Bowhead whale bones in prehistoric Thule Eskimo contexts have been examined since 1975 in the central Canadian Arctic. Approximately 10,500 bones, representing almost 1000 animals, have been counted on the shores of six adjacent islands. Comparisons of Thule-derived bowhead samples with live Beaufort Sea samples and Early Holocene samples indicate that Thule Eskimo hunters selected yearlings and two- to three-year-old subadults, to the almost complete exclusion of calves and adults. Almost all bowheads found at Thule sites measure 7–10 m in length, estimated by regression analyses based on Alaskan bowhead skeletons of known size. Archaeological bowhead bones represent several stages of past hunting and processing behavior, including selective hunting, beach flensing and meal/blubber caching, winter house construction, and bone re-use from house ruins. The availability and abundance of bowheads were primary determinants of Thule subsistence-settlement patterns in this region. Archaeological whale bones arc a nonrenewable cultural resource of the New World Arctic that deserve study and protection.

This illustrated glossary of sea ice and associated terms is an abstract of a fuller illustrated glossary, also covering land ice terms, which the Institute has had in preparation for many years, and hopes to issue before long as a Special Publication. It is a development of an Admiralty glossary, published in 1953, with such modifications as seem to be required for international agreement.

The article discusses the results of a three year research project studying international indigenous political activism using case studies from the Arctic. Drawing on two different disciplinary starting points, international relations and international law, the project addressed two interrelated questions. The first of these was how relations between states, international organisations and indigenous peoples have been and are currently constructed as legal and political practices; the second was how indigenous peoples construct their political agency through different strategies to further their political interests. These questions are addressed from the point of view of power relations. The power to act is the basic form of political agency. However, this power may take different forms of political action, for example, self-identification, participation, influence, and representation. The main conclusions of the article are: 1) indigenous political agency is based on multiple forms of power; 2) practices of power that enable and constrain indigenous political agency change over time; 3) power circulates and produces multiple sites of encounters for states, international organisations and indigenous people; 4) indigenous political agency is a question of acting; and 5) there are new challenges ahead for indigenous peoples in claiming a political voice, in particular in global climate politics.

Antarctic tourism has experienced a boom period over the last thirty years. Beginning in the 1980s, the number of tourists who visited the continent annually began to rise sharply, and within the space of twenty years the numbers had increased by more than six hundred percent. Despite a global recession and downturn in visitor numbers over the last two austral seasons, the expectation is that Antarctic tourist numbers will trend upward again as the world tourism market recovers and the demand for Antarctic visits increases. In a continent renowned both as the last great global wilderness and as a place dedicated to scientific research in the interests of humankind, tourism on this scale presents a formidable range of issues for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) to contend with. This article suggests that the rapid growth in Antarctic tourism, and the impacts of that tourism coupled with the lack of a comprehensive regulatory and management framework for tourism now pose a considerable challenge to both the Consultative Parties and to the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) itself. The obligations and duties of the ATCPs under the Antarctic Treaty and other ATS instruments require a robust, strategic response by them to the issues and concerns generated by the growth of tourism. What is needed, it is argued, is for the parties to initiate a more interventionist pro-active policy approach to create a holistic, binding tourism framework so that they may fulfill more effectively their stewardship and governance roles in Antarctica, prevent degradation of Antarctica's environment, and reduce risks to tourists themselves.

A breeding colony of ivory gulls was discovered on an ice floe in northeast Greenland in August 2008. The ice floe resembled nearby islands in that it was covered with a thick layer of gravely moraine, and furthermore its position was fixed throughout most of the breeding season as the surrounding first year ice only broke up in mid August when most of the gull chicks had fledged.

Karl Weyprecht has left an unforgettable record of polar exploration, but has himself tended to be forgotten. His fame rests not so much with his work in the Arctic, which included the discovery of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa, but on the series of international scientific programmes which he initiated in 1875 with the first International Polar Year (IPY), 1882–83. International scientific programmes can be traced back to 1751, when observations of the parallaxes of the Moon, Mars and Venus were made at six stations in the Northern Hemisphere and at one in the Southern. The most recent, the World Climate Research Programme, organized jointly by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), began in 1980.

