Galya Morrell has shared the link to the video “CLIP” summarizing the new initiative of Uummannaq Polar Institute named CLIP (“Cleaner Life Ice Project“).

It is UPI’s contribution to the Earth Day – a day on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth’s natural environment. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year on April 22nd.

Learn more about the CLIP project at the Uummannaq Music/Uummannaq Polar Institute website with detailed description of the happening:

http://uummannaqmusic.com/2012/04/clip/

Happy Earth Day, my friends!

Proud to announce that our Cold United group on Flickr is becoming popular! We’ve got 684 members and 8,899 cold winter photographs. Cool! Feel free to join us.

Meanwhile, enjoy Cold United members’ pretty chilly portraits. All pics are clickable.

Flagstaff Eskimo. By Shanks, Flickr.

29 Eric Lon at Stok Kangri, October 2011. By Eric Lon, Flickr.

Snow heart in Yakutia, Siberia. By Egor Fedorov, Flickr.

Two sisters in the fish market in Yakutsk, Yakutia, Siberia. By Bernard Grua, Flickr.

Standing on a frozen lake. By LiamCH, Flickr.

With All Of My Heart. By John M. Kennedy, Flickr.

By Jessica Joy Photography, Flickr.

Indeed, winter has already started. For instance, my city of Yakutsk has -24C right now. Not extremely yet, but it’s good time to shart sharing the cold and its beauty

Mikael Stranberg on the Termo Original promo poster

This is really great what Mikael Stranberg, a famous Swedish explorer, did. He allowed me to show his travel winter photographs on the Cold United weblog. Awesome!

Who is Mikael Strandberg?

Actually, no need to say who Mikael Strandberg is, but I will be happy to introduce him.

He is a member of The Royal Geographical Society, Explorers Club, The Long Riders Guild, and Travellers Club.

He is the man who did Expedition: Siberia 2004 across Kolyma in Yakutia.

It’s him, who features the world’s major explorers on his personal blog www.mikaelstrandberg.com

It’s, certainly, Mikael, who officially does promo for Termo Original.

Back to the current post. Hereby, we present Mikael’s cold photographs taken at three different places, precisely in Kolyma (Yakutia/Siberia), Iceland and Argentina. Enjoy fantastic winter pictures!

Kolyma in the Siberian region of Yakutia

Chukchi reindeer herder yura in Kolyma, Yakutia, Siberia

A Yakut horseman in Srednekolymsk, Yakutia, Siberia

Yakut horseman near Srednekolymsk, Kolyma, Yakutia, Siberia

Mystique reindeer in Srednekolymsk, Yakutia, Siberia

Gulag crosses in Kolyma, Yakutia, Siberia

Fishermen near Zyranka in Kolyma, Yakutia, Siberia

Iceland

A mountain in Iceland

Light setting in Iceland

Frozen waterfalls in Iceland

Geysers in Iceland

A sculpture in Reykjavik, Iceland

South Argentina and icebergs

Passing by the iceberg in Argentina

In front of ice in Perito Moreno, Argentina

Lago Grey and an iceberg in Argentina

What a great video! This is the preview of the BBC documentary “Arctic with Bruce Parry.” It’s coming up soon on BBC 1. Don’t miss this unique chance and spectacular insight into the life of Uummannaq, Greenland. Check the schedule on BBC.

Follow also the amazing project Uummannaq Music run by Galya Morrell and Joel Spiegelman in Uummannaq. All project’s news updates might be found on its Facebook page as well.

This post is dedicated to my friends in Uummannaq. Greetings from the Siberian city of Yakutsk!

It was said to hear from Ole Jorgen about the absence of sea ice and snow in your area this winter. Hope it would be possible to backward nature processes

Hello, friends!

Just remembered all cold regions, apart from Russia, are going to celebrate Christmas pretty soon! Here are my wishes to you.

Don’t complain about the cold weather, if it happened on your side. Look at my X-mas iPhone video greeting (a sort of) done, while I was standing on the crossroad in front of Yakutsk City Hall this morning. The outdoor temperature was -44C. Presume it is much colder than yours

Take care! Have fun! Take your time to find the best gifts in stores! Enjoy the X-mas fever!

See also pics…

Morning photographs:

Pictures taken at midday:

Hannes Rada and his frozen eyelashes in Oymyakon, Eastern Siberia, Russia

Hannes Rada, an Austrian friend of mine, has a hobby. A few times a year he travels, as he says, to off-beaten places. He visits so-called authentic areas that are not yet spoiled by tourists and where not so many travelers dare or are able to go. His list of such visited places are pretty long. It would be easy to say that he has been to all continents.

He is also a great photographer. All his travel pictures might be seen on his personal website OffTheBeatenTrack.at.

Moreover, he is a clever cameraman. This time I would like to present videos from his last destinations, the North Pole and the world’s coldest inhabited village of Oymyakon located in Russia’s Eastern Siberia. Enjoy the North!

