Last week, a 908-foot Russian tanker carrying liquified natural gas passed south through the Russian side of the Bering Strait, with two more to follow. The ships are traversing the northern coast of Siberia, called the North Sea Route, in the middle of January with no icebreaker escort, an unprecedented event that may hint at the future of the region as climate change alters global commerce.
Ice in the north Bering Sea is diminishing, researchers aboard a Coast Guard ship report.
The “thermal curtain” is another expression for “cold pool” that acts as a barrier to keep some species—pollock and Pacific cod, for example — from migrating across the eastern Bering Sea shelf and northward toward the Bering Strait. For the first time in 37 years of surveying the Bering Sea, we could not find the cold water barrier.
Recent storms and warm seas melted a vast stretch of ice in the Bering Sea, leaving some islands surrounded by water when they should be locked in ice.
Last week, social media across Western Alaska lit up as residents posted photos and videos of open water where, normally, there's ice.
No sea ice; hunters say it should not be like this today.
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