War in Ukraine | Russian Arctic research at risk

The war in Ukraine has destroyed international scientific cooperation in the Arctic. One of the collateral victims: research on climate change.

For nearly 15 years, Gabriela Schaepman-Strub has been at the forefront of Arctic warming. The scientific director of the Swiss Polar Institute travels to the Russian part of the territory every summer to collect environmental data.

Every summer, except this year. Since the invasion of Ukraine last February, the Russian Arctic has been virtually inaccessible to Western scientists.

One of the projects of the researcher, also professor of biology and environmental sciences at the University of Zurich, aims to understand the effects of droughts and rains in northeastern Siberia. The presence of his team in the field is necessary for the maintenance of the equipment and the taking of data.

“This is a project that we have been carrying out for four years and which has required enormous financial and human resources. If we can’t go back next year, I think we’ll have to give up everything. It would be the loss of years of work and information that we urgently need to better predict permafrost thaw and vegetation changes,” she worries.

Many scientific projects in the Arctic are based, like that of Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, on international partnerships with Russia. But since the beginning of the war, the time for collaboration has ceased.

“Much of the research in the Arctic is paralyzed right now,” said Gary Wilson, professor of political science at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). Most of the international organizations taking part in this work have suspended their relations with Russia and withdrawn any Russian component from the projects they finance. »

Past President of the Canadian Association for Northern Studies, Gary Wilson is involved in many of these Arctic research organizations. Like several of his colleagues, he cut all ties with Russian researchers since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The climate crisis put on ice

This research – now interrupted – is crucial in a context of climate change, underlines Gary Wilson. “Russia covers more than a third of the Arctic. We need constant data to study the different phenomena in this region. The war has been going on for nearly a year. This already represents a year of missing data,” he laments.

The Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the world, according to a recent study by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Some of its regions, such as Svalbard, have just experienced the hottest summer on record.

And that’s just a taste of the years to come.

The melting of Arctic permafrost amplifies global warming by releasing carbon, in the form of CO₂ and methane. According to current scientific models, this soil contains 1700 billion tons of carbon, double the amount already present in the atmosphere and four times the amount emitted by humans since the industrial revolution.

“We can study what is happening in the rest of the Arctic, but that does not allow us to extrapolate for the Russian part of the territory, explains Gabriela Schaepman-Strub. The climate and environment in the Russian Arctic are very different. And the phenomena observed in Siberia, for example, are not the same as those in northern Canada. »

Some data can be obtained from satellites. But they will never replace research carried out in the field, argues the Swiss professor.

Breaking links

Since its founding in 1996, the Arctic Council has been the symbol of cooperation between the states of the North. This international forum, which brings together the eight Arctic nations as well as indigenous peoples of the region, has enabled the establishment of numerous environmental scientific projects.

But uncertainty hangs over the Council’s future. Last March, its work was suspended.

“An important Council project that could not be resumed due to the involvement of the Russian Federation is the Circumpolar Wildfire Project, which aims to improve coordination and promote international cooperation in responding to forest fires. catastrophic forest in the Arctic,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an email to The Press.

“Forest fires threaten populations in the circumpolar Arctic, particularly in Russia and the United States,” the spokesperson added. And in addition to the threats they pose to local communities, they release significant amounts of smoke and black carbon into the atmosphere, harming human health and intensifying the process of climate change. »

The severance of all these international links will leave a deep scar scientifically, laments Gabriela Schaepman-Strub.

Some Russian scientists are trying to continue collecting data in the north of their country. But Arctic expeditions are often expensive and difficult to conduct without international support.

“As long as the war continues and there is no peace agreement in sight, I believe that it will be the status quo, adds Gary Wilson. Russian researchers will continue to collect data as they can. And with any luck, we will have access to this data one day. »

4.7 million hectares

Area of ​​the region burned by forest fires in the Siberian Arctic from 1982 to 2020, more than a quarter of the area of ​​Canada.

Source: Higher Council for Scientific Research in Spain

280 gigatonnes per year

Mass of ice lost by Greenland on average since 2002.

Source: NASA