The fur seal population of the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, was intensively hunted by sealers from the discovery of the islands in 1819 to the early 1820s, by which time the seal numbers were so depleted that sealing became uneconomic. Sealing was revived for both fur seals and elephant seals at several periods later in the century. Sealers were put ashore in gangs and built makeshift shelters in which to live, and also occupied caves. Many of these have been identified on the various islands of the South Shetlands, and a number have been excavated. The paper addresses some of the management issues facing the conservation of these sites, which include accelerating tourism, disturbance by scientific researchers, disturbance by animal activity, burial or erosion by drifting sand, and climate change.

The preservation and conservation of living resources was one of the original stated objectives of the Antarctic Treaty, 1959. The harvesting of animals near bases for food, especially Weddell Seals Leptonychotes weddelli received particular attention at the Fourth Meeting of SCAR, 1960 (Polar Record,1961) and several regulations were suggested including: a permit required before killing, records to be kept of animals killed, and use of alternative food where possible. Annex D, Section (b)i states “… Without detailed biological research it is impossible to assess the permissible annual crop which the various [Weddell] seal colonies would stand, but it is certain that this figure is being seriously exceeded in many areas.”

Marine plastic pollution is increasing prominence in current discussions on the governance of the world’s oceans. The Southern Ocean is geographically remote but is still significantly impacted by plastic pollution. Plastic pollution in the Southern Ocean can derive from a variety of sources, including waste from research stations and fishing operations within the Treaty Area and, through transport by ocean currents and wind-generated water movements, from outside the Treaty Area. While there is a growing academic literature on marine plastic pollution in Antarctic, there is less attention to date on the response of the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) to this issue. This paper analyses how the ATS has engaged with the issue of plastic waste in general, and marine plastic pollution more particularly, from the entry into force of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty in 1998–2019. Our results indicate that from 2017 the ATS has shown increased attention towards addressing locally sourced marine plastic pollution. A significant problem, however, remains with the respect to marine plastic pollution originating from outside Antarctic Treaty Area that requires a governance response from outside the ATS.

During Leg 119 of the Ocean Drilling Program, between December 1987 and February 1988, six holes were drilled in the Kerguelen Plateau, southern Indian Ocean, and five in Prydz Bay at the mouth of the Amery Ice Shelf, on the East Antarctic continental shelf. The Prydz Bay holes, reported here, form a transect from the inner shelf to the continental slope, recording a prograding sequence of possible Late Paleozoic to Eocene continental sediments of fluvial aspect, followed by several hundred metres of Early Oligocene (possibly Middle Eocene) to Quaternary glaciallydominated sediments. This extends the known onset of large-scale glaciation of Antarctica back to about 36–40 million years ago, the sedimentary record suggesting that a fully developed East Antarctic Ice Sheet reached the coast at Prydz Bay at this time, and was more extensive than the present sheet. Subsequent glacial history is complex, with the bulk of sedimentation in the outer shelf taking place close to the grounding line of an extended Amery Ice S helf. However, breaks in the record and intervals of no recovery may hide evidence of periods of glacial retreat.

Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022 was the end of the Arctic cooperation between states and others as we knew it, despite the fact that Russia’s illegal actions are not occurring in the Arctic region. Russia’s attack on Ukraine caused pronounced security fears and responses, particularly from the European and North American countries, including the other Arctic states. This naturally affected Arctic cooperation because it is precisely in the Arctic region that Russia is such a vastly central actor. For example, the region’s pre-eminent inter-governmental forum, the Arctic Council, is struggling to continue its activities in full, as the seven western Arctic states paused participating in meetings held in and activities involving Russia. On the other hand, the first in-person meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) fisheries agreement in late November 2022 successfully adopted its COP Rules of Procedure by consensus, including Russia. The purpose of this article is to investigate how adversely Arctic international cooperation in inter-governmental forums and treaties has suffered due to the Ukraine war, utilising a qualitative research methodology to collect internal and sensitive information from key informants. In particular, the article aims to find an answer to the following question: In which types of Arctic inter-governmental structures have the states been able to continue the cooperation and for what reasons? The hypothesis that will be tested in this article is whether treaty-based cooperation has fared better than cooperation founded on soft law. This article will flesh out the current state of Arctic cooperative frameworks and actual cooperative activities under them, analysing three soft law-based cooperative frameworks, including the Arctic Council and several treaty-based cooperative frameworks, such as the CAO fisheries agreement and Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement. This article is based on the facts as of 22 February 2023.

