Denmark and Canada have signed an agreement settling the territorial dispute over the uninhabited Hans Island in the middle of the Kennedy Channel of Nares Strait in the Arctic.

Denmark and Canada have signed an agreement settling the territorial dispute over the uninhabited Hans Island in the middle of the Kennedy Channel of Nares Strait in the Arctic.

The Russian Navy has completed a ten-year research project in the Arctic Ocean and its outlying seas conducted to determine and specify the baselines of Arctic islands.

The Russian Government has approved a list of regions of the Far North and equivalent status territories. The list includes parts of the republics of Altai, Buryatia, Karelia, Komi and Tyva, Trans-Baikal, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Perm and Primorye territories, Amur, Arkhangelsk, Irkutsk, Sakhalin, Tomsk, Tyumen regions and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area. It also includes Yakutia, Magadan and Murmansk regions, Nenets, Chukotka and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous areas as well as the Kamchatka Territory in full.

“The list of regions of the Far North was compiled in 1992–1994, and amended later on numerous occasions. Its new version has a clearer structure and conforms to the current territorial and municipal division of the country,” a statement posted on the government’s official Telegram channel says.

The document states that the residents of all localities covered by the previous versions of the list will keep the benefits, government guarantees and compensations for which they are eligible.

Researchers of the Moscow State University have created a database "Thermoabrasion of the seashores of the Russian Arctic", which contains information on qualitative and quantitative parameters characterizing the shores of six seas: Barents, Pechora, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Bering.

Thermoabrasion is the destruction of frozen shores as a result of thermal (thermal) and wave action. Almost a third of the entire coastline of the Arctic seas of Russia is subject to this process. To date, researchers from various scientific groups have published a lot of data on the destruction of the shores of the Arctic seas in various regions of the Russian Arctic. However, only the geographers of Moscow State University for the first time collected all the available knowledge into a single database "Thermoabrasion of the seashores of the Russian Arctic".

"Forming a database, the geographers of Moscow State University combined literary, archival and information obtained as a result of their own observations, which reflects the magnitude of the retreat or, conversely, accumulation (that is, "build-up") of the coast for various parts of the Russian Arctic over the past century," the report says.

The database allows you to analyze the spatial and temporal variability of the rates of coastal retreat along the Arctic coast of Russia, compare the rates of coastal destruction with various environmental features - lithological composition of rocks, geomorphological level, as well as hydrometeorological parameters - the duration of the ice-free period, annual sums of positive and negative air temperatures, the frequency of storms.

In the future, MSU geographers plan to supplement and expand the database in order to understand in more detail how the coastline of the Arctic seas changes over time.

The Tansuo 4500 self-contained robot submersible, developed at the Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully completed a research project in the Arctic, as part of the 12th Chinese high-latitude expedition. Four research associates studied the Arctic shelf from aboard the expedition icebreaker MV Xue Long 2.

The successful underwater mission by the Tansuo 4500 in the high-latitude Arctic zone helped obtain important statistics for use in conducting additional in-depth research, for comprehending geological processes and studying multiple energy-and-substance exchange cycles near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

This data will serve as a solid scientific foundation for actively involving China in Arctic environmental protection projects.

Due to the high density of sea-ice formations near the expedition’s operation zone, researchers developed an innovative method for obtaining soil samples from under the ice.

The method combines acoustic remote control and automatic guidance allowing the robot submersible to cope with certain difficulties caused by rapid ice-floe movements and a limited open-water section linking it with the vessel.

This made it possible to successfully complete several underwater missions in the high-latitude Arctic Ocean zone, covered with dense ice, and to safely return the robot to the icebreaker.

The robot managed to collect high-resolution multi-directional, hydro-dynamic and aero-magnetic data volumes that will form the mainstay of an advanced measuring technology.

This data will help provide insight into the topographical and geo-morphological specifics of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, its magma and hydro-thermal activity. Until recently, scientists made very little headway in studying these phenomena.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the deep-water Tansuo 4500 submersible under a pilot strategic science and technological project aimed at evaluating substance-and-energy exchanges in the tropical belt of the West Pacific and their influence.

Prior to joining the Arctic scientific expedition, the robot submersible was adapted to the new environment and to high-latitude Arctic navigation. It was also pre-programmed to measure the seabed and to eliminate malfunctions.

Experts also tested the equipment in lakes and seas, so as to effectively prove the system’s reliability.