The research effort is the first comprehensive satellite study of the contribution of the world's melting glaciers and ice caps to global sea level rise and indicates they are adding roughly 0.4 millimeters annually, said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. The measurements are important because the melting of the world's glaciers and ice caps, along with Greenland and Antarctica, pose the greatest threat to sea level increases in the future, Wahr said.

The researchers used satellite measurements taken with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a joint effort of NASA and Germany, to calculate that the world's glaciers and ice caps had lost about 148 billion tons, or about 39 cubic miles of ice annually from 2003 to 2010. The total does not count the mass from individual glacier and ice caps on the fringes of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets - roughly an additional 80 billion tons.

"This is the first time anyone has looked at all of the mass loss from all of Earth's glaciers and ice caps with GRACE," said Wahr. "The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet's cold regions are responding to global change."

A paper on the subject is being published in the Feb. 9 online edition of the journal Nature. The first author, Thomas Jacob, did his research at CU-Boulder and is now at the Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres, in Orleans, France. Other paper co-authors include Professor Tad Pfeffer of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Sean Swenson, a former CU-Boulder physics doctoral student who is now a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

"The strength of GRACE is that it sees everything in the system," said Wahr. "Even though we don't have the resolution to look at individual glaciers, GRACE has proven to be an exceptional tool." Traditional estimates of Earth's ice caps and glaciers have been made using ground-based measurements from relatively few glaciers to infer what all of the unmonitored glaciers around the world were doing, he said. Only a few hundred of the roughly 200,000 glaciers worldwide have been monitored for a decade or more.

Launched in 2002, two GRACE satellites whip around Earth in tandem 16 times a day at an altitude of about 300 miles, sensing subtle variations in Earth's mass and gravitational pull. Separated by roughly 135 miles, the satellites measure changes in Earth's gravity field caused by regional changes in the planet's mass, including ice sheets, oceans and water stored in the soil and in underground aquifers.

A positive change in gravity during a satellite approach over Greenland, for example, tugs the lead GRACE satellite away from the trailing satellite, speeding it up and increasing the distance between the two. As the satellites straddle Greenland, the front satellite slows down and the trailing satellite speeds up. A sensitive ranging system allows researchers to measure the distance of the two satellites down to as small as 1 micron - about 1/100 the width of a human hair - and to calculate ice and water amounts from particular regions of interest around the globe using their gravity fields.

For the global glaciers and ice cap measurements, the study authors created separate "mascons," large, ice-covered regions of Earth of various ovate-type shapes. Jacob and Wahr blanketed 20 regions of Earth with 175 mascons and calculated the estimated mass balance for each mascon.

The CU-led team also used GRACE data to calculate that the ice loss from both Greenland and Antarctica, including their peripheral ice caps and glaciers, was roughly 385 billion tons of ice annually. The total mass ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica and all Earth's glaciers and ice caps from 2003 to 2010 was about 1,000 cubic miles, about eight times the water volume of Lake Erie, said Wahr.

"The total amount of ice lost to Earth's oceans from 2003 to 2010 would cover the entire United States in about 1 and one-half feet of water," said Wahr, also a fellow at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that human activities like pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is warming the planet, an effect that is most pronounced in the polar regions.

One unexpected study result from GRACE was that the estimated ice loss from high Asia mountains - including ranges like the Himalaya, the Pamir and the Tien Shan - was only about 4 billion tons of ice annually. Some previous ground-based estimates of ice loss in the high Asia mountains have ranged up to 50 billion tons annually, Wahr said.

"The GRACE results in this region really were a surprise," said Wahr. "One possible explanation is that previous estimates were based on measurements taken primarily from some of the lower, more accessible glaciers in Asia and were extrapolated to infer the behavior of higher glaciers. But unlike the lower glaciers, many of the high glaciers would still be too cold to lose mass even in the presence of atmospheric warming."

"What is still not clear is how these rates of melt may increase and how rapidly glaciers may shrink in the coming decades," said Pfeffer, also a professor in CU-Boulder's civil, environmental and architectural engineering department. "That makes it hard to project into the future."

