My photo in the Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change

My photo in the Encyclopedia of Weather and Climate Change

My photo of women waiting for a bus in Yakutsk in winter was published in “The Encyclopedia of Weather & Climate Change. A Complete Visual Guide.” Can you believe it? Aaaah. I don’t. This is like a dream.

Funny, but a year ago, when I received Mr. Lachlan McLaine’s message titled “Image query”, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Actually, I did, but I couldn’t realize how big the project Mr. McLaine mentioned was, though he wrote that he was currently working as a project editor on a book titled “The Encyclopedia of Weather”. He said, “It’s a big project with an emphasis on good informative photos and illustrations.”

At that moment, his words didn’t mean anything special to me. I was just an ordinary Siberian guy, who was voluntarily developing YakutiaToday.com, the website dedicated to my lovely Siberian region called the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). And here I received the message saying “The picture wanted.”

First, I was just happy at the fact that my old picture posted on the mentioned web resource deserved any attention. Second, I said, “Why not? Take it, but, please, give the link to my site.” Third, I asked Mr. McLaine, “Is it possible to get one copy?” My intention was simple, I wanted to practice my English. My weather terminology is still weak, you know.

One year passed, and here we are. See further what was the final result. I am so happy. I am ready to repeat “Thank you, Mr. McLaine!” as many as possible. This post is one of my ways of saying “Thank!” (more…)

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Resource development has only led to more misery for northern Russia's indigenous peoples, Larissa Abryutina from the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North, tells a Laval university conference on the challenges of sustainable development and sovereignty in the Arctic on May 18.

Resource development has only led to more misery for northern Russia's indigenous peoples, Larissa Abryutina from the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North, tells a Laval university conference on the challenges of sustainable development and sovereignty in the Arctic on May 18.

Pollution, alcoholism, poor health care reduce life expectancy to between 40 to 45 years.

QUEBEC CITY — Many of the 280,000 indigenous peoples of Russia’s north are watching their communities and cultures teeter on the brink of extinction as economic hardships force them to leave their homelands and migrate in droves to the city.

Many of those who remain behind have abandoned traditional values and become “profit-driven in their search for compensation for their traditional lands,” Larissa Abryutina of the Russian Association of the Indigenous People of the North said May 18 in a presentation to a conference at Laval University on sustainable development and sovereignty in the Arctic.

Like other speakers, Abryutina revealed a striking irony: that it’s much easier to find bad examples of development and self-determination in the Arctic than good ones.

Abryutina, a Chukchi, is herself a casualty of the desperate choices facing northern Russian indigenous people: a doctor of radiology, she left her home region of Chukotka due to its declining standard of living.

(more…)

Reindeer in Yakutia, North Siberia, Russia. Photo by Bolot Bochkarev.

Here I would like to share the current results of the Siberian part of the Snow Change International Research Project realization. It took me real efforts to find this information. The project I am about described has its own website, but its owner doesn’t have time to publish a very interesting research results info on its online resource. Therefore, I asked a regional coordinator, the Northern Forum Academy chairman, Vladimir Vasiliev, to present the text to me. He did, but it was totally written in Russian. So I have translated it into English and not sure yet if some terms sound correctly. If any, just let me know about mistakes.

About: SnowChange is a not-for-profit independent cooperative organisation with headquarters in Finland. Head of International Affairs: Tero Mustonen
Status: Active. Website: SnowChange.org.

Project Mission

The international community network of SnowChange spans all eight Arctic states. Most of the member communities and families are from the various Arctic Indigenous Nations and other subsistence communities.

The project involves working with the various Northern areas and peoples on the topics of ecological, especially climatic and weather changes from the scientific and traditional knowledge point of view. In addition to the community documentation Snowchange as well works to advance local Indigenous knowledge in the global context and advance decolonisation of the North in the face of rapid changes.

The scientific priority of Snowchange is currently in the following areas of the North:
- The Saami territories of Finland, Russia, Sweden and Norway
- Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Murmansk and Republic of Karelia in Russian Federation
- Savo, North Karelia and Kainuu, Finland
- Iceland and Faroe Islands
- British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Canada
- Alaska, USA

In addition to the operations in all Arctic countries (United States / Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland and Faroe Islands (Denmark), Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russian Federation) SnowChange has partners in Bolivia, Nepal, Ghana and New Zealand.

Report on the Snow Change project realization in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Information from its regional coordinator, Vladimir Vasiliev
(more…)

Even herders riding on  reindeer at their winter pastures near Verkhoyansk. Yakutia, Siberia, Russia.

Even herders riding on reindeer at their winter pastures near Verkhoyansk. Yakutia, Siberia, Russia.

I really love what the UK couple Bryan & Cherry Alexander do. They’ve got a great collection of “cold” pictures on the website ArcticPhoto.co.uk. It’s their stock library. Yeah, they make money on their works, but they are pro photographers. The point is that they are totally devoted to Arctic and Antarctic! That’s what I love in them.

