‘We are cut off.’ Tensions with Russia are hobbling Arctic research | Science

In 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin—then the prime minister—visited a remote research station on Samoylov Island, in Siberia’s far north. Beginning in the 1990s, the facility on the Lena River had become a hub for German and Russian collaboration on change in the region’s permafrost. “I see a good example of international cooperation here,” Putin told a group of scientists.

Today, as Arctic researchers prepare for their summer fieldwork, Samoylov station instead highlights the collapse of international cooperation. German scientists have not been to Samoylov since 2021, and a regular stream of permafrost data has dried up. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Germany and other European countries joined the United States and Canada in barring their scientists from collaborating on most projects with Russia, which controls half of the Arctic’s coastline. “We are cut off from this part of the Arctic,” says Anne Morgenstern, a permafrost scientist at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute who coordinated the German presence at Samoylov. “It’s just a tragedy, the whole situation, and everybody hopes that this horrible war ends soon.”

The abrupt rupture is jeopardizing data on climate change, oceanography, and ecology that stretch back decades. On Samoylov Island, sensors that measure carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the warming permafrost are likely still operating, Morgenstern says. But none of the data is flowing to German scientists, and she questions how long the observations can be sustained without spare parts or specialized knowledge from Germany. “We suspect it’s going to be very hard for them to maintain the measurements in the long term,” she says.

Rebuilding severed ties could be slow. Mike Sfraga, chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, described it as a “tectonic shift” at a February conference in Norway. “If the war stopped tomorrow miraculously, things don’t just turn back on.”

Russia continues to pursue Arctic research. It is building a permafrost monitoring network and recently launched the Severny Polyus (North Pole), a research vessel designed for yearslong Arctic deployments, the press office of the St. Petersburg–based Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute said in a statement. Most collaborations with the West “have now been suspended, not on our initiative. Of course, we regret this decision of foreign colleagues, but we continue to work on our own.”

Some Western scientists have found workarounds. Jan van Gils, an ecologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, studies red knots, shorebirds that winter in Africa, then fly 9000 kilometers to Siberia to breed in the summer. He was planning an intensive 4-year field campaign in Russia. Instead, during fieldwork last month in Mauritania, he attached GPS trackers to 80 of the birds in hopes of following them remotely. “Of course the science would even be better if we could study it onsite,” he says.

Agencies are also improvising. For years, Russian vessels had serviced a set of Arctic Ocean sensors, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, that are moored just outside Russian waters. Instead, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy will travel this summer to work on them.

Many scientists are also reorienting their research to more accessible territory in Scandinavia and North America. Morgenstern is working to establish a program on the Mackenzie River in the Canadian Arctic to monitor its water chemistry, including the effects of thawing permafrost. That would take the place of her past work on the Lena River. Bruce Forbes, a geographer at Finland’s University of Lapland, is moving a planned study of the cues that guide reindeer migration across the tundra from Siberia to northern Finland. “I hope I can go back eventually,” Forbes says.

As individual scientists and institutions try to move forward, the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental policymaking body, remains in limbo. Composed of officials from the eight Arctic nations, the council doesn’t directly fund research. But it sets research priorities and coordinates scientific activities. After the invasion, most work was frozen when officials from the seven Western countries refused to meet with their Russian counterpart, even though Russia held the council’s chair.

Norway takes over as chair on 11 May. It may try to get all the nations to agree to ground rules that would allow lower level council committees to resume activities that require Russian involvement, says Jennifer Spence, a Harvard University Arctic policy expert who recently served on the council’s Sustainable Development Working Group. That could include publishing scientific reports and supporting researchers monitoring environmental conditions. “Norway is looking for a meaningful way to keep the work of the Arctic Council alive,” she says.

In the Barents Sea, Norway and Russia continue to exchange data about fisheries they managed together. But it’s just a sliver of the past cooperation on this shared water body, says Ole Arve Misund, executive director of the Norwegian Polar Institute. “This is the only official contact,” he says.

Individual researchers are also struggling to keep lines of communication open. Last year, Norwegian organizers of the largest Arctic science conference, the Arctic Science Summit Week, barred Russians from participating. This year, Austrian organizers of the event allowed Russians to attend as long as they displayed no official affiliation with a Russian institution, such as listing it on a name tag. But only six Russian scientists ended up attending a gathering that drew more than 800 people, and five of those were online.

Vladimir Romanovsky, a Russian-born permafrost expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who carries both U.S. and Russian passports, traveled via Turkey to a conference in Siberia’s Yakutsk region this winter, where a good friend leads a permafrost research program. He says he’s glad he went, in part to encourage young researchers he met. “I will continue to support these relations just for those young people to have some hope.”

Yet he worries that a program he coordinates tracking permafrost temperatures across the Arctic is imperiled. He has had to abandon his practice of sending money to Russian colleagues to help support their work. He says they are reluctant to accept research money from abroad, fearing they will be labeled a “foreign agent”—which could put them at risk of government scrutiny or arrest. “The coming field season is in big question,” he says.