According to the GRACE data, total sea level rise from all land-based ice on Earth including Greenland and Antarctica was roughly 1.5 millimeters per year annually or about 12 millimeters, or one-half inch, from 2003 to 2010, said Wahr. The sea rise amount does include the expansion of water due to warming, which is the second key sea-rise component and is roughly equal to melt totals, he said.

"One big question is how sea level rise is going to change in this century," said Pfeffer. "If we could understand the physics more completely and perfect numerical models to simulate all of the processes controlling sea level - especially glacier and ice sheet changes - we would have a much better means to make predictions. But we are not quite there yet."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Paris, France (AFP) Feb 9, 2012 - Himalayan glaciers and ice caps that supply water to more than a billion people in Asia are losing mass up to 10 times less quickly than once feared, reports a study published Thursday.

Based on an improved analysis of satellite data from 2003 to 2010, the findings offer a reprieve for a region already feeling the impacts of global warming.

But they do not mean that the threat of disruptive change has disappeared, the researchers warned.

"The good news is that the glaciers are not losing mass as fast as we thought," said Tad Pfeffer, a professor at the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and a co-author of the study.

"The bad news is that they are still losing a lot of water. There is still definitely a serious problem for the Himalayas."

Much of that loss, it turns out, is taking place in the huge plains immediately south of the towering mountain range, where pumping from wells is draining ancient aquifers far faster than precipitation can replenish them.

Earlier estimates -- also based on satellite data -- mistakenly attributed much of the draining of these water tables to glacier melt-off, Pfeffer said in a phone interview.

Other calculations now thought to be off the mark were based on scaled-up extrapolations from lower-elevation glaciers that were more accessible to observation, but also more subject to warming trends.

"Many of the high glaciers would still be too cold to lose mass even in the presence of atmospheric warming," said co-author John Wahr, a physicist at the University of Colorado.

The study, published in Nature, provides what may be the most accurate global estimate of how much mass Earth's frozen regions -- glaciers, ice caps and the continent-sized icesheets sitting atop Greenland and Antarctica -- have shed over the last decade.

From 2003 through 2010, they collectively lost about 4,200 cubic kilometres (1,000 cubic miles), enough to raise sea levels by 12 millimetres (a half-inch) over that eight year period, the study found.

Most of that increase came from the Greenland and West Antarctica, while only 3.2 mm (0.125 inches) of the total can be attributed to the world's melting glaciers and ice caps.

"For high-mountain Asia, we are reporting loss of only four gigatonnes (Gt), or four cubic kilometres, annually," said Pfeffer. "Other studies have reported loss as high as 50 Gt per year. There's a big difference."

For the icesheets, however, the new estimates of ice mass loss over the last decade are roughly in line with other measurements based on different methods, the researchers said.

The second major driver of rising oceans is thermal expansion -- water taking up more space as the atmosphere heats up.

Satellite data used in the study, published in Nature, was taken from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a joint NASA-German effort to measure changes in the planet's gravity field.

Two GRACE satellites launched in 2002 whip around Earth in tandem 16 times a day at an altitude of about 480 kilometres (300 miles), sensing subtle variations in gravitational pull caused by shifts in mass in ice sheets, oceans and water stored in the soil and in underground aquifers.

The new data will help scientists refine predictions about how quickly sea levels will rise, and by how much.

Current estimates vary between about half-a-metre and a metre by century's end.

"A better estimate of past behaviour, such as that obtained [in the new study], will therefore result in better estimates of future behaviour," Jonathan Bamber, a professor at the University of Bristol, noted in a commentary, also in Nature.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Moscow (AFP) Feb 8, 2012 - Russian scientists on Wednesday announced they had drilled deep through Antartica's icesheet to reach a pristine lake untouched for tens of thousands of years.

"A small window has opened into the unknown world of Lake Vostok," Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute said in the first official confirmation of the breakthrough.

"For me, discovering this lake is comparable to the first flight to space. In its technical complexity, its importance and its uniqueness," expedition leader Valery Lukin told the Interfax news agency.

Specialists "penetrated the prehistoric waters of Lake Vostok under the ice through a deep ice borehole," scientists said, revealing a discovery that took place on February 5.

The expedition drilled down to the lake's surface at a depth of almost four kilometres (2.34 miles) but did not immediately take a water sample to avoid contamination, Lukin said.

