The northernmost town in the world, Ny-Ålesund, has for more than 30 years hosted the UK’s Arctic Research Station – the nation’s only permanent infrastructure at the Earth’s northern pole.
Located on the Norwegian island of Svalbard – one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth – the station acts as a base for UK scientists studying the Arctic’s ice, ecosystems and atmosphere.
On 7 February, Carbon Brief was invited to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the UK’s national polar research institute in Cambridge, to hear more about what life is like for UK scientists living in the Arctic Circle.
BAS’s Arctic Day also offered a chance to hear about how researchers are working to understand the complex impacts of climate change on the land’s most northern edge.
UK Arctic base
Formerly a mining town, Ny-Ålesund now hosts Arctic research stations for a range of countries including China, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK.
It is accessible via a flight on a 14-seater plane that leaves four times a week from Longyearbyen, the largest town in Svalbard.
Speaking at BAS’s Arctic Day, the institute’s Arctic operations manager Iain Rudkin explained that the town is famous for being the starting point for a number of “crazy” Arctic expeditions.
This includes the expeditions of Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who was the first man to successfully navigate the treacherous Northwest Passage through the Arctic to North America by boat in 1905.
The UK’s Arctic Research Station was built in 1991. It consists of seven bedrooms, three laboratories, a sitting room, an office and storage space. The station can be explored room by room using this 3D virtual tour tool.
According to station lab manager Guy Hillyard, the labs consist of a general space, a microscopic lab and a wet lab suitable for processing dirty soils and sediments.
The station also has an annex for drying mosses and soils, freezers at temperatures from -18 to -25C for storing ice cores and separate freezers for storing frozen sediment, he added.
Until recently, Ny-Ålesund was a town of “radio silence”, meaning there was no wifi, bluetooth or other kinds of internet access. However, last year, a decision was made to install a 4G mast.
Although many living at Ny-Ålesund appreciated the radio silence, the decision was made to make it easier for people out in the field to call for help if in danger and to allow scientists to use scientific equipment that communicates via the internet, Rudkin said.
Algae, AI and invisible ecosystems
BAS’s Arctic Day saw a number of UK-based scientists briefly explain the purposes of their research at Ny-Ålesund in the past and coming few months.
Dr Jaz Millar, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol, travelled to Ny-Ålesund in July 2023 as part of their research into how climate change could be affecting algal blooms on glaciers, which are vast rivers of frozen ice.
The algae that Millar studies is dark purple, meaning it lowers the “albedo” on the surface of glaciers. Albedo is a term for describing the proportion of sunlight that is reflected away from a surface, with bright white having a high albedo and dark colours having a low albedo.
When the albedo on the glacier’s surface is lowered, it absorbs more sunlight. This causes it to melt faster.
It is possible that presence of meltwater induces the growth of more algae – potentially representing a self-reinforcing “worrying positive feedback loop”, Millar explained.
Around Ny-Ålesund, Millar’s team visited three glaciers. They studied algal growth with a range of techniques, including bringing microscopes directly into their field sites and taking ice samples.
Millar’s research has not yet been published, but the results suggest that the relationship between glacier melt and algal bloom growth may be more complex than just a linear positive feedback loop.
Elsewhere, Prof Kate Hendry, a chemical oceanographer at BAS, explained more about her research into how the melting of glaciers could be altering the flow of key nutrients into coastal waters – eventually impacting marine ecosystems.
She explained that glacier meltwater typically contains nutrients that are needed by diatoms – single-cell algae that act as food for tiny marine creatures called zooplankton – which in turn support a wide range of fish, bird and mammal species, including whales. These nutrients include iron nitrate and silicic acid.
As glaciers melt at an increasingly rapid rate because of climate change, this may impact the growth of diatoms – in turn affecting species higher up the food chain, she said.
To study this, Hendry’s team visited Ny-Ålesund in 2023 to collect more than 1,000 samples from glaciers, the ocean and sediments. Her team will return this year to look further at how the availability of iron and silicon in fjord environments could be affected by climate change.
At the sidelines of the presentations, Carbon Brief spoke to Martin Rogers, a machine-learning scientist at BAS, about his research using AI to map changes to Arctic sea ice in higher resolution than is currently available.
The AI tool can search through different types of satellite imagery, offering scientists the highest-resolution image available when considering factors such as cloud cover, which can obscure views of the sea ice, he explained.
In the future, this tool could be used to help scientists understand in greater detail the extent to which sea ice is declining because of climate change, he added:
“The big question is about the decline in sea ice extent. With this product, you can get the sea ice extent in high fidelity. Then you’ve got more precise information about how the sea ice extent is changing between years.”
Finally, the conference heard from Laura Molares Moncayo, a PhD student at the Natural History Museum and Queen Mary University of London.
Her research is centred around the question of whether the Arctic’s atmosphere could be supporting an ecosystem that is invisible to the human eye.
For decades, researchers assumed that glaciers were devoid of complex lifeforms, she explained. However, research has revealed that they actually support a vast array of microorganisms, which are well adapted for harsh, frozen environments.