In 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin—then the prime minister—visited a remote research station on Samoylov Island, in Siberia’s far north. Beginning in the 1990s, the facility on the Lena River had become a hub for German and Russian collaboration on change in the region’s permafrost. “I see a good example of international cooperation here,” Putin told a group of scientists.

Today, as Arctic researchers prepare for their summer fieldwork, Samoylov station instead highlights the collapse of international cooperation. German scientists have not been to Samoylov since 2021, and a regular stream of permafrost data has dried up. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Germany and other European countries joined the United States and Canada in barring their scientists from collaborating on most projects with Russia, which controls half of the Arctic’s coastline. “We are cut off from this part of the Arctic,” says Anne Morgenstern, a permafrost scientist at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute who coordinated the German presence at Samoylov. “It’s just a tragedy, the whole situation, and everybody hopes that this horrible war ends soon.”

The abrupt rupture is jeopardizing data on climate change, oceanography, and ecology that stretch back decades. On Samoylov Island, sensors that measure carbon dioxide and methane emissions from the warming permafrost are likely still operating, Morgenstern says. But none of the data is flowing to German scientists, and she questions how long the observations can be sustained without spare parts or specialized knowledge from Germany. “We suspect it’s going to be very hard for them to maintain the measurements in the long term,” she says.

Rebuilding severed ties could be slow. Mike Sfraga, chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, described it as a “tectonic shift” at a February conference in Norway. “If the war stopped tomorrow miraculously, things don’t just turn back on.”

Russia continues to pursue Arctic research. It is building a permafrost monitoring network and recently launched the Severny Polyus (North Pole), a research vessel designed for yearslong Arctic deployments, the press office of the St. Petersburg–based Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute said in a statement. Most collaborations with the West “have now been suspended, not on our initiative. Of course, we regret this decision of foreign colleagues, but we continue to work on our own.”

Some Western scientists have found workarounds. Jan van Gils, an ecologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, studies red knots, shorebirds that winter in Africa, then fly 9000 kilometers to Siberia to breed in the summer. He was planning an intensive 4-year field campaign in Russia. Instead, during fieldwork last month in Mauritania, he attached GPS trackers to 80 of the birds in hopes of following them remotely. “Of course the science would even be better if we could study it onsite,” he says.

Agencies are also improvising. For years, Russian vessels had serviced a set of Arctic Ocean sensors, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, that are moored just outside Russian waters. Instead, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy will travel this summer to work on them.

Many scientists are also reorienting their research to more accessible territory in Scandinavia and North America. Morgenstern is working to establish a program on the Mackenzie River in the Canadian Arctic to monitor its water chemistry, including the effects of thawing permafrost. That would take the place of her past work on the Lena River. Bruce Forbes, a geographer at Finland’s University of Lapland, is moving a planned study of the cues that guide reindeer migration across the tundra from Siberia to northern Finland. “I hope I can go back eventually,” Forbes says.

As individual scientists and institutions try to move forward, the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental policymaking body, remains in limbo. Composed of officials from the eight Arctic nations, the council doesn’t directly fund research. But it sets research priorities and coordinates scientific activities. After the invasion, most work was frozen when officials from the seven Western countries refused to meet with their Russian counterpart, even though Russia held the council’s chair.

Norway takes over as chair on 11 May. It may try to get all the nations to agree to ground rules that would allow lower level council committees to resume activities that require Russian involvement, says Jennifer Spence, a Harvard University Arctic policy expert who recently served on the council’s Sustainable Development Working Group. That could include publishing scientific reports and supporting researchers monitoring environmental conditions. “Norway is looking for a meaningful way to keep the work of the Arctic Council alive,” she says.

In the Barents Sea, Norway and Russia continue to exchange data about fisheries they managed together. But it’s just a sliver of the past cooperation on this shared water body, says Ole Arve Misund, executive director of the Norwegian Polar Institute. “This is the only official contact,” he says.

Individual researchers are also struggling to keep lines of communication open. Last year, Norwegian organizers of the largest Arctic science conference, the Arctic Science Summit Week, barred Russians from participating. This year, Austrian organizers of the event allowed Russians to attend as long as they displayed no official affiliation with a Russian institution, such as listing it on a name tag. But only six Russian scientists ended up attending a gathering that drew more than 800 people, and five of those were online.

Vladimir Romanovsky, a Russian-born permafrost expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who carries both U.S. and Russian passports, traveled via Turkey to a conference in Siberia’s Yakutsk region this winter, where a good friend leads a permafrost research program. He says he’s glad he went, in part to encourage young researchers he met. “I will continue to support these relations just for those young people to have some hope.”

Yet he worries that a program he coordinates tracking permafrost temperatures across the Arctic is imperiled. He has had to abandon his practice of sending money to Russian colleagues to help support their work. He says they are reluctant to accept research money from abroad, fearing they will be labeled a “foreign agent”—which could put them at risk of government scrutiny or arrest. “The coming field season is in big question,” he says.