"According to the ecologically clean technique we have developed, now we cannot take any samples," Lukin said, explaining the water would get contaminated with kerosene and freon being used antifreeze.

Instead scientists will wait for a column of water to rise up through the borehole and freeze, he said. Scientists plan to collect the water samples from December this year to January 2013.

He said scientists could not take the samples back to Russia due to restrictions on liquids on flights, so they would be taken back on a research ship, arriving only in May 2013.

Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial body of water in Antarctica, "presents a potentially a unique water ecosystem," isolated from the atmosphere for at least one million years, the Arctic and Antarctic Institute said on its website.

Nevertheless the expedition has raised fears among international experts about the environmental impact of the kerosene used as antifreeze and questions about the scientific worth of the mission.

Russia has presented the expedition as a major triumph, and the Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology Yury Trutnev viewed the site earlier this month.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Exeter, UK (SPX) Feb 08, 2012 - New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published in Nature Geoscience.

The team set out to identify the effects that the first land plants had on the climate during the Ordovician Period, which ended 444 million years ago. During this period the climate gradually cooled, leading to a series of 'ice ages'. This global cooling was caused by a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon, which this research now suggests was triggered by the arrival of plants.

Among the first plants to grow on land were the ancestors of mosses that grow today. This study shows that they extracted minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and iron from rocks in order to grow. In so doing, they caused chemical weathering of the Earth's surface. This had a dramatic impact on the global carbon cycle and subsequently on the climate. It could also have led to a mass extinction of marine life.

The research suggests that the first plants caused the weathering of calcium and magnesium ions from silicate rocks, such as granite, in a process that removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forming new carbonate rocks in the ocean. This cooled global temperatures by around five degrees Celsius.

In addition, by weathering the nutrients phosphorus and iron from rocks, the first plants increased the quantities of both these nutrients going into the oceans, fuelling productivity there and causing organic carbon burial. This removed yet more carbon from the atmosphere, further cooling the climate by another two to three degrees Celsius. It could also have had a devastating impact on marine life, leading to a mass extinction that has puzzled scientists.

The team used the modern moss, Physcomitrella patens for their study. They placed a number of rocks, with or without moss growing on them, into incubators. Over three months they were able to measure the effects the moss had on the chemical weathering of the rocks.

They then used an Earth system model to establish what difference plants could have made to climate change during the Ordovician Period.

One of the lead researchers, Professor Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter said: "This study demonstrates the powerful effects that plants have on our climate. Although plants are still cooling the Earth's climate by reducing atmospheric carbon levels, they cannot keep up with the speed of today's human-induced climate change. In fact, it would take millions of years for plants to remove current carbon emissions from the atmosphere."

Professor Liam Dolan of Oxford University, one of the lead researchers, said: "For me the most important take-home message is that the invasion of the land by plants - a pivotal time in the history of the planet - brought about huge climate changes. Our discovery emphasises that plants have a central regulatory role in the control of climate: they did yesterday, they do today and they certainly will in the future."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Innsbruck, Austria (SPX) Feb 07, 2012 - The composition of land surface - such as vegetation type and land use - regulates the interaction of radiation, sensible heat and humidity between the land surface and the atmosphere and, thus, influences ground level climate directly. For the first time, the Innsbruck climate scientists quantitatively examined whether land-cover changes (LCC) may potentially affect glacier loss.

"We used Kilimanjaro in East Africa as a test case, where a significant decrease of forests at elevations between 1,800 and 3,000 meters, caused by illegal deforestation and an increased number of forest fires, has been documented since the 1970s," explains climate researcher Thomas Molg, who has worked in Berlin since 1 October 2011 but finished the study with his team at the University of Innsbruck.

The glaciers in the Kilimanjaro area have been shrinking for many decades, and climate researchers from Innsbruck and America have conducted thorough glaciological and meteorological measurements for ten years -ideal prerequisites for carrying out a comprehensive study about a potential connection between forest loss and glacier shrinking.

Novel methodology
The prerequisite for conducting this study was a novel methodology that links a glacier and atmospheric model in such a way that no statistical corrections are necessary (published by Kaser/Molg, 2011 in Journal of Geophysical Research). Direct measurements of various climate elements on Kilimanjaro such as temperature, humidity, radiation, precipitation and glacier mass changes showed that reality can be simulated well by this new methodology.

