The auditorium here in Tromsö is packed full for the start of Arctic Frontiers. This is the fifth of these conferences and it attracts a lot of international attention. I asked a Norwegian newspaper colleague if it was likely to get a lot of attention in the national press. He says: sadly, no. He thinks there has been so much talk about climate change opening up new shipping routes, access to oil, gas and minerals that people have lost interest now that is actually happening. Overkill? Return to business as usual? Of course that’s just one person’s opinion, but this seems to be a general problem with the climate change topic.. Anyway here in the packed hall with almost a thousand participants registered for the course of this week, we certainly can’t complain about a lack of interest. And I hear a lot of Russian voices. There is a lot of talk of increasing cooperation between Norway and Russia (and they did settle a long-standing dispute about Arctic borders last year).

Jonas Gahr Store is Norway\’s foreign minister. Last night he opened an exhibition on polar explorers. This morning he opened the Arctic Frontiers conference with a speech entitled “State of the Arctic – Challenges ahead”.
It was a good summary of the current situation. He started with a reference to famous polar explorers, the Norwegians Fridtjof Nansen und Roald Amundsen, and the Russian Mikhail Lomonossov, all of whom are being commemorated as part of various anniversary ceremonies this year. He says humanity today faces a challenge in some ways similar, but as a collective challenge. Like the great explorers, we have to seize the moment, he said. He made it quite clear the Arctic climate is changing fast – and faster than anticipated – and quoted figures on temperature and sea ice decline, which make the region today very different from it was in the days of those polar explorers. Amundsen was the first to sail the North-East and the North-West passages, in 196 and 1920. Last year, modern „explorers“ sailed both within a few weeks.
Store says he is „deeply worried. The conference title is Arctic Tipping Points and that is being interpreted in various different ways at this Tromsö meeting. For the scientists, it refers to the climate. More about that in later sessions. It can also be a tipping point in terms of relations between different countries – those with Arctic territory and others, showing an increasing interest in the oil, gas and mineral resources of the Arctic, and, of course, the shipping routes.
If I try to put Store’s remarks into a nutshell: He stresses the need for international cooperation both with regard to the Arctic and reducing emissions. He admits a paradox between his country’s interests in coal, oil and gas, which, in turn, drive further climate change. But he says opting out of all that alone would not solve the problem. He says Norway will keep working for more renewables, capture carbon and storage and international agreements. He’s optimistic there will soon be a practicable „polar code“ for shipping
in the „harsh and environmentally challenging“ waters of the northern Arctic. (The BP-Russian agreement is creating some concern amongst people I’ve talked to here). He also looks forward to a legally binding search and rescue agreement, which he hopes will be signed in May in Greenland.
Of course sustainability is a buzzword here as elsewhere.
And with reference to possible security conflicts in the race to exploit resources,“low tension in the high north“ is the motto given by the Norwegian foreign minister.
Let me stop at that and listen to some more.

If you’ve ever thought it was getting increasingly difficult to find a public phone box in the age of mobiles – you’d have to dig deep for this one in Tromsö. (Or has Dr. Who landed a new-look tardus a little too deep? Apologies if you do not understand this reference). Yes, I have indeed arrived in the Arctic circle town, 2 hours flight north of Oslo. It’s actually an island, linked to the mainland by a fairly spectacular bridge.

Tromsö is nicknamed the “gateway to the Arctic“. Traditionally, that has been the case especially for polar explorers, scientists and fishermen. With the climate warming, it’s likely there will soon be all sorts of others heading through the gate in search of oil, gas or mineral riches…. But let’s leave that for later. The Arctic Frontiers conference officially starts tonight. I thought I’d set the scene for you before I head off to the ceremony.

We left Oslo this morning in beautiful weather, a pleasant (for ice-blogger types) minus five, sunshine on snow. By the time we got up north (well it is January and we are in the Arctic circle), there was so much snow falling on the runway we had to circle for half-an-hour while they got it swept again. Yes, I had a very guilty conscience about the emissions we were producing.

It was a great day for snow ploughs. I watched this little one through the window, keeping the harbour walk reasonably clear for pedestrians – and handily dumping the white stuff into the sea.

Still snow on the gangway though. I don’t expect those boats are going anywhere today.

Tromsö itself is quite picturesque, with a lot of these 19th century wooden buildings.

And if you’re into building snowmen, clearly it’s a great place to be.
Even if the weather outside looks pretty much as you might expect here at this time of year – more on the warming of the Arctic and what the politicians, scientists and locals here are saying about it tomorrow.

(Frozen over Chukchi Sea)

Did it make you sit up and listen when you heard that particular little item of news? You could be fogiven if you missed it, hidden away in the business news somewhere. BP and the Russian state oil company Rosneft have signed an agreement which will let them join forces to exploit the oil and gas resources of Russia’s Arctic region – and the date envisaged is 2015.
With the Gulf of Mexico disaster just nine months past, I’d say there is every reason to be concerned about the fragile Arctic environment.
And the increasing interest, not just in this particular case, seems to me a clear indication that the climate is changing – and some of those changes are coming fast.
From this weekend onwards, I’ll be looking into the situation of the Arctic in particular at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromso, in Arctic Norway. I’ll keep you posted on what the politicians, scientists and environmentalists are saying.”Arctic Tipping Points” is the title of this year’s Arctic conference. It looks as if they might not be as far in the future as people once thought.

(Greenland 2009)

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has released figures confirming that 2010 tied with 2005 for the warmest global surface temperatures ever recorded. According to the analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007.The GISS records go back to 1880.
“If the warming trend continues as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long”, says the Institute’s director James Hansen.
NASA says their temperature record is a close match with those of others, independently produced, including the UK’s
Met Office Hadley Centre
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.
Hansen says the records show a rise in temperature over the last ten years in spite of year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino – La Nina cycle of tropical ocean remperature. There is also a possibility that the cold spell which had us diving for the snow shovels here in northern Europe could have been influenced by the decline of Arctic sea ice and linked to warming temperatures at more northern latitudes. The sea ice helps insulate the atmosphere from the ocean’s heat.
The GISS experts say winter weather patterns are “notoriusly chaotic”. Well, climate is certainly a complex business. But whatever way you look at it, it looks like we all have our work cut out for us to have any chance of halting the worrying upward trend in temperature.

Snow on trees – beautiful, if you ask me, and appropriate weather for this time of year. Of course not everybody sees it that way. Most of the people supposedly always “Dreamin’ of a white Christmas…” have been whinging non-stop since the snow started, admittedly a good bit ahead of the feast itself.
And then, yes, off we went. They’re at it again. Newspapers, people on the (much delayed) train, friends on the telephone… the same old story… “so much for climate change. Do you know how much snow is on my doorstep…?”
Well I was in a way relieved to know that George Monbiot has been encountering the same problem – and has a suitable explanation to hand. Let me direct you to “That snow outside is what global warming looks like” in a recent edition of the Guardian.
“The cold has reason in a deathly grip” – does that sound a bit drastic?