A mobile home washed away in severe flooding after Storm Hans hit Hemsedal, Norway, on Tuesday, 8 August. The extreme weather has battered parts of Scandinavia and the Baltics for several days. Rivers have overflown, roads have been damaged and people have been injured by falling branches.
“Last year we got several reports from tourists and scientists that they saw around six walruses dead here on the west side of Svalbard. Unfortunately, we couldn’t sample them as the dead walruses drifted away by the time we got to the place. But it’s not normal to get so many reported dead walruses in such a small area," said Christian Lydersen, senior scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute. Now samples (collected by a Station Manager in July 2023) have tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Reports are coming in about hundreds of dead birds from Hammerfest in the west to Murmansk in the east. A zone with a radius of five kilometers is closed and guards are in place round-the-clock.
Floodwaters in Tomsk region threatens to submerge the river banks in Seversk where highly radioactive liquid waste from the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program for decades were injected into two unprotected underground reservoirs.
This crab from the Pacific Ocean was once introduced into the Barents waters of the Soviet Union in Arctic Russia. Since then the invasive species has spread to Norway’s Barents Sea and a multi-million dollar industry has sprung up around it. In 2023 Norway exported 2,500 tons of king crab worth 1,2 billion kroner (€100 million).
The isotope measured in air in Tromsø for now is unknown. The isotope comes from a nuclear reactor, and is used in medial diagnostic.
Longyearbyen airport had an average temperature of 6.1°C, which is 2.5°C above normal. Global air and sea surface temperatures were also at record levels.
Loaded with up to 38,000 tons of oil, the 245 meter long tanker Shturman Skuratov makes this year's first transit shipment on the Northern Sea Route. Despite major concentrations of sea-ice, the tanker sails without icebreaker assistance.
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