"Based on this evaluation we then modified vegetation cover in the atmospheric model - first showing 1976 and subsequently the current state - and calculated its effect on glacier mass," says Thomas Molg.

The results show that LCC mainly alter precipitation over glaciers but with different effects on the Northern and Southern ice fields of the mountain (increase or decrease respectively), which results in local increase or decrease of glacier mass.

"Depending on the season, LCC contributes not more than seven to 17 % to glacier mass loss in the southern sector. We, therefore, cannot confirm the hypothesis that deforestation at Kilimanjaro contributes significantly to glacier loss," explains Thomas Molg.

Less precipitation in mid-mountain elevation zones
The results of the study suggest that relatively small-scale land-cover changes, such as on Kilimanjaro, may not have enough impact on the mountain climate to surpass the effects of global climate change on glaciers.

"However, another important aspect of the results is that deforestation decreases precipitation significantly more in mid-mountain elevation zones about two kilometers below the glacier than in summit zones". This affects local water reservoirs and reduces water supply for the local population.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Moscow (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - A Russian team has succeeded in drilling through four kilometres (2.5 miles) of ice to the surface of a mythical subglacial Antarctic lake which could hold as yet unknown life forms, reports said Monday.

Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica and scientists want to study its eco-system which has been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years under the ice in the hope of finding previously unknown microbiological life forms.

"Our scientists completed drilling at a depth of 3,768 metres and reached the surface of the subglacial lake," an unnamed source told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Sergei Lesenkov, spokesman for the Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute, told AFP in Moscow that there was the possibility of a "fundamental scientific development".

Lesenkov said that analysis of the composition of gas bubbles discovered in the ice above the lake could help climate change research.

"Because the lower layer was formed 400,000 years ago, from the composition of the gas it is possible to judge the gas composition in the atmosphere 400,000 years ago and during the time that has passed since the formation of the lake," he said.

"From there, it is possible to identify and forecast certain climatic changes in the future. This is very important."

No official announcement of the breakthrough has been made, although sources said that this was expected to come from the government.

"If it is true and it's successful, it's a milestone that's been completed. This is a major achievement for the Russians because they've been working on it for years," Professor Martin Siegert, head of the school of geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, told AFP.

He said that exploring environments such as Lake Vostok would allow scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions and thus whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.

There has long been excitement among some scientists that life theoretically could exist on Saturn's moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.

Valerie Massson-Delmotte of the climate and environment laboratory at the French Atomic Energy Commission, said Lake Vostok was of particular interest as it had been formed over the course of 400,000 years.

"There is also a strong interest from biologists to study the forms of life that could exist in these extreme conditions which have been separated from the rest of the world environment for several million years," she said.

RIA Novosti said that the possibility that the lake existed had first been suggested by a Soviet scientist in 1957. Scientific research drilling in the area started in 1989 and the lake's existence was confirmed only in 1996.

But efforts to reach its surface were suspended two years later amid fears that the process could contaminate the waters.

After developing new techniques in an attempt to ease environmental concerns, attempts to drill down through the deep ice sheet to the lake's surface resumed.

The Russian researchers intend to start drilling again and obtain water samples from the lake for analysis in December after a ten-month break due to harsh weather conditions.

The hidden lakes of the Antarctic are seen as one of the final frontiers in exploring the Earth and several teams from other nations are also engaged in similar projects.

There is still controversy over the methods used by Russia, with Western scientists expressing concern that the kerosene that has been used to prevent freezing ice from closing the borehole risks contaminating samples.

Siegert will lead a mission next year to drill into another subglacial lake in west Antarctica called Lake Ellsworth, using a different technique called hot-water drilling.

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]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Moscow (UPI) Feb 2, 2012 - Russian researchers say their drilling project is close to breaching a prehistoric lake trapped deep beneath Antarctica for the last 14 million years.

The 20-year-project is about to reach Lake Vostok, the largest in a sub-glacial web of more than 200 lakes hidden beneath 2 1/2 miles of Antarctic ice, WiredUK reported Thursday.

The lakes are rich in oxygen with levels 50 times higher than in a typical freshwater lake, believed to be the result of the enormous weight and pressure of the continental ice cap.

