­ly has cover. The future of the wreck is the­r­e­for unclear, but at least it does not impo­se any major envi­ron­men­tal hazard any­mo­re.

Pum­ping ope­ra­ti­on at the wreck of Petro­za­vodsk. Foto © Kyst­ver­ket

Grounding of Russian ship at Bjørnøya IV

Source: Kyst­ver­ket

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