No disaster yet, but they are taking huge risks. A 20-year-old 'shadow fleet' oil tanker without ice-class is entering icy Arctic route The Mires is 244 meter long and sails under the flag of Sierra Leone. “Ships of this kind are in danger of serious damage if they get in contact with sea ice,” says a professor in ice navigation. “Unfortunately, there appears to be an increasing number of ships without ice-class sailing on the Northern Sea Route (NSR),” says Professor in ice navigation Norvald Kjerstad. “Ships of this kind are very exposed to serious damage if they get in contact with ice - especially ice that contains parts of glacier ice or multi-year-old ice, which is the case along the whole NSR,” he explains. Kjerstad spoke to the Barents Observer as the Mires, a 244-meter long oil tanker without ice-class entered the eastern part of the sea route. The tanker is on the sanctions lists of Ukraine and the UK. The Mires set out from the Chinese port of Xiushan Island on August 28 and sailed through the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea on August 9. There are substantial volumes of sea ice in the area. The ship will have to sail through an area of almost 500 nautical miles covered by drift ice. “These are normally unacceptable conditions for a ship without ice-class,” Kjerstad emphasizes to the Barents Observer. The destination of the 106,094-ton deadweight tanker is not clear, but it is likely to eventually make a port call in Murmansk where it will pick up oil and proceed to an export market. The 20-years-old tanker is sailing on the icy route with the blessing of the authorities in Moscow. The permission issued by the Russian Northern Sea Route Administration reads that the ship is allowed to sail across the whole route without icebreaker escort in areas without sea ice. Ship tracking information indicated that the tanker was sailing without icebreaker escort near the coast of the Chukotka peninsula on September 11. Apparently, the Mires is the only zero ice-class oil tanker with permission for transit sailing on the NSR this year. But there are several other kinds of vessels without ice-class approved for sailing in the area. The Barents Observer has compiled a list of more than 20 non-ice-class bulk carriers, cargo ships and container carriers that have gotten Moscow’s approval for sailing on the route. Several of them were sailing in the far northern waters in the first week of September. Among them are the container carriers Hong Chang Sheng and Honwell. The carriers are 26 and 24-years old respectively and both sail between China and St.Petersburg. According to Ksenia Vakhrusheva, Arctic project advisor at the environmental organization Bellona, there is a high risk for environmental damage, especially of oil spill, from shipping along the NSR. She explains that so-called 'shadow fleet' ships are allowed to sail on the route. Many of them sail with their AIS turned off and many are not listed in the official NSR registry. She argues that Russian authorities are neglecting security. “The attitude of the authorities towards environmental risks is negligible. It is more likely that we will know about an oil spill from international journalists who monitor satellite images, than from Russian authorities,” she says to the Barents Observer. Vakhrusheva emphasizes that vessels without ice-class in principle can sail along the NRS only when there is no ice or with an icebreaker escort when there are light ice conditions. But the conditions in the far northern waters can change rapidly. “The question is what happens when ice conditions change. Last year, Chinese ships violated this rule and continued shipping with harder ice conditions than was permitted. We saw that Russia allowed this and no known sanctions were in place on these ships. It can happen again,” she says. The Arctic expert does not exclude that Russia uses the Arctic route for transportation of sanctioned goods. “Russia uses all possible routes to deliver sanctioned goods, including the NSR. Delivery of equipment for the Arctic LNG 2 project was an example of this. It is possible that vessels carrying goods from China to Russian ports carry also dual-purpose or sanctioned goods, but it is difficult to investigate.” The Mires is sanctioned by the UK and Ukraine. According to Ukrainian authorities, the ship’s owner and commercial manager indicate that the tanker is part of the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ that transports Russian oil in circumvention of international sanctions.
