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Please join the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Julia Lajos, Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of History.
The arctic climate is currently changing faster than the climate of the planet; this phenomenon is known as ‘Arctic amplification.’ However, even before the beginning of the anthropogenic global climate change, the Arctic climate was quite changeable. The observations of the rapid warming of the Arctic caused by natural factors in the 1920s-1940s led scientists to acknowledge the possibility of short-term changes of the climate in general. Warming of the Arctic in that period was mostly pronounced in its part adjacent to the North Atlantic Ocean, including the Barents and the White Seas in Russia. Russian scientists along with Scandinavian ones played a crucial role in the observation and analysis of this process. This talk, on the one hand, illustrates climate as a driver for changes in abundance and migrations patterns of fish species important for the ecosystems of these seas and for the economy. On the other hand, the talk focuses on Russian scientists and their international networks, through which new knowledge on the changes of Arctic climate circulated. In addition, the legacy of this period for the Soviet / Russian climate science is discussed.
