Ever since the early explorers realized that the Arctic sea ice is continually moving, breaking and shifting, it has been the subject of scientific curiosity. Beginning with Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of the Arctic Ocean in 1893–96, knowledge has been accumulated about the ocean, the ice, and the atmosphere in the Arctic by means of some 30 drifting ice stations, and numerous aircraft landings and submarine crossings.

Radar backscatter in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions is temporally dynamic and reflects changes in sea ice, glacier facies, soil thaw state, vegetation cover, and moisture content. Wind scatterometers on the ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites have amassed a global archive of C-band radar backscatter data since 1991. This paper derives three high temporal resolution data products from this archive that are designed to facilitate scatterometer research in high-latitude environments. Radar backscatter data have a grid spacing of 25 km and are mapped northwards from 60°N latitude over intervals of one, three, and seven days for the period 1991–2000. Data are corrected to a normalized incident angle of 40°. Animations and full-resolution data products are freely available for scientific use at http://merced.gis.ucla.edu/scatterometer/index.htm.

William Speirs Bruce (1867–1921) had two consuming passions throughout almost the whole of his life: Scottish nationalism and polar science. His early life in London and Edinburgh is seen as a prelude to polar oceanographic exploration, culminating in the success of the Scotia Antarctic expedition, 1902–04. His later life was frustrated by the limited achievements of the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate (which was founded to exploit the mineral resources of Svalbard), by a perceived prejudice against him in government and professional societies in London, and by the lack of support for his Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory.

A comprehensive visual and photographic record of a wide variety of auroral events was made from Spitsbergen during a prolonged period of clear weather that coincided with a remarkable resurgence in solar activity close to sunspot minimum. Using colour and interference-filter photography, the nature of the different auroral types was established and tentatively correlated with major flare events on the sun. At least three outstanding auroral substorms and three diffuse polar cap glows were generated by four large solar flares in the first half of February 1986. Many discrete polar cap aurorae were also observed in the same period.

Following a review of commercially-viable offshore oil deposits in northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, the author explores alternative possibilities currently under consideration for transporting the oil to centres where it will be used.

Hazards of pipeline construction, particularly under water, and the problems and dangers associated with giant surface tankers and projected giant submarines are discussed. The author concludes that conventional submarines towing oil-filled plastic drogue tanks offer the safest and most expeditious method of solving the problem. This is the second of two articles (see Polar Record, 21 (133): 369–81 (1983)).

In the early years of Soviet power, expeditions to the Barents and Kara Seas were organized, and this laid the foundations of navigation between the European part of the Soviet Union and the Siberian rivers Ob' and Yenisey. In the course of these voyages great quantities of goods were carried across the Arctic seas, which were to become important in the country's economy.

Africa has been marginalised in the history of Antarctica, a politics of exclusion (with the exception of Apartheid South Africa) reflected unsurprisingly by a dearth of imaginative, cultural and literary engagement. But, in addition to paleontological and geophysical links, Antarctica has increasing interrelationship with Africa’s climactic future. Africa is widely predicted to be the continent worst affected by climate change, and Antarctica and its surrounding Southern Ocean are uniquely implicated as crucial mediators for changing global climate and currents, rainfall patterns, and sea level rise. This paper proposes that there are in fact several ways of imagining the far South from Africa in literary and cultural terms. One is to read against the grain for southern-directed perspectives in existing African literature and the arts, from southern coastlines looking south; another is to reexamine both familiar and new, speculative narratives of African weather – drought, flood and change – for their Antarctic entanglements. In the context of ongoing work on postcolonial Antarctica and calls to decolonise Antarctic studies – such readings can begin to bridge the Antarctica–Africa divide.

After making a final landing with their hydrogen balloon on the Arctic pack ice on 14 July 1897 at 82°56′N 29°52′E, expedition members Salomon August Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel began a slow march with very heavily laden sledges over the ice to try to reach a depot at Cape Flora. Two fundamental errors regarding where to go and what to bring sealed their fate. This note will explore the theory that, given the information they had at the time, the explorers should not have made these mistakes. In fact, the expedition members could have survived if they had instead travelled directly to their other depot at Seven Islands with more lightly laden sledges.

In this article we survey descriptions of Christmas celebrations contained in the diaries and narratives of polar explorers (mostly British) from 1818 to 1912. We find that Christmas was a time almost universally associated with the display of positive emotions, although this was in the context of increased amounts of stress associated with the challenges of over-wintering at high latitudes. Firstly, we argue that Christmas was crucial to the well-being of expedition participants because it opened emotional channels that enabled them to cope with stress. Secondly, we argue that Christmas revealed a play space in which certain types of normally deviant behaviour were welcomed. Thirdly, we argue that Christmas was a major nutritional event for over-wintering crew members, satisfying a need for calories that was rarely met in the everyday rations.

This note considers the decision by the UK government to rename the southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula - Queen Elizabeth Land. Named in honour of the UK Head of State, it was intended to be a ‘gift’ recognising her Diamond Jubilee. However, the 169,000 square mile territory in question is counter-claimed by Argentina and Chile. The circumstances surrounding this declaration, in December 2012, reveals both the contested politics of Antarctic place naming, and a growing willingness of the UK government to strengthen its ‘strategic presence’ in the Antarctic and wider South Atlantic/Falkland Islands region. This naming event provoked Argentina to issue a formal protest note to the UK Ambassador to Argentina.

Further information is presented relating to a sledge discovered on Byers Peninsula, Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands in 2007.

The range of the barren-ground caribou in Canada includes approximately 700 000 square miles [1 812 993 sq km]: north from the forests of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the Arctic Ocean and west from Hudson Bay to Alaska. Much of that vast expanse of stunted forests and tundra remained virtually unmapped until the ingress of the aeroplane in the 1930's.

The introduction of the ‘western diet’ marked a decline in omega–3 fatty acids rich foods and a concurrent increase in saturated and omega–6 fatty acids that persists today. Historically, circumpolar people have had a low incidence of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease and this has been largely attributed to polyphenolic compounds and omega–3 fatty acids offered from subsistence foods. In this report, we studied sled dogs as an Arctic sentinel species for monitoring the effect of a changing diet on lipid profiles along the Yukon River. Subsistence fed village sled dogs along the Yukon River, maintained largely on salmon were compared with a control kennel maintained on commercial food. Profiles showed higher levels for long chain omega–3 fatty acids in village subsistence fed dogs compared to control dogs and an opposite trend for omega–6 fatty acids, establishing baseline levels for follow up studies. A comparison with data for previously published mercury levels from the same cohort of dogs revealed a positive correlation with alpha–linolenic fatty acid and a negative correlation with linoleic fatty acid. Food and nutritional security is a concern in the Arctic as the impacts of climate change and transport of contaminants become obvious. This study supports not only the nutritional value of a subsistence diet but also the utility of sled dogs as a sentinel for human dietary change.