How did these microorganisms find their way into glaciers?
Glaciers grow by receiving rain and snow from the atmosphere. In fact, glaciers could be considered a “condensed version of the atmosphere”, Molares Moncayo explained.
It is possible, she continued, that the microorganisms found in glaciers may have fallen from the atmosphere. Such microorganisms would, in theory, already possess the adaptations required to survive the tough conditions of the Arctic air.
In a week’s time, she will travel to Ny-Ålesund to try to establish whether the Arctic atmosphere is home to an invisible ecosystem of microorganisms.
To do this, she will use a range of equipment, including dry air samplers, which collect any solid particles present in air into a filter.
She will then use DNA sequencing techniques to identify which microorganisms are present in her air samples. She will also study the microorganisms’ functional genes, which will offer clues into whether the microorganisms are interacting with each other when still in the air.
The post Ny-Ålesund: How UK scientists are studying climate change in the Arctic appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Ny-Ålesund: How UK scientists are studying climate change in the Arctic
Stientje van Veldhoven is Minister of Climate and Green Growth for the Netherlands.
When we co-hosted the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) this April, the world was reeling from the volatility in oil and gas prices due to the Hormuz blockade. Fossil fuels moved to the centre of the debate as country leaders scrambled to secure supplies for their people.
We saw the very opposite in Santa Marta. Nearly 60 nations came together with 2,600-plus participants from civil society and community organisations, businesses and scientists to discuss concrete solutions on how governments can shift away from fossil fuels. Together, we defined the ‘Santa Marta process’ to serve as an extra engine for the broader process of the UNFCCC.
The Santa Marta process will see expert groups and committed countries develop national roadmaps, chart pathways to overcome financial constraints, and drive economic transformation. We made a multi-year commitment to take this process forward. With Tuvalu and Ireland taking over as co-chairs for 2027, transitioning away from fossil fuels is now moving from words to action.
European nations signal support for fossil fuel roadmap, says COP30 president
Work gets underway
At the opening of the Santa Marta conference, my co-chair Colombia’s then energy minister Irene Veléz Torres and I repeatedly stressed one thing: that the forum was not a space for negotiations, but a forum for countries and other partners to discuss practical steps to move away from fossil fuels.
Since then, we have seen three roadmaps already submitted: by France, Germany and our own. Pacific Island ministers also recently announced their intention to develop a regional roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. And I called on the European Commission to do the same for the European Union.
On top of this, numerous countries are already working on parts of the transition, such as phasing out coal or ending fossil fuel subsidies. More countries are expected to follow soon.
Workstreams were launched in early August, followed by sign-ups from countries willing to take a larger role and lead on organising different activities. Each workstream has an assigned lead organisation (or madrina). Each has its own working structure.
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An agenda row is averted at the opening session, where the UN climate chief said strong results are needed from the talks to boost “real-world outcomes”
Workstream 1 focuses on supporting countries in developing and implementing flexible, country-owned national roadmaps. It operates as an open, collaborative hub that coordinates partner institutions to provide tailored technical, financial and policy support directly aligned with each country’s specific needs and existing frameworks. The consortium, which functions as a hub, currently consists of the NDC Partnership, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the World Resources Institute and the newly established Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition.
Workstream 2 focuses on mobilising collective coalition power to tackle national and international financial constraints, debt-related barriers and macroeconomic dependencies that hinder the transition away from fossil fuels. Starting with a scoping phase, it will deliver transparent, actionable recommendations and reform solutions to support countries’ structural fiscal needs at global fora. Its madrinas are the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Transforma, a Latin American think-and-do-tank.
Workstream 3 focuses on driving economic transformation by mapping green partnership potential, decarbonising trade balances and building competitive, mutually beneficial clean markets. It aims to help countries, especially producers, diversify their economies, scale domestic value creation, and unlock collective trade opportunities. The madrina is the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development working together with the South Centre.
Incorporating Santa Marta into COP
What was abundantly clear in Santa Marta is that our coalition’s efforts are a strong support to, rather than a replacement for, the COP process. Over the past decade or so, the focus at COPs was on setting goals. Now we must focus on implementation. The COP31 presidencies have previously indicated their willingness to incorporate elements of the Santa Marta process into COP31 outcomes. We look forward to seeing how we can achieve this together.
The Brazilian COP30 Presidency delivered its global roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels – a voluntary toolkit for countries that want to move ahead – just before the COP started in Antalya on Monday. During the coming two weeks, it’s critical that we see more concrete, actionable roadmaps for the fossil fuel phase-out. These documents can be crucial for a strong second Global Stocktake of national climate plans in two years’ time.
Brazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable
At COP31, a variety of TAFF-related events will be hosted, focusing on next steps within the Santa Marta workstreams. We welcome any leader and expert from around the world to take part as they work to develop their roadmaps, identify the fossil fuel subsidies they need to phase out, or establish green/clean markets at home.
Only by reducing fossil fuel demand and replacing it with clean electricity to run our economies can we all become more economically resilient and sharply cut the pace of climate change.
The post COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.