A fire in the museum of science in Naples (Napoli) in Italy hast led to the loss of irretrievable artifacts from polar history. The exhibition was meant to focus on those aspects of polar history which are shared by Italy and Norway, such as the airship expeditions to the North Pole by Roald Amundsen and Umberto Nobile, who started 1926 and 1928 in Ny Ålesund. Now, both countries have lost some of their polar heritage.
According to media, fire raising was the reason for the disaster, which has destroyed the museum and thus 175 jobs. There is no information about people being injured. The motive is believed to be a local conflict about the attractive museum estate.
Some of the lost artifacts were brought to Naples from Norway especially for the exhibition. Lost are, amongst others, the skies that Fridtjof Nansen has supposedly used during his famous crossing of the Greenland inland ice in 1888, clothes used by Nobile during his North Pole flight with the Italia in 1928 and the logbook of the Norge, the airship that was used by Amundsen, Nobile and Ellsworth and their crew on their famous flight from Ny Ålesund across the North Pole to Alaska in 1928. It was most likely on this occasion that the North Pole was seen by man.
The airship Norge in 1926 near Ny Ålesund before taking off for the North Pole. The logbook is now lost forever.
Spitsbergen is currently coming under strong pressure – regarding the weather. The meteorological stations in Svalbard are registring record-high air pressure values, stronger than anything that has been measured in history of local measurements, which is partly going back into the 1920s. A new record has been established at the automatic weather station on small Karl XII Øya (-island) north of Nordaustland, where 1054,7 hPa were registered a few days ago, significantly more than the old record of 1051,9 hPa from 1929.
Northern Greenland has currently partly even higher values. The high pressure is responsible for a period of calm, clear and cold weather, much to the delight of locals and tourists. The forecast for the Easter weekend in Spitsbergen is, however, predicting clouds, but still temperatures well below freezing. The cold weather is also beneficial for wildlife and the development of fast ice in fjords and drift ice east of Spitsbergen. The north coast is still largely ice-free, due to the influence of more temperate waters that have come up with the West Spitsbergen Current (“Gulf Stream”) from further south. On the eastern side, the drift ice has recently even reached Bjørnøya (Bear Island), where the first polar bears in 2 years have already been seen!
High pressure over Greenland and the European Arctic. Image: mountainforecast.com.