I found their website eight years ago, when I searched pictures from Yakutia’s Arctic. They’ve got amazing photographs of the ordinary people of Verkhoyansk, the 2nd or, maybe, the 1st Pole of Cold in the northern hemisphere. In their Yakutia-related collection you can see hunters, horse herders, reindeer herders, Yakut villagers, Even nomads, etc. I think they were the first international photographers, who managed to visit Verkhoyanks in 90s.

No need to introduce Bryan & Cherry Alexander. They are pretty well-known. Their cold-related works are regular printed in the world’s leading magazines. They’ve got photos from all Arctic regions – Northern Siberia, Greenland, Alaska, Arctic Canada and Arctic Scandinavia. Their power is their ability “to document the lives of the native peoples who live in these remote places.”

If you are interested, what type of people live in the Arctic zone, just check out their collection with photographs of Inuit, Innu, Cree, Dene, Komi, Khanty, Nenets, Dolgan, Nganasan, Even, Evenk, Evenki, Yakut, Chukchi, Sami, Selkup, and Yupik. Even with watermarks they are pretty informative :)

And if you wonder how to keep your cameras safe in the extreme cold, read their tips. (more…)

The Winter Road Documentary Poster

This is the trailer of Nikolay Evstifeev’s documentary “THE WINTER ROAD. The Land of Fierce…” about the sever work in Siberia’s Yakutia. Here you can see how hard ordinary people’s work can be in the hardest part of Siberia. The documentary won The Best Directing Award at The 17th Saint Anna Film Festival and The Best Cinematography Award at The 29th VGIK Film Festival. Btw, Anton Safronov was a camera man.

The documentary is about Yakutia, the sever land of truckers, gold miners, hunters, and oil industry workers. Extreme conditions are revealed in every capture. Survival at minus 50 degrees Celsius, the road on the frozen river, people’s attitude to nature, wild life… and PEOPLE without false manners and any compromises.

“This movie is very sincere! This is a real big documentary!” said Michael Porechenkov, the chairman of the 29th VGIK Film Festival jury, a famous Russian actor. (more…)

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His name is Andrei. He is the director of sports center in the settlement of Tomtor in the valley of Oymyakon. In winter with its usual extremely cold weather, he likes running from home to his work place in the early morning and… swimming in the Kujdusun brook, that gets never frozen even under -50 degrees Centigrade.

Via Hannes Rada

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This 340-year-old bow was reconstructed from several fragments found near melted patches of ice in the Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories
This 340-year-old bow was reconstructed from several fragments found near melted patches of ice in the Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories. (Tom Andrews)

Melting ice pockets high in Canada’s Arctic mountains are slowly revealing the habits of caribou hunters over thousands of years as they moved from attacking with spears to bows and arrows — and even set traps to snare smaller snacks while they waited for their main prey.

Since 2005, archeologist Tom Andrews and colleagues have been piecing together how hunters in the area adapted over many generations, studying bits of tools grabbed from melting snowy patches in the remote Mackenzie Mountains in western Northwest Territories along the Yukon boundary.

Mountain boreal caribou have long sought refuge on the cooling patches, escaping annoying bugs and warmer temperatures over the summer months. Over generations, humans learned to hunt them there and have left tools buried deep beneath years and years of winter snow.

Now, said Andrews, the ice patches are slowly receding each year, likely due to global warming, revealing perfectly preserved relics of the past. (more…)

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About the video

“I always wondered: what Angel of Uummannaq might look like? Would it be wearing skins and kamiks, like Greenlandic Ken who is fashioned in polar bear pants and a seal parka? Would it be flying above the ice cap or beneath the sea ice? Would it be driving the dogs?.. I staged this little Arctic Ballet on Ice to find the answer.” Chaika1961 [Galya Morrell].

Via Galya Morrell’s blog

Who is Galya Morrell?

Galya Morrell is the NY-based educator, who coordinates the fantastic Uummaannaq Music project in Greenland, Norway. She describes her initiative as “the most unusual Music Festival at the Ice School for Orphaned Eskimo Children in Uummaannaq, Greenland, 590 kilometers north of the Artic Circle.”

Please visit her blog for more information and enjoy what kind of good deeds she and her colleagues do for Eskimo kids. By the way, browse through her beautiful winter pictures. White snow, blue ice, happy kids and wonderful music!

Join also the Uummaannaq Music Facebook fan page.

Celebrating Epiphany in Kalofer, Bulgaria, Jan. 06, 2010. © REUTERS

Jan. 0, 2010 – That’s the way the inhabitants of the little Bulgarian town Kalofer were celebrating Epiphany on the eve of the Orthodox Christmas.

See more pics and the video. (more…)

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Bitter frost hit Moscow. I would like to say that Yakutians only enjoy the current cold weather there, but that’s not true :) Moscovite women seem to be glad as well. It is right time to show their glamour look. Why? Read the feature I digged today.

Deidre Dare, a Moscow News columnist, writes in his story ‘Polar Attraction’:

The absolute best thing about winter in Moscow is wearing fur. (more…)

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