#bering strait

A satellite view of the Bering Strait, which separates northeastern Russia and Alaska, in summer. Credit...NASA

Excerpt:

Brightening clouds. Refreezing the Arctic. Floating a giant parasol in outer space. To the ranks of out-there ideas for countering climate change, two Dutch scientists have added this: building a 50-mile-long dam across the Bering Strait, the shallow waterway that separates Russia and Alaska.

In a study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances, the researchers show that, under certain conditions, such a dam could prevent a collapse of a network of ocean currents, known as the AMOC, that plays a central role in regulating Earth’s climate.

The AMOC (pronounced AY-mock) has weakened in recent decades, and a growing body of evidence suggests human-caused warming could someday cause it to shut down or slow significantly, with grave effects on the weather on multiple continents.

The new study is a “proof of concept,” not an action plan, one of its authors, Jelle Soons, a doctoral candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said. More research is needed to confirm that such a dam would work as intended and to assess its feasibility and environmental side effects, Mr. Soons said.

Still, he said, humanity could someday be forced to take drastic measures to avert the worst effects of global warming. While cutting carbon emissions is still the best way to prevent an AMOC collapse, his findings show that “in a worst-case scenario,” a Bering Strait dam could be an option, Mr. Soons said.

The AMOC, or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is part of a giant loop of water that snakes through the world’s oceans. It carries warm, salty water from the tropical Atlantic up past the Eastern Seaboard and toward Europe. There, the water releases its heat into the air and helps moderate the weather in Britain and the Nordic countries. In the process, the water cools, sinks and heads back south, where it goes on to influence rainfall patterns in Africa, South America and beyond.

Now, though, warming from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is disrupting this vast oceanic conveyor belt. As temperatures rise, the Arctic gets rainier and Greenland’s ice sheet melts, more fresh water is pouring into the North Atlantic, making its surface less salty. That prevents the water of the AMOC from sinking at the loop’s northern end, which in turn causes it to draw less warm water northward from the tropics.

The groupings are not based on trying to ensure equal demographics in each, but by proximity to and impact of the Bering Strait Land Bridge theory or other relation to prehistoric colonization of the Americas.

I wasn't sure how to group Oceania and the Polynesian/Micronesian/Melanesian folks given the overall histories, so you get your own bunch. I can't remember if those theories about Polynesians reaching the Americas for trade on occasion, prior to written records, are legitimate/supported or just a thing I heard once. Either way, I think that history of 'discovering unpopulated lands by heading east from large landmasses' is similar enough that maybe it comes up for overlapping histories? IDK! You get your own buttons.

Also wasn't sure if it would make sense to include SEAsia with East Asia or lump it in with the rest, buuuut I think upon reviewing the maps that it looks like the Strait is a lot less geographically/politically related to most of East Asia than I thought, so there's less of a difference between EAsia and SEAsia than I thought, enough that marking them out separately from Russia but not each other probably works.

I initially wrote out a less America-Specific description of primary/secondary or elementary/middle/high but honestly? It took up too much space. Appropriate disambiguation made the title so long that people wouldn't have read it. So. You get K-12 or equivalent.

I'm including Mexico with Central America for two reasons: 1. Most Mexicans I've seen talking on the topic recently, at least on tumblr, prefer to be divided in that direction for cultural reasons. 2. Geographically much more distant from the Bering Strait than its northern neighbors.

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There is something poignant to me about the journeys of HMS Herald to the Bering Strait in search of the lost Franklin Expedition—she made three voyages in 1848, 1849, and 1850 before resuming a six-year circumnavigation of the world, an accomplishment that produced several volumes from the ship's naturalist.

Herald was the first ship of Franklin Expedition lieutenant Henry TD Le Vesconte, who joined her as a first-class volunteer in 1829 when he was 15 years old. Her captain at the time was George Berkeley Maxwell, and young Mr. Le Vesconte apparently had such a good relationship with his first captain that he wrote to his father in 1836 about sending letters to "Capt. Maxwell whom I have not heard from since I joined Endymion before doing so I wrote but he was then in Italy. [...] I wanted Captain M to try to get me home that I might pass the College and get appointed to some desirable ship." (Henry TD Le Vesconte to father, Aug 24 1836)

There was a belief among Henry TD Le Vesconte's family that he "was chosen for Franklin's Arctic Expedition because of his knowledge of the Bering Strait." (See "La famille Le Vesconte" by Jean Arthur in the Société Jersiaise 1974 annual bulletin). It has puzzled me that they would think that, when Henry wasn't anywhere near the Bering Strait in his naval career—but Herald was. Did family lore mix with knowledge of the activities of Henry's first ship?

Herald survived into the age of photography, and there is an 1857 albumen print of her (State Library of New South Wales collection).