Video slideshow of the trip to the North Pole on Russia’s Yamal nuclear icebreaker:

Using a frozen banana as a hammer at -52C in Oymyakon, Yakutia/Russia:

By the way, Yakutia is the short name for the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the biggest & coldest region in Russia’s Siberia. My honor to have been born and live in such a beautiful land! That’s where Oymyakon is located. More region info at eYakutia.com.

By the way 2, It was Hannes Rada, who made the fantastic video of a Siberian guy’s Swimming in Yakutia at minus 52 degrees in Oymyakon’s never frozen Kujdusun River.

In this Oct. 23, 2010 photo, Russian scientist Sergey Zimov walks on a Siberian lake near the town of Chersky, Russia, where methane bubbles are trapped under the ice. Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the last few decades, as the Earth has gradually warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane _ a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide _ at a perilous rate. Photo by AP Photo/Arthur Max.

Below is another news story about Sergey Zimov‘s research results.

Who is Sergey Zimov? He is well-known scientiest in my region, the director of the Northeast Science Station in Chersky (see on the map) in the Russian Republic of Sakha in northeastern Siberia.

Mr. Zimov is the most cited by international media. When you hear anything about climate changes’ affects on Siberia’s Arctic, Pleistocene ecosystem in the northern steppes as well as the re-establishment of a grassland ecosystem known as Pleistocene Park in the way of its existence during the Pleistocene period, just know that the major resource of all these newsbreaking stories is Sergey Zimov, a Russian scientiest in the Northeastern Siberia.

This time, precisely yesterday, his scientific computation was featured in Associated Press’ Leaking Siberian ice raises a tricky climate issue.

Mr. Zimov gave Arthur Max, an AP reporter, evidences to some scientists’ beliefs of thawing permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change as 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, might be a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.

Arthur Max’s story:

CHERSKY, Russia – The Russian scientist shuffles across the frozen lake, scuffing aside ankle-deep snow until he finds a cluster of bubbles trapped under the ice. With a cigarette lighter in one hand and a knife in the other, he lances the ice like a blister. Methane whooshes out and bursts into a thin blue flame.

Gas locked inside Siberia’s frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.

Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.

“Here, total carbon storage is like all the rain forests of our planet put together,” says the scientist, Sergey Zimov — “here” being the endless sweep of snow and ice stretching toward Siberia’s gray horizon, as seen from Zimov’s research facility nearly 350 kilometers (220 miles) above the Arctic Circle.

Climate change moves back to center-stage on Nov. 29 when governments meet in Cancun, Mexico, to try again to thrash out a course of counteractions. But U.N. officials hold out no hope the two weeks of talks will lead to a legally binding accord governing carbon emissions, seen is the key to averting what is feared might be a dramatic change in climate this century.

Most climate scientists, with a few dissenters, say human activities — the stuff of daily life like driving cars, producing electricity or raising cattle — is overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that trap heat, causing a warming effect.

But global warming is amplified in the polar regions. What feels like a modest temperature rise is enough to induce Greenland glaciers to retreat, Arctic sea ice to thin and contract in summer, and permafrost to thaw faster, both on land and under the seabed.

Yet awareness of methane leaks from permafrost is so new that it was not even mentioned in the seminal 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species.

“In my view, methane is a serious sleeper out there that can pull us over the hump,” said Robert Corell, an eminent U.S. climate change researcher and Arctic specialist. Corell, speaking by telephone from a conference in Miami, said he and other U.S. scientists are pushing Washington to deploy satellites to gather more information on methane leaks.

The lack of data over a long period of time casts uncertainty over the extent of the threat. An article last August in the journal Science quoted several experts as saying it’s too early to predict whether Arctic methane will be the tipping point.

“Arctic Armageddon Needs More Science, Less Hype,” was its headline.

Studies indicate that cold-country dynamics on climate change are complex. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, a scientific body set up by the eight Arctic rim countries, says overall the Arctic is absorbing more carbon dioxide than it releases.

“Methane is a different story,” said its 2009 report. The Arctic is responsible for up to 9 percent of global methane emissions. Other methane sources include landfills, livestock and fossil fuel production.

Katey Walter Anthony, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has been measuring methane seeps in Arctic lakes in Alaska, Canada and Russia, starting here around Chersky 10 years ago.

She was stunned to see how much methane was leaking from holes in the sediment at the bottom of one of the first lakes she visited. “On some days it looked like the lake was boiling,” she said. Returning each year, she noticed this and other lakes doubling in size as warm water ate into the frozen banks.

“The edges of the lake look like someone eating a cookie. The permafrost gets digested in the guts of the lake and burps out as methane,” she said in an interview in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, en route to a field trip in Greenland and Scandinavia.

More than 50 billion tons could be unleashed from Siberian lakes alone, more than 10 times the amount now in the atmosphere, she said.

But the rate of defrosting is hard to assess with the data at hand.

“If permafrost were to thaw suddenly, in a flash, it would put a tremendous amount of carbon in the atmosphere. We would feel temperatures warming across the globe. And that would be a big deal,” she said. But it may not happen so quickly. “Depending on how slow permafrost thaws, its effect on temperature across the globe will be different,” she said.

Permafrost is defined as ground that has stayed below freezing for more than two consecutive summers. In fact, most of Siberia and the rest of the Arctic, covering one-fifth of the Earth’s land surface, have been frozen for millennia.