The conditions in Lake Vostok are thought to be similar to the conditions on Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus, believed to possess a massive saltwater reservoir beneath its icy surface.

Finding life in the dark, inhospitable depths of Vostok would strengthen the case for life in the outer solar system, researchers said.

Russian engineers said if they are successful in breaching the lake, they plan to send a swimming robot into the lake in the Antarctic summer of 2012 into 2013 to collect water samples and sediments from the bottom.

Cracked glacier to produce giant iceberg
New York (UPI) Feb 2, 2012 - A newly released satellite image shows a 19-mile crack in a glacier in Antarctica that could release an island of ice the size of New York, U.S. experts say.

The crack was first spotted in the Pine Island Glacier in October, and a NASA satellite captured the new image on Nov. 12, the New York Daily News reported.

The crack has grown to 260 feet wide and 195 feet deep, NASA scientists said, and a huge iceberg will eventually separate from the glacier and float into the open ocean.

Ice shelves are thinning at an accelerated pace due to global warming, researchers said, although the crack in the Pine Island Glacier appears to be part of the natural process of iceberg formation.

"It's part of a natural cycle, but it's still very interesting and impressive to see up close," NASA scientist Michael Studinger said at the time of the October discovery.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Paris (ESA) Feb 03, 2012 - Alexander Kumar, the next ESA-sponsored crewmember to stay in Concordia, has arrived safely at the research base in Antarctica. The voyage to one of the remotest places on Earth takes even longer than the voyage to the International Space Station.

The international outpost's programme of research includes glaciology, human biology and the atmosphere. ESA uses the base to prepare for future long-duration missions beyond Earth.

Concordia is an ideal place to study the effects on small, multicultural teams isolated for long periods in an extreme, hostile environment.

Alexander left the port of Hobart in Tasmania on 7 January aboard the vessel Astrolabe. The ship is used by the French Polar Institute to supply Concordia and the French coastal Antarctic station Dumont D'Urville.

Alexander's work started before reaching the base: he had to tend to routine medical problems as the only qualified physician on the ship.

After a week-long journey across the Southern Ocean, the Astrolabe arrived at Dumont d'Urville.

The 1200 km second leg of the voyage called for a twin-propeller plane. The aircraft has to be maintained meticulously because it flies at altitudes where the air pressure is a third less than at sea level, in extreme cold weather.

After a five-hour flight, Alexander arrived at Concordia, a staggering 3200 m above sea level, and one of the coldest places on Earth. Alexander is replacing Eoin Macdonald-Nethercott, who has been at Concordia for over a year.

Once the Antarctic winter sets in next month, it will be impossible to access the outpost because temperatures can drop to -84 degrees C.

Concordia's 14 inhabitants have to learn to live and work together without help from the outside world. Only after the Antarctic summer warms the frigid surroundings will fresh supplies and personnel be able to reach the site.

Alexander will perform a comprehensive programme of research during his year-long stay. A variety of tests will investigate how the Concordia team adapt to the station. Areas of special interest are sleep patterns, individual and team performance, and exercise.

Alex will also test software tools that could help crews on future missions.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Brussels, Belgium (SPX) Feb 02, 2012 - These researchers assert that the Arctic is already suffering some of the effects that, according to The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), correspond with a "dangerous climate change". Currently, the rate of climatic warming exceeds the rate of natural adaptation in arctic ecosystems. Furthermore, the Eskimo population is witnessing how their security, health and traditional cultural activities jeopardize.

The experts demand an effort in order to develop indicators that warn about these changes in good time, soften its causes, and re-enact the adaptation and recovery capacity of ecosystems and populations.

Carlos Duarte, CSIC researcher and author of the article, states: "We are facing the first clear evidence of a dangerous climate change. However, some of the researchers and some of the Media are plunged into a semantic debate about whether the Arctic Sea-Ice has reached a tipping point or not. This all is distracting the attention on the need to develop indicators that warn about the proximity of abrupt changes in the future, as well as on the policymaking to prevent them".

Tipping points are defined as critical points within a system, of which future condition may be qualitatively affected by small perturbations. On the other hand, tipping elements are defined as those components of the Earth system that may show tipping signs.

