Fuzzy Signals to Potential Observer States in the Arctic Council

The attention to the Arctic is fuelled by the prospect of economic development, emerging shipping routes, and changing geopolitics. Since 1996 the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum for Arctic cooperation, has served to foster environmental protection and sustainable development in the region. The Arctic Council is composed of the eight Arctic states with territory north of the Arctic Circle and six Permanent Participants representing Arctic Indigenous People. Since its inception, the Arctic Council has admitted 13 non-Arctic Observer states. However, in 2021 three new candidates (Ireland, Czech Republic, and Estonia) were not successful with their applications despite proven records of Arctic research and influence in the region. This article will elaborate on the dynamics of Observer states admittance to the Arctic Council. Signalling theory is applied in this paper as a theoretical lens. More precisely, this paper will concentrate on fuzzy signalling, because such signals do not fall into binary classification and require a lot of contextual geopolitical information for interpretation. The data consists of research articles, publicly available statements, and media articles. The findings demonstrate that the admittance of Observer states to the Arctic Council can be viewed as fuzzy signalling. This paper will argue that fuzzy signalling is intrinsic to a multi-actor governance forum like the Arctic Council, where decisions are made on a consensus basis.

Variations in Atmospheric Energy Transport across the Arctic Circle

<p>Understanding the variability of energy transport and its components, and the mechanisms involved, is critical to improve our understanding of the Arctic amplification. Large amounts of energy are transported from the equator to the poles by the large-scale atmospheric circulation. At the Arctic Circle, this represents an annual average net transport of about two PW. The energy transport can be divided into latent and dry static components which, when increasing, indirectly contribute to the Arctic amplification. While the enhanced dry static energy transport favors sea ice melt and changes the lapse rate, the enhanced influx of latent energy affects the water vapor content and cloud formation, and thus also the lapse rate and sea ice melt via radiative effects.</p> <p>In this study, 40 years (1979-2018) of 6-hourly ERA-Interim reanalysis data are used to calculate the energy transport and its components. Inconsistencies due to spurious mass-flux are accounted for by barotropic wind field correction before the calculation. The first and last decade of the ERA-Interim period differ in terms of sea ice cover, sea surface temperature, and greenhouse gas concentrations, all of which affect the atmospheric circulation.</p> <p>The comparison between these periods shows significant changes in monthly and annual vertically integrated energy transport across the Arctic Circle. On an annual average, energy transport significantly increases in the late period for both total energy and its components, whereas the transport of dry static energy decreases in the winter season. The analysis of the atmospheric circulation reveals variations in the frequency of occurrence of preferred circulation regimes and the associated anomalies in energy transport as a potential cause for the observed changes.</p> <p>The hemispheric-scale and climatological view provides an expanded overall picture in terms of poleward energy transport to atmospheric events as cold air outbreaks and atmospheric rivers. This is demonstrated using the example of the atmospheric river which occurred over Svalbard on 6<sup>th</sup> & 7<sup>th</sup> June 2017.</p>

MIRNY. The Prison of Time

<p>Speculative architecture is sometimes used by speculative architects to enhance our awareness of dystopian elements that thread their way through societies, even when a society is striving for utopian ideals. This contradiction exists because a dystopia to one person may be viewed as a utopia to another – and dystopian conditions can sometimes become so commonplace that they are no longer viewed as out of the ordinary. The site for this design research investigation is Mirny, Yakutia, Siberia, located 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle – a city of almost one million people with no access by road, set in permafrost year-round. The city developed around the open pit Mirny diamond mine that once brought wealth to the community; but while the diamonds are now mostly gone, the mine remains – one of the largest, toxic open holes in the world. With the depletion of diamonds, the city became largely forgotten, but the population remained. Yakutia is defined by the enormous pit and its decades-old, never-changing, Soviet-era architecture – lost in time. The utopian ideal from which the city was born is now shrouded in dystopian conditions. But the people, those born in the city who have lived there all their lives, have known nothing else; they remain unaware of the utopian/dystopian contradiction. This thesis looks at how transformations within our evolving built environments can result in contradiction. It challenges speculative architecture to enhance our ability to recognise such contradictions, distinguishing between utopian and dystopian urban conditions when they simultaneously define a city.</p>

MIRNY. The Prison of Time

<p>Speculative architecture is sometimes used by speculative architects to enhance our awareness of dystopian elements that thread their way through societies, even when a society is striving for utopian ideals. This contradiction exists because a dystopia to one person may be viewed as a utopia to another – and dystopian conditions can sometimes become so commonplace that they are no longer viewed as out of the ordinary. The site for this design research investigation is Mirny, Yakutia, Siberia, located 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle – a city of almost one million people with no access by road, set in permafrost year-round. The city developed around the open pit Mirny diamond mine that once brought wealth to the community; but while the diamonds are now mostly gone, the mine remains – one of the largest, toxic open holes in the world. With the depletion of diamonds, the city became largely forgotten, but the population remained. Yakutia is defined by the enormous pit and its decades-old, never-changing, Soviet-era architecture – lost in time. The utopian ideal from which the city was born is now shrouded in dystopian conditions. But the people, those born in the city who have lived there all their lives, have known nothing else; they remain unaware of the utopian/dystopian contradiction. This thesis looks at how transformations within our evolving built environments can result in contradiction. It challenges speculative architecture to enhance our ability to recognise such contradictions, distinguishing between utopian and dystopian urban conditions when they simultaneously define a city.</p>