The destination of the 106,094-ton deadweight tanker is not clear, but it is likely to eventually make a port call in Murmansk where it will pick up oil and proceed to an export market. The 20-years-old tanker is sailing on the icy route with the blessing of the authorities in Moscow. Sounds like nothing a couple of torpedoes couldn't fix
Anytime you head into those latitudes, you are taking huge risks. One that is just as big as sea ice is ice accretion on the ship's surface. the weight of the ice can destabilize and sink a ship remarkably fast. An oil tanker has a lot of surface area and not so many crew members. It would be impossible to clear the ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin's_lost_expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Terror_(1813) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_disaster_of_1871 "The Terror" is a great (historical fiction) book and a pretty solid miniseries
A few years ago, I did a little contract work with a few buddies for some orgs that run research ships that go beyond 60 degrees latitude (most north, but a couple south). Our job was to help them develop better safety protocols. They were having a difficult time crewing the ships because many crewmembers rightly thought that the science researchers who were funding the trips had too much influence over operations and were willing to put the whole ship at risk in pursuit of their research. Captains were loathe to go against the folks paying the bills. Additionally, some ships being used were not built for ice so they compensated by staying away from ice (which is folly up there). There was a lot of complacent thinking: "But nothing's ever happened." The culture was ripe for a major incident. While the environment is completely different from wildland fire, the safety processes were similar. We got agreement on turn-down protocols and language all researches had to agree to before setting foot on board. Propped up the captain's authority with institutional support and identified safety issues the crews were noticing but were not acted upon. Radio comms and location tracking were a big issue too, so we set up some new processes and bought new equipment to track locations better. Also, amazingly, they had no uniform way of identifying sea ice types so we cobbled together a book stolen mostly from navies and coast guards in Norway and Canada that helped captains and crews identify the 40+ types of sea ice. Finally, we implemented evac drills and found out that most lifeboat lowering mechanisms had never been tested in realistic conditions and some were even rusted shut. Two things we could not solve: ice accretion on ship surfaces and getting into safety suits and then lifeboats without getting wet. Of course, once you are wet at those latitudes, you're dead even if you manage to live a little bit longer. Well, I guess there was a third thing: if the ship catches fire, you're probably done because of the safety suit/lifeboat issues, but fire has always been a huge problem for both ships and airplanes because there is nowhere to go. I think we made a difference, but I suspect the culture is not strong enough and the orgs too disjointed to sustain the changes long-term. We'll see. Anyway, let's just say the extreme latitudes want to kill you and kill you in a way that you feel it. It is absurd to me that some companies are now running tourist cruises to Antarctica. Just no. It'd be like hiring a guy who has summitted the highest peaks in Kansas to guide you to the top of Everest--you don't even need to go to the top of Everest and you certainly don't need to take a cruise to freaking Antarctica. Penguin movies are not reality. Here's a basic descriptor of sea ice types. Most of these categories have sub-categories and every type can influence polar ship operations in some way. What's missing in this doc is info about the transitions between types that can sometimes occur with astonishing quickness. https://www.canada.ca/en/environmen...ns/educational-resources/sea/types-forms.html
I thought about the project and your background. Even though you had no previous experience with operations in Cold Climates, you quite probably checked off at least one if not all of the following Read and used Policy - Best Practices Manuals for the Agencies that you have worked for Have been interviewed as a Subject Matter for those writing Manuals Have been part of a team that conducted interviews and authored Manuals A fair amount of a basic TOC (Table Of Contents) for the Manuals that you were already familiar with would transfer over to creating a Manual for Research Ships in extreme climates. The naming of basic concepts Staffing Training Equipment Command and Leadership Weather conditions Conditions on the ground (ice) Seasonality - Calendar considerations Etc might differ, but that would be easy to adjust for. Some things that would merit a major section in the manual for activity in Artic conditions might be unique or merit just a subsection in Manuals that you have dealt with in the past.. But again it wouldn't be that difficult to accommodate for.
The oceans just hit an ominous milestone A new report sounds the alarm on ocean acidification as Earth breaches the seventh of nine "planetary boundaries." You’re the product of stability on a planetary scale. Around 12,000 years ago, Earth warmed from an ice age into the relatively consistent climate that allowed humans to adopt agriculture, literally putting down roots. That stability, though, is now shattered, as more than 8 billion people rapidly heat the planet, ravage its ecosystems, and plunder its resources. In a new report, scientists warn that we’ve crossed yet another “planetary boundary,” a threshold that keeps Earth’s systems hospitable to life — a sort of global resilience that allows the planet to absorb shocks. This time, it’s the relentless acidification of the seas that’s crossed into dangerous territory, threatening all manner of marine life, including the organisms at the base of the food web. Of the nine total planetary boundaries, this is the seventh that’s been breached. “What this health check again and again shows is that we have one interlinked, interconnected Earth system,” said Levke Caesar, co-lead of the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of the report. “It actually would be fatal if we just concentrate on climate change, because, as we see, there are six other boundaries that have been transgressed. And we’re actually also increasing the pressure on all of these seven boundaries.” Think of a planetary boundary as a warning sign on a road. At the end of the road is a cliff, representing a tipping point, in which an Earth system dramatically changes, often irreversibly. Researchers are worried, for instance, that parts of the Amazon may be nearing a transformation from rainforests to savannas due to the compounding crises of climate change and deforestation. If that’s the cliff, the concept of a planetary boundary is a big yellow “CLIFF AHEAD” sign, a warning from scientists that we could be approaching a catastrophic