Stream icings are a unique type of river ice that form in a portion of a stream channel which freezes deeply enough to restrict channel flow. Icings are usually found in Arctic and sub- Arctic regions because of the prevalence of permafrost and seasonally frozen ground in these regions. Hydraulic pressure builds up at the point of constriction as the river ice and permafrost thicken during the freeze-up period (Fig 1). Water is forced up through cracks in the river ice and freezes upon exposure to the cold air. This process continues in successive overflows until the source of water is exhausted.

A single chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarctica), which had moulted at the South Shetland Islands, was subsequently tracked during 120 days at sea in the austral winter using a global location system (geolocation) based on light intensity. The bird moved east along the Scotia Ridge to a point approximately 300 km west of the South Sandwich Islands and approximately 1600 km away from the colony in which it had moulted. It spent more than 60% of its time in open water north of the edge of the pack ice.

We argue that the current understanding of the Arctic as a region fraught by increasing tension and competition under conditions of climate change is an incomplete story. It ignores many salient developments in furthering co-operation and human security agendas, and marginalises some of the more complex and interesting developments within the region. Such changes in ‘natural states’ do not, in and of themselves, create geopolitical and political instability. Rather, it is the way in which change is understood as a problem for institutional and international organs that creates conditions for co-operation or competition. In the Arctic today, the balance is tipped in favour of co-operation, but the situation is complex and many actors have vested interests.

This study examines how climatic extremes during winter 2010–2011 affected the traditional food system in Iqaluit, Nunavut. This winter was anomalous throughout the Canadian Arctic, and manifested itself locally by warmer temperatures and decreased ice coverage. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with hunters (n = 25), a fixed question survey with public housing residents (n = 100), as well as analysis of remotely sensed sea-ice charts and temperature data from the Iqaluit weather station, this work identifies and characterises the extreme climatic conditions experienced, their subsequent effects on Iqaluit's traditional food system, and coping strategies used for dealing with food-related stresses. The results show increased environmental stress on the traditional food system compared to previous years. Freeze up occurred 59 days later than the average for the 1982–2010 period, while mean annual temperatures were 4.9ºC higher than the climatological mean, which negatively impacted hunters’ harvests and residents’ food supplies. Coping strategies alleviated some stresses, but adaptability was limited for financially insecure households reliant on income support. The study shows that when challenging socioeconomic conditions, such as those associated with public housing, are coupled with significant environmental stress, such as experienced during that winter, the vulnerability of the traditional food system is exacerbated. We suggest that winter 2010–2011 can be used as an analogue for exploring future food system vulnerabilities, with climate models projecting similar conditions in the coming decades.

For several years. Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc has been using an impulse radar system as a shallow subsurface exploration tool for engineering applications. Recently this system has been applied to the measurement of ice thicknesses both on sea-water and fresh-water ice. In the course of a feasibility study performed in December 1972, thebasic operating parameters and limitations of the tool when operated on ice were determined. Following the feasibility study, operational surveys were performed totalling approximately 11 crew-months and covering in excess of 1 500 km of survey route at several locations in the Canadian Arctic. The technique is known as Electromagnetic Subsurface Profiling (ESP), and it can be considered the electromagnetic equivalent of the single-trace acoustic profiling methods used for marine subbottom profiling. In practice, ice-thickness profiling is done by towing a sled-mounted antenna behind a tracked vehicle containing the impulse system (Fig 1). Real-time profile data are displayed graphically on a strip-chart recorder. The data may also be recorded on magnetic tape for later processing and playback.