According to the experts, the Arctic shows the largest concentration of potential tipping elements in Earth's Climate System: Arctic Sea-Ice; Greenland Ice-Sheet; North Atlantic deep water formation regions; boreal forests; plankton communities; permafrost; and marine methane hydrates among others.

Duarte maintains: "Due to all of this, the Arctic region is particularly prone to show abrupt changes and transfer them to the Global Earth System. It is necessary to find rapid alarm signs, which warn us about the proximity of tipping points, for the development and deployment of adaptive strategies. This all would help to adopt more preventive policies".

Effects on the Global Climate System
In another article, published in the latest number of 'AMBIO', Duarte and other CSIC researchers detail the tipping elements present in the Arctic. They also provide evidence to prove that many of these tipping elements have already entered into a dynamic of change that may become abrupt in most of the cases. According to the study, it is possible to observe numerous tipping elements that would impact on the Global Climate System if they were perturbed.

CSIC scientist explains: "In this work, we provide evidence showing that many of these tipping elements have already started up. We also identify which are the climate change thresholds that may accelerate the global climate change. The very human reaction to climate change in the Arctic (dominated by the increase of activities such as transportation, shipping, and resource exploitation) may contribute to accelerate the changes already happening".

Scientists believe that nearly 40% of anthropogenic methane emissions could be lessen to a zero cost or even produce a net economic benefit. The experts assert: "In the large term, cutting the accumulative carbon dioxide emissions is essential to downshift the tipping elements such as the Greenland Ice-Sheet".

Both articles were written under the European funded project "Artic Tipping Points".

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Oslo, Norway (UPI) Feb 1, 2012 - China's efforts to tap the natural resources and transportation routes of the arctic will continue to be frustrated by Norway, a diplomatic source says.

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten last week cited an unnamed source saying Norway will block China's bid to obtain permanent observer status at the eight-member Arctic Council as long as Beijing continues to snub Oslo diplomatically.

China downgraded its relationship with Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010. Even though the Nobel committee is independent from the Norwegian government, Beijing has cut political and human rights ties with Oslo.

Aftenposten's source said the situation has made it hard for the country to back Denmark's moves to sponsor China into the Arctic Council's permanent observer table, which include such non-arctic nations as France, Germany, Britain, Poland and Spain.

Full members include Denmark, Canada, Finland, the United States, Russia, Sweden, Norway and Iceland.

The council's activities have centered on such issues as environmental protection, shipping activity and the effects of climate change. But with melting of permanent sea ice, the arctic is emerging as not only a viable summer shipping route from Asia to Europe but also as a potentially rich sources of valuable minerals.

China has long sought access to Greenland to share in its wealth of rare earths and minerals such as zinc, iron ore, uranium, lead and gemstones, which are being exposed as its glaciers retreat and its Danish administrators seek to commercialize the resources.

The arctic is also thought to hold up to 25 percent of the world's oil and natural gas reserves.

Denmark, seeking to bolster trade with China, is backing Beijing's bid to upgrade its status from ad hoc to permanent observer.

The Danish ambassador to China said in October the Chinese have "natural and legitimate economic and scientific interests in the arctic" and that Denmark intended to support China's application to become a permanent observer to the Arctic Council.

Norway's position, however, effectively "amounts to a ban" of China at the group, Senior Scientist Geir Flikke of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs told the newspaper, adding, "In that sense, it is remarkable."

The diplomatic row has reversed Oslo's position -- Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said two months before Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that Norway supported China's bid for permanent observer status.

"I can neither confirm nor deny this story but I can say bilateral contacts between Norway and China are at a low level," Karsten Klepsvik of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the British newspaper The Guardian.

The stakes in arctic are indeed high for Beijing, said Ji Zhiye, deputy director of Chinese Institute of Modern International Relations.

"Different states now are studying options to ship their cargoes via Arctic Ocean," Ji told the Voice of Russia. "The reason is obvious. When you sail from Europe, right after you pass Egypt through Suez channel and Red Sea you encounter Somali pirates or the pirates operating in the Strait of Molucca.

"When the shipments go via Arctic Ocean, then one has an opportunity to save huge amounts of money, which otherwise would be spent on security operations, and the risks are much lower."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:07:38 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D