During the summer, the ground can defrost to a depth of several feet, turning to sludge and sometimes blossoming into vast fields of grass and wildflowers. Below that thin layer, however, the ground remains frozen, sometimes encased in ice dozens or even hundreds of meters (yards) thick.

As the Earth warms, the summer thaw bites a bit deeper, awakening ice-age microbes that attack organic matter — vegetation and animal remains — buried where oxygen cannot reach, producing methane that gurgles to the surface and into the air.

The newly released methane adds to the greenhouse effect, trapping yet more heat which deepens the next thaw, in a spiraling cycle of increasing warmth.

Curbing man-made methane emissions could slow this process, said Walter Anthony.

“We have an incentive to reduce our fossil fuel emissions. By doing so, we can reduce the warming that’s occurring in the Arctic and potentially put some brakes on permafrost thaw,” she said.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in its 2010 Arctic Report Card issued last month, said the average temperature of the permafrost has been rising for decades, but noted “a significant acceleration” in the last five years at many spots on the Arctic coast.

One of those spots would be Chersky, an isolated town on the bank of the Kolyma River at the mouth of the East Siberia Sea.

The ground in this remote corner of the world, 6,600 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow, has warmed about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) in the last five years, to about -5 C (23 F?) today, says Zimov, director of the internationally funded Northeast Science Station, which is about three kilometers (2 miles) from town.

The warming is causing the landscape to buckle under his feet.

“I live here more than 30 years. … There are many (dirt) roads in our region which I used or built myself, but now I can’t use anymore. Now they look like canyons,” he says.

Buildings, too, collapse. The school in Chersky, a Soviet-era structure with a tall bronze statue of Karl Marx on its doorstep, was abandoned several years ago when the walls began to crack as the foundations gave way.

The northern Siberian soil, called yedoma, covers 1.8 million square kilometers (700,000 sq. miles) and is particularly unstable. Below the surface are vertical wedges of ice, as if 15-story-high icicles had been hammered into the soft ground, rich in decaying vegetation, over thousands of years.

As the air warms, the tops of the wedges melt and create depressions in the land. Water either forms a lake or runs off to lower ground, creating a series of steep hillocks and gullies. During summer, lakeside soil may erode and tumble into the water, settling on the bottom where bacteria eat it and cough up yet more methane.

The process takes a long time, but Zimov has done a simulation by bulldozing trees and scraping off moss and surface soil from 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of former larch forest, rendering it as if it had been leveled by fire.

Seven years later the previously flat terrain is carved up with crevices 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 meters) deep, creating a snowy badlands.

Gazing across a white river to the apartment blocks on a distant hill, Zimov said, “In another 30 years all of Chersky will look like this.”

The Best of Russia is the online photo contest. People are asked to submit their best photographs and show their own Russia. Eventually all collected pictures show the country as it is seen by ordinary citizens, and what they see is the best.

Enjoy more winter photographs.

In the city of Kolomna. By Tatiana Pemova.

Our Russian winter. By Alexander Fleming.

Snow-covered. The village of Lubenkino. By Natalia Molotkova.

St Petersburg. By Alexander Firsov.

With birdth. By Evgeniy Dimitraidi.

In the winter light. By Vladimir Kirillov.

Frost and the Sun. By Igor Medved.

Doves in St Petersburg. By Alexander Berezhnoi.

The village of Petropavlovka. By Sergei Kuzmin.

Via The Best of Russia.

Dear fans of the coldest Siberian region of Yakutia, especially Swedish friends!

If by any chance you are or will be in the city of Orsa, Sweden, please, visit Yegor Makarov’s photo exhibition dedicated to people of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and its culture. The event will last till November 22, 2010. Further, please find more information and photographs.

About the event in short:

On the 22nd of June we had the honor of opening an exciting photo exhibition in our Art hall in Carnivore Center Gronklitt, Orsa, Sweden: Native People of Sakha.

Photographer Yegor Makrov from Yakutia presents in 39 images (50×70 cm) and 32 postcards (15×21) a fascinating wilderness, native groups, handicraft, traditions – from the ”Amazonas of north” – Yakutia.

The exhibition will after the period in Gronklitt continue on a world tour to other museums and art halls.

More info and photos at eYakutia.com – English Yakutia.

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!”

Most of all, I am proud that Yakutsk, my town, was mentioned in the section “Earth’s Coldest Places.” It is in the list together with Antarctica and Greenland! The latter I see only in books as well as on channels like Discovery and National Geographic.

Here’s another page that knocked me down. My name is the first in the line, before such weather photo archive powerhouses like NASA, European Space Agency, Bureau of Meteorology, and etc., and etc. Fantastic! This is a real honor for me.

Mr. McLaine, I thank you so much for giving such a rare opportunity and huge promotion. Just trying to imagine, what those guys of NASA & ESA would say, “Who the hell is that Bolot?” Just a guy in Siberia’s Yakutia, who loves taking pictures of cold!

On the other hand, I am very glad that my region promotion was done in such an extraordinary, free way! Awesome!