Over on the Desafio Extremo website, they’re hosting a poll, where viewers can vote for their favorite trip from the current season. Personally, we’re partial to one episode in particular. But really, can you blame us?

In the video below (Jesús y María al final logran encontrarse con los narvales) Jesús and Maria encounter a narwhal at last. There’s gorgeous underwater footage leading up to it, but, if you’re too impatient, skip to 2:30 to see the whale!

Vote Arctic! Vote Often!

Larsen has already completed his expedition to the South Pole, and he’s currently headed north from Ellesmere Island. He’s been tweeting from the ice, and blogging as well, and he’s got some great observations that capture some wonderful moments on the ice. Here’s a piece of an entry from a few days ago:

The sunsets have been incredible. The sun is so low on the horizon that we can see the sun’s final crimson sliver for nearly 15 minutes. After that, sunset lingers so long that we are hesitant to look away for fear of missing some bit of amazingness. Red fades into orange, yellow then blue.

Expeditions are made up of a millions small moments like that, from looking in the eyes of a beluga as it sings beneath the ice to hearing the soft breath of a narwhal as it surfaces beneath a midnight sun. One of the things that makes the Arctic so amazing, so precious, is that no two expeditions — no two moments on the ice — are ever the same.

(Want to experience your own small moment on the sea ice? Check out our Adventure Travel page for our latest trip information!)

Every year, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies analyzes data on global temperatures. This past year was one of the warmest on record, tying for second place, while the decade between 2000 -2009 was found to be the warmest on record.

NASA has posted a collection of articles, photographs, and videos exploring what climate change means for the earth, including the video above. Check the link for more images of climate change as seen from space, answers to common misconceptions about climate change, and other resources on the changes taking place across the globe.

Visit our Flickr page for more images, including our full array of airboat photos.

Image via CBC

Now that the Olympic Winter Games have ended, it’s time for the Arctic Winter Games, where youths from indigenous communities throughout the circumpolar regions gather to compete.

Like the Vancouver Olympics, Winter Games organizers in Grande Prairie have had to contend with unseasonably warm weather this year, as well as the difficulties inherent in being the southernmost community to ever host the games. Difficulties which seem to include a certain amount of ribbing from the visiting teams:

“Theres things called trees that we’re not used to, and that’s going to be a little bit of a surprise to our dogs,” said John Hickes, a dog-mushing coach from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut

The theme of this year’s event is the Hero’s Journey, and Sunday’s opening ceremony drew upon the stories and traditions of various northern communities.

Good luck to all the athletes!

via CBC News – Edmonton – Arctic Winter Games open in Alberta.

In this week’s Guardian, John Crace looks into the training Daniels and her fellow expedition members Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton endure before they can tackle the pole. Crace paints a vivid picture:

Six am on a sub-zero morning in Devon. A five-mile run in the dark, ending in a couple of hill sprints. Breakfast. Circuit training in the barn; beyond any pain threshold to physical exhaustion. Lunch. Ninety minutes dragging weighted tyres up and down a 1:6 hill. The only upside is that the mud has frozen over. It’s mindless, repetitive, punishing effort, not improved by an ex-marine shouting in your ear. Tea. A three-mile run, followed by more circuits. Die

The article also creates a nuanced and detailed portrait of the explorers. One thing that struck me while I was reading, I was struck by how normal — and simultaneously how extraordinary — the explorers are. Everyday people, not superhuman, not Olympic athletes, aging (45 now, for God’s sake,” as Daniels readily admits), they tackle the pole, year after year, gathering data and working to mitigate climate change. Everyday heroes, exploring the Arctic.

Trial by ice – what it takes to be an Arctic explorer | Environment | The Guardian.

Well, the footage from that expedition — part of the series Desafio Extremo, or Extreme Challenge — is now online. And it’s pretty spectacular, capturing both the beauty and danger of diving beneath the Arctic ice.

Check out the videos online here, and if you read Spanish (or feel like cheating, as I did, with a free online translator) you can read Jesús Calleja’s account of the adventure on his blog, which really captures the adrenaline of piloting a snowmobile across the sea ice, as well as the combination of on-the-ice flexibility and strong infrastructure needed to pull off a filming expedition to the Arctic!

Here’s a teaser for the show. Visit the Desafino Extremo site for more photos and footage of the adventure!

Polar Bears: Younger than they look

DNA from the jawbone, which was discovered in Svalbard by researcher Olafur Ingolfsson of the University of Iceland in 2004, shows that polar bears are a relatively young species, having split from brown bears approximately 150,000 years ago and evolved rapidly during the climate changes that took place during the late Pleistocene. As Ingolfsson notes, in an email quoted on the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog,

I think our find shows that polar bears have been around for a while, and they probably have survived situations in the past where the Arctic was warmer and there was less seasonal sea ice than today. . .

I want to stress that we should be concerned about the polar bears’ future. There are other risks out there, mainly from chemical pollution of the Arctic (heavy metals, pcbs, etc). Also, increased traffic (oil tankers) when/if ship lanes open up across the Arctic Ocean could constitute a major threat.

Polar bear fossils are rare, as the animals spend most of their lives on the sea ice, which means that their remains rarely end up on land. The DNA taken from the jawbone gives researchers a rare glimpse into the lives of ancient polar bears. It is also the oldest mitochondrial sample from a mammal sequenced to date.

Read more:

Science Daily: Ancient DNA from rare fossil reveals that polar bears evolved recently and adapted quickly

Arctic Update: Resilient Bears, Shrinking Ice — Dot Earth Blog, NY Times.com

Unis: Oldest remains of a polar bear ever discovered.

Tom with the harpoon he found on a dive last year.

Divers beneath the ice.

A team prepares to dive.

Visit our Flickr page for photos of ice diving, dog sledding, ballooning and more. And if you’d like to read about how Tom found the harpoon in the top photo, that’s #8 on his Top Ten Floe Edge Moments from 2009!

Dr. Law was instrumental in the establishment of an Australian presence in Antarctica, serving as director of Australia’s Antarctic Division from 1949 until 1966, and leading the expeditions that established Australia’s first research stations on the continent.

Read More: Australian Antarctic pioneer dies at 97 – Australian Antarctic Division.