shift. Or to use another metaphor: A planetary boundary is your doctor warning you that you have high blood pressure, and the tipping point is the ensuing heart attack. “We are setting the planetary boundaries in such a way that as long as we are within the safe operating space, we should prevent the crossing of tipping points,” Caesar said. Before ocean acidification was added to the list this year, the researchers warned that six other boundaries have already been crossed: The climate is changing rapidly; humans are using too much fresh water; we’re driving species to extinction and transforming the biosphere; forests are shrinking; fertilizers are polluting water bodies; and “novel entities” like chemicals and plastics are streaming into the environment. Ocean acidification is intimately intertwined with the planetary boundary of climate change because seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and indeed has soaked up a quarter of humanity’s CO2 emissions. That’s helped keep the planet from warming even faster, but also creates carbonic acid. Accordingly, the report notes that ocean acidity has grown 30 to 40 percent since widespread burning of fossil fuels started in the industrial era. This is perilous news for oceanic lifeforms. Many organisms, like corals, mollusks, and crustaceans, build shells for protection, but carbonic acid reduces the amount of calcium carbonate available for them to do so. And what they do manage to build will be continuously eroded by the increasing acidity of seawater, requiring them to add new layers to their homes to keep up. “Acidification affects a lot of marine organisms physiologically,” said Peter Roopnarine, curator of geology at the California Academy of Sciences, who wasn’t involved in the report. “Whether that’s for a properly functioning respiratory system, or for building an external or internal skeleton. It affects everything from the larvae, or the development of these organisms, all the way up to the adults.” Acidification and rising water temperatures also cause coral bleaching, when the organisms get stressed and release the symbiotic algae that provide them energy. Because scientists have evidence that organisms are already being harmed in this way, the new report confirms that we’ve crossed the planetary boundary for ocean acidification. “There’s some real concern that as our water acidifies, that there will be fairly significant ecosystem impacts to the marine calcifying species,” said Jennie Rheuban, a research specialist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who wasn’t involved in the report. This acidification could also shake the very foundation of the oceanic food web. Phytoplankton are tiny photosynthetic organisms that soak up CO2 and expel oxygen, just like plants on land. Indeed, these plankton gobble up half of the CO2 sequestered worldwide by photosynthesis, and produce half of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen. Unfortunately, many species of phytoplankton build shells and may struggle as the oceans relentlessly acidify. These organisms sequester loads of carbon and serve as a critical food source for small creatures known as zooplankton, which in turn are consumed by larger animals like fish. But not all oceans are acidifying the same way. Colder locales, like the Arctic or Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica, more readily acidify than tropical waters. That means the polar regions — which may be remote but host a bevy of species like whales — could be approaching a tipping point where organisms aren’t able to build shells. “The Southern Ocean is about to tip,” said Ken Johnson, a senior scientist who studies the region at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute but wasn’t involved in the report. “The water is changing faster. We’re creeping right up to the edge of that tipping point.” Further complicating matters, planetary boundaries often reinforce one another. In addition to acidification, ocean life is dealing with the breaching of the climate boundary, as the seas have absorbed around 90 percent of the excess heat that humans have added to the atmosphere. That’s steadily raised the average ocean temperature, but is also driving extreme marine heat waves, further stressing the organisms there. (Oxygen concentrations also drop as temperatures rise, compounding their pain.) They’re also dealing with the “introduction of novel entities” boundary being breached, as chemicals and plastic pollution injure and kill oceanic species. Those overlapping crises are not only making it more difficult for organisms to survive, but may also be making it more difficult for the ocean to keep sequestering carbon. That’s what Caesar and her colleagues will be exploring next. “What is happening under these different stressors?” Caesar said. “Because it’s not just ocean acidification. The ocean is also losing oxygen. It’s warming. How is this impacting this ocean buffering capacity?” The good news is that by rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we can pull back from the cliff of ocean acidification. In fact, human intervention is why 2 of the 9 planetary boundaries haven’t been crossed. Levels of ozone in the stratosphere are now within safe levels, the report notes, thanks to international agreements banning ozone-depleting substances. And atmospheric aerosols are also within the safe operating space, thanks to countries better regulating the burning of dirty fuels like coal and switching to renewable power like solar and wind. The number of overlapping and reinforcing problems makes the ocean a particular challenge. But by doing things like restoring coastal ecosystems and reducing plastic pollution, humans can reduce the pressures we’re putting on them. “That can be really hard to tackle, addressing these problems when there isn’t sort of a silver bullet where you change one thing and you fix all the problems,” Rheuban said. “There’s quite a number of different issues that need to be solved.”
A writeup about the experiences of citizens and how they felt about how their local governments responded to the July flooding in the Texas Hill Country. Flood of Doubt
The August view of fire. Record fires in Iberia, near-record in Canada, and forest clearing fires in the Amazon. Africa is a combo of field burning, savannah lightning fires, cooking fires that got away, and large scale stump burning in new fields. Also, a few notable fires in Russia and northern Australia tends to burn this time of year, mostly from lightning. Here's September. You can see the changes shorter days and a bit cooler weather make in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately, the Amazon basin is fairly constant now with the forest clearing fires. Australia starts to pick up as their spring gets underway. Still, at the global level September wildfire emissions were the lowest in 23 years, mostly thanks to Asia and Russia being relatively calm.
More fire stuff--it's the climate. https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2025/wildfire-disasters-surged-past-10-years-study-shows