4. Peoples of the Arctic

‘Peoples of the Arctic’ focuses on the 4 million people that live north of the Arctic Circle, providing an important distinction between indigenous and settler residents, as over 1 million indigenous peoples live in the eight Arctic states. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first people in the Arctic arrived about 40,000 years ago as there were Upper Palaeolithic hunting communities in north-eastern Siberia. There is considerable diversity of indigenous peoples that have called the Arctic home. Arctic demographers predict that more and more Arctic peoples will be based in towns and cities, but in the Russian and North American Arctic there will still be dispersed and small-scale settlements. Indigenous peoples of the Arctic are culturally, economically, and politically active in all the Arctic states.

1. The Arctic world

‘The Arctic world’ begins with the definition of the Arctic, which is understood as the land, sea, and ice lying north of the Arctic Circle set at a latitude of approximately 66.5° N. The Arctic tree line is a robust indicator of Arctic-ness as everything to the north is a landscape characterized by shrubs, dwarf trees, and lichen. Arctic warming occurs at least twice as rapidly as the global average, which is a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Since 1980, the warming trajectory in the Arctic has been much steeper than that of the rest of the planet.

Изменение сукцессионных систем палеофитоценозов на границе межледниковья и ледниковья позднего эоплейстоцена в пыльцевой записи оз. Эльгыгытгын (Центральная Чукотка)

Lake El'gygytgyn is located beyond the Arctic Circle in Chukotka at 67°30' N, 172°05' E and formed following a meteorite impact that occurred 3.6 million years ago (core interval 45.79-43.65 m). In its sediments, 5 palinologic zones are distinguished; they reflect changes in paleosuccessional systems and are consistent with MIS 33, 32, and 31 (1.114-1.062 mya). During warmings, thickets of birch trees and alder were widely spread. Cliseries, caused by macroclimate changes in cold substages, are characterized by a significant reduction in tree and shrub vegetation as well as by expansion of the arctic and subarctic tundras. Grass tundras dominated and were replaced by forest tundra communities in the valleys of the Anadyr Plateau surrounding the lake. The most abrupt change of phytocenosis succession systems is observed at the border of 32 and 31 isotopic stages. The succession processes are primarily expressed in a sharp increase of birch-shrub communities in the vegetation cover and in the appearance of late succession edificators (Carpinus, Corylus, Myrica, Quercus) forming forest climax associations.

Anthropology of disease. In the wake of the Arctic Circle epidemics: field materials of I.S. Gurvich

The unique body of materials collected by the Soviet ethnographer and the North scholar I.S. Gurvich (1919–1992) in places of compact residence of the indigenous peoples of Yakutia (the Yukagir expedition of 1959) for the first time determined scientific interest in the problem of medical anthropology, which reflected original ideas about diseases and health as a vital unity (body and soul), as well as symbolic “charging” of medical practices. The purpose of this research is an attempt to understand the spiritual experience of the peoples of Yakutia in the context of social, epidemiological, and climatic disasters. An interpretation of the visual image of epidemics in the traditional worldview of the indigenous peoples of Yakutia is given. The main object of this research, which recon-ciles the past and present, is the traditional world of long-lasting “perception” and “experience” of mass epidemics by indigenous people of the North. The methodological innovation of the paper is the study of colonial diseases in the framework of social and cognitive anthropology. With the example of local ideas about diseases and treatment in different ethnic communities of North Asia (the Yakuts, Evens, and Yukagirs), we analyze a complex socio-cultural phenomenon that emerged in the 17th century from the historical contacts between local and foreign origin cultures. The cultural dimension of the epidemic diseases within the borders of the Arctic circle, based on the historical and ethnographic sources of the Northern expeditions of the Soviet ethnologist I.S. Gurvich, is the first attempt of the cognitive analysis, the image of the disease and symbolic strategies for its prevention. A broad semiotic analysis of the concept of disease in the indigenous peoples of the Arctic at the level of linguistic, histori-cal, mythological, folklore and ritual texts allowed us to identify the original layer of demonological representations associated with mass epidemics and symbolic strategies for their prevention. Cultural codes of the demonic char-acter-disease (space, color, object, action, ritual) are identified. Sacred practices of influencing the disease were expressed in the following ways: foresight; conciliation; gifting/redemption; deception techniques; and deliverance. Dis-eases are personified and encoded using certain characters. Obviously, the semiotic system serving the image of dis-ease in the framework of the local ethno-cultural traditions reflected the local specifics.

Ecological Feedback Effects Affecting Arctic Biodiversity in Response to Glacial Melt

A changing Arctic The Arctic is a geographic region situated in the northernmost part of earth. It marks the latitude above which the sun does not set on the summer solstice and does not rise on the winter solstice. The Arctic is considered an area within the Arctic Circle that draws an imaginary line that …