Ukraine's Conflict Has Rippled All the Way to the Arctic Circle
The effects of the conflict in Ukraine have rippled across the globe, sending more than two million refugees fleeing, and driving up gasoline prices in the U.S., heating bills in Europe, the cost of bread in the Middle East, and even the price of potato chips around the world. But one of the most significant impacts, for the future of global warming at least, is unfolding thousands of miles away in the Arctic, where vital research on carbon emissions just came to a screeching halt.
Right as Russia decided to attack Ukraine, a global consortium of permafrost scientists was poised to embark on a multi-year, Arctic-wide monitoring effort that would have helped provide crucial data on how the region is warming. But international uproar and financial sanctions over the unprovoked invasion put an immediate stop to any scientific collaboration with Russian researchers. And while climate scientists agree that the sanctions are necessary, they lament the lost opportunity for vital research in the region—Russia accounts for half the Arctic land mass.
“At least half our work would have been in Russia, and now we can’t do any science there at all,” says Sue Natali, Arctic program director for the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, who now has a couple of pallets worth of methane and carbon monitoring equipment originally destined for Russian research stations lying unused in the back of her research center.
As the conflict progresses, experts worry that eroding political cooperation among Arctic nations could see environmentally-harmful Russian activities in the region go unchecked—further worsening the effects of climate change.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraines-conflict-has-rippled-all-the-way-to-the-arctic-circle/ar-AAUQ5Ej