Former Cold War foes team up to probe warming seas

By Jeffrey Jones

ABOARD THE PROFESSOR KHROMOV (Reuters) - Rebecca Woodgate had no time for idle chat as her oceanography team scurried on the deck of their research ship during a recent mission in the Bering Strait, a crucial region for studying the impact of global warming.

Woodgate, of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center, had much to do in a short time, pinpointing undersea locations of eight data-gathering moorings on the U.S. and Russian sides of the strait, electronically coaxing them to the surface and sinking new ones that will be anchored for a year.

It's exacting work that must be done quickly for readings to be useful to her and her colleagues on a joint U.S.-Russian expedition to gauge the impact of climate change on the far north waters between the former Cold War foes.

When an onlooker wandered too close to the action during a deployment in choppy seas off the Siberian coast, the British-born scientist hastily handed him used packaging from a piece of gear and said, "Here -- do something with this."

Resembling strings of beach balls, the moorings provide precision measurements of currents, temperature and salt content. Some even record whale sounds for the mission, called RUSALCA, or Russian-American Long-term Census of the Arctic.

RUSALCA, which in Russian folklore is the name of a female water nymph, has uncovered growing evidence of warming and its effects where the Pacific and Arctic oceans meet.

Organized by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Russian Academy of Sciences, it does so while balancing the objectives of two countries with growing interest in securing their resource-rich Arctic territories as open water make them more accessible.

The area is a crucial piece of the climate change puzzle.