Norse immigrants from Europe settled in southern Greenland in around AD 985 and managed to create a farming community during the Medieval Warm Period. The Norse vanished after approximately 500 years of existence in Greenland leaving no documentary evidence concerning why their culture foundered. The flooding of fertile grassland caused by late Holocene sea-level changes may be one of the factors that affected the Norse community. Holocene sea-level changes in Greenland are closely connected with the isostatic response of the Earth's crust to the behaviour of the Greenlandic ice sheet. An early Holocene regressive phase in south and west Greenland was reversed during the middle Holocene, and evidence is found for transgression and drowning of early-middle Holocene coast lines. This drowning started between 8 and 7ka BP in southern Greenland and continued during the Norse era to the present. An average late Holocene sea level rise in the order of 2–3 m/1000 years may be one of the factors that negatively affected the life of the Norse Greenlanders, and combined with other both socio-economic and environmental problems, such as increasing wind and sea ice expansion at the transition to the Little Ice Age, may eventually have led to the end of the Norse culture in Greenland.

Chemical factors that are essential in frost heaving of soils are examined through consideration of the process of ice formation in soils and the role of temperature gradients in generating water potential gradients in freezing soils. Unfrozen films are maintained around soil particles in frozen soils. The osmotic potentials at the ice–water interface of the unfrozen films and in the frozen fringe, the thin zone between the frozen and unfrozen soil, generated by dissolved salts and exchangeable cations that satisfy soil particle surface charge, are controlled by the local temperature. The coldest location and the most negative osmotic potentials at the ice–water interface are located immediately below the base of the ice lens, in the unfrozen films that separate the underlying soil particles from the ice lens. An osmotic potential gradient is generated because the osmotic potential at the water–ice interface in the frozen fringe becomes less negative with increasing temperature and distance from the ice lens. As water freezes onto the ice lens, re-supply of water to the unfrozen film along the osmotic potential gradient is the temperature-gradient-induced mechanism that generates the force that lifts the overlying frozen soil. Models that recognize this driving mechanism should improve predictions of soil freezing and frost heave, analysis of contaminant transport in freezing and frozen soils, and other aspects of the soil-freezing and frost-heave processes.

This note addresses the recent announcement regarding Argentina's submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. While the commission considered much of Argentina's submitted materials regarding the outer continental shelf (and sovereign rights that accrue to the seabed), it deliberately excluded areas of controversy including the Falkland Islands and Antarctica. What should be of interest to Polar Record readers is how consistently international media, including British journalists, misunderstand international maritime law and ‘stoke’ the fires of Argentine and British nationalisms. The Argentine government, however, was not an innocent party and its own press releases were ambiguous on the matter concerned, even if the commission had recognised the merit of much of their scientific-technical submission.

Sphagnum moss has been used globally as an indicator of climate change. Since continuous meteorological recording started in the late 1940s, there has been a marked change in the climates of Southern Ocean islands. The distribution of Sphagnum on Macquarie Island appeared to be expanding through the 1980s. All patches of Sphagnum were mapped in the 1992/93 austral summer, with 112 Sphagnum moss patches (<3 m2) and 12 larger (≥3 m2) patches recorded. The vast majority of sites recorded were lowland coastal, with a few sites around plateau lakes. The area of moss beds ranges from 0.03 m2 to 32.4 m2. A total of 23 sites were pegged and tagged by 1996, but only 14 of these sites still had Sphagnum moss present by 2004. It is considered that the climatic conditions (higher than average temperatures and wind speeds and lower than average humidity and precipitation) that occurred between April 1999 and May 2000 would have resulted in a period of desiccation that accounts for the destruction of the smaller and/or shallower Sphagnum beds on the island. It is highly likely that both the spatial distribution and size of Sphagnum moss beds on Macquarie Island will continue to decline with predicted changes in sub-Antarctic climate.