Witness Community Highlights

24 March 2023 Issue

Greenland's Largest Ice Stream Likely to Lose Ice Six Times Faster than Thought

Figure 1. The Northeast Greenland Ice Stream with its two main outlets, the Zachariae Glacier, bottom right, and the Nioghalvfjerdfjorden Glacier top right, which flow into the North Atlantic Ocean (Landsat scene from August 2021). Photo courtesy of Christopher Shuman, University of Maryland.

An interdisciplinary team combined field measurements, satellite observations, and numerical modeling to discover that the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream was much more sensitive to the intrusion of warm water along the coast than what was previously thought. Their work helped identify how the ice slides on the bedrock. This new knowledge led to a revised assessment of the future mass loss of this sector, which is six times higher than previous estimates.

By: Mathieu Morlighem, Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College and Shfaqat Abbas Khan, DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark.


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Improving the Arctic Observing Network in a Changing Environment: A Report Summary

Figure 1. Global five-year average temperature anomalies from 2017–2021 from the NASA GISS analysis. The rate of warming in the Arctic is significantly faster than the rest of the planet. Image courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) and the United States Arctic Observing Network (US AON) Board released a report to Congress on 13 December 2022 describing the need for a sustained Arctic Observing Network. The report recommends that sustained and enhanced Arctic observations will contribute invaluable information to global models and forecasts, national security decisions, community resilience efforts, health and well-being, and economic prosperity.

By: Hazel Shapiro, Program Analyst at US Arctic Observing Network (US AON) and Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC); Sandra Starkweather, Executive Director, US AON; Thorsten Markus, Cryospheric Science Program Manager, NASA; and Olivia Lee, former Program Director, Arctic Observing Network Office of Polar Programs


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Reflections on a Recent Conference Session: Alaskan and Arctic Anthropology Since Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

Figure 1. Map of the Bering Strait communities which, together with the nearby seasonal hunting, fishing, and reindeer herder camps, have been the sites of the authors' ethnographic research. The Indigenous men from the Chukotkan communities, who over the past year perished in the war in Ukraine, have relations in communities on both sides of the Bering Strait. Image courtesy of Igor Pasternak.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, ethnographic research in Chukotka has not been possible. A recent conference session was organized to focus on the direct relevance that the suffering and displacement of millions of people in Ukraine and in Chukotka has for Arctic social sciences. Although the war and Putin's regime will eventually come to an end, the future of the social science research in Russia has possibly reached a "turn of no return" due to the fact that hundreds of Indigenous hunters, reindeer herders, culture, language, and knowledge bearers will be gone.

By: Sveta Yamin-Pasternak, Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Igor Pasternak, Department of Art, University of Alaska Fairbanks


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Witness Community Highlights is an online publication launched in May 2017 to complement the regular publications of Witness the Arctic. It was developed in response to community feedback identifying the need for a monthly publication to highlight 1–2 Arctic research efforts and other timely items of interest to our readers. Community Highlights is distributed at the beginning of the month via our Witness the Arctic mailing list of over 8,700 subscribers.

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Editors of Witness Community Highlights welcome ideas for future articles. If you have an idea or a question about this publication, please contact Betsy Turner-Bogren at betsy@arcus.org.

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