Today's Events 

The House will consider several non-Arctic provisions.  The Senate may consider energy tax and postal service legislation.

Media

The Week at a Glance: March 26-30, 2012. The House will consider a short-term extension of surface transportation programs. Later in the week, the House will consider its FY 2013 budget resolution. The Senate will consider energy tax breaks and a postal service overhaul. Congressional Quarterly

Obama Tells Russia He'll Have 'More Flexibility' After the Election. President Obama privately told Russia he will have "more flexibility" to deal with missile defense after the election in a conversation that was picked up Monday by live microphones. Speaking to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ahead of a global nuclear security summit in South Korea, Obama asked for "space" and "time" to deal with the missile defense issue.  "Yeah. I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you," Medvedev said. The Hill 

Northern Lights: First-Ever Measurement of Auroral Turbulence Using a Nanosatellite Radar Receiver. Researchers from SRI International and the University of Michigan have taken the first-ever measurement of naturally occurring auroral turbulence recorded using a nanosatellite radar receiver. Science Daily

NRL Scientists Optimize Arctic Sea Ice Data Products. Scientists from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Geosciences Division are assisting NASA, the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and the European Space Agency (ESA) in developing more accurate monitoring and sustainable forecasting of Arctic sea ice. Recent dramatic changes in the characteristics of the Arctic sea ice cover have sparked interest and concern from a wide range of disciplines. The demand for an improved ability to monitor and forecast changes in sea ice cover is driven by diverse and varying priorities to include socioeconomics, maritime safety and security, and resource management, as well as basic research science. Satellites provide an important and cost effective platform for instruments designed to monitor basin-wide changes in the volume of ice cover and snow pack depths. The primary focus of NRL and NASA is to collect data to aid in the validation and calibration of these data sets to further optimize instrument suites and the development of predictive sea ice models. Market Watch 

Citing Near-Zero Demand, Airline Ground High Arctic Service: Canadian North Sells Only Three Passenger Bookings. After selling only three passenger bookings, the Canadian North airline will cancel a trial run through the High Arctic that would have operated April 6 to April 14 in competition with First Air. "We are very sorry to report that due to an underwhelming response to our offering, we have decided not to operate these flights," Tracy Medve, president of Canadian North, said March 22 in an email to Tununiq MLA Joe Enook, Amittuq MLA Louis Tapardjuk and Quttiktuq MLA Ron Elliot. Until the 1990s, Resolute Bay enjoyed a jet service leveraged by the Polaris lead-zinc mine at Little Cornwallis Island. Arctic Bay benefitted from a jet service used to fly workers and supplies in and out of the Nanisivik mine. Nunatsiaq Online

Captivity Could Help Polar Bears Survive Global Warming Assault, Some Zoos Say. Polar bears are ideally suited to life in the Arctic: Their hair is without pigment, blending in with the snow; their heavy, strongly curved claws allow them to clamber over blocks of ice and snow and grip their prey securely; and their rough pads keep them from slipping. The one thing they cannot survive is the disintegration of the ice. They range across the sea ice far from shore to hunt fatty seals, whose blubber sustains them. Heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuel are making the Arctic warm twice as fast as lower latitudes, and Arctic summer sea ice could disappear by 2030, according to climate models. Washington Post

Arctic Politics: Cosy Amid the Thaw: The Arctic Council Works Well-because of the region's riches. It was once a backwater, both bureaucratically and literally. Not any more. "The Arctic is hot," says Gustaf Lind, the Swedish ambassador who will chair the Arctic Council meeting in Stockholm on March 28th-29th. The other members are America, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Russia, plus six non-voting representatives of indigenous Arctic peoples such as Sami and Inuit. The top of the world is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of it: water in the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Norway's Svalbard archipelago, is roughly 3.5°C warmer than a century ago. When dark, absorptive seawater replaces bright, reflective ice, it retains more heat. That speeds global warming. Largely as a result, the Arctic now has less sea-ice, for the time of year, than for millennia. Most scientists expect the Arctic Ocean to begin to be largely ice-free in summer sometime between 2020 and 2050. The Economist

Can Polar Bears Put Climate Change Back on the Agenda. For various reasons, the climate crisis has disappeared from the political dialogue. This is unlikely to change in 2012, unless polar bears put it back on the agenda. Polar bears are running out of places to live due to climate change, which is warming their habitat in the Arctic - as it is in the other cold region where they don't live: the Antarctic.  In fact, this warming is occurring even more dramatically than even some of the most dire projections, and now there is a discussion about whether we can even preserve the species. Washington Post

Arctic Tourism Doubles. The national park "Russian Arctic," located on the northern parts of Novaya Zemlya and on the islands of Franz-Josef Land, will be receiving 14 cruise vessels this year, twice as many as in its opening season in 2011. Barents Observer

Arctic Council Meets in Sweden, Climate Change Expected to be Hot Topic. Officials from the US, Canada, Norway, Iceland, Russia, Finland and Denmark will be in Stockholm to talk about the Arctic this week. When Sweden took over the Arctic Council's chairmanship a year ago, expectations were high that environmental issues would get special attention. Partly because Sweden said they would. And partly because the country has no major vested interests -- no Arctic coastline and no claim to the region's potentially huge oil and gas reserves. So has the last year lived up to expectations? Alaska Dispatch

It Squiggles! Scientists Discover New Species in Alaska. Scientists have discovered a new variety of water flea in a roadside pond on the Seward Peninsula outside of Nome, suggesting that life in the Alaskan Arctic may be far ecologically mysterious than previously thought. This tiny crustacean - now named Eurycercus beringi - was identified during a multi-year, trans-continental investigation of water fleas that squiggle through small lakes across Alaska, Siberia and other Northern Hemisphere locales. The creatures fill a niche near the bottom of the freshwater food chain, providing summer food for birds while munching on even smaller life that erupts during the intense, brief Arctic summer. Alaska Dispatch

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