January 29, 2026 | In Policy Magazine, Vincent Rigby, writing with Lawrence L. Herman, warns that U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to annex Greenland signals a bigger risk to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. They argue that renewed U.S. expansionist rhetoric alongside American rejection of Canada's claim that the Northwest Passage constitutes internal waters raises the prospect of future U.S. military or naval incursions in the region.

October 16, 2025 | Vincent Rigby spoke at a McGill roundtable on Arctic sovereignty and security that examined Canada’s northern strategy amid rising geopolitical tensions. He emphasized that national defence cannot be addressed through military means alone, calling for a broader approach grounded in partnership and community well-being. “You can’t have national security without human security,” he said, pointing to the need for sustainable development and trust with Indigenous communities.

A study released this month found that as the climate changes in the North, some cold-adapted arctic birds are especially susceptible to heat stress.

“Our research shows that climate change is having substantial impacts on Arctic ecosystems, with consequences for exposure to toxic pollutants like mercury,” says co-author Jean-Pierre Desforges, a Postdoctoral Fellow [NRS] at McGill University under the supervision of Nil Basu [NRS/SHN] and Melissa McKinney [NRS].

McGill Newsroom

Emily Choy [Post Doctoral Fellow, NRS. Advisor : Kyle Elliott] became hooked on the Arctic when, as a Master’s student, she jumped on a research opportunity to study the effects of manmade contaminants on High Arctic food webs on Devon Island, Nunavut. “When I experienced how out of the world it was and observed the wildlife that are so highly adapted to the Arctic environment, I just fell in love,” says Choy.

The Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in the summer within the next 30 years, a study says, which will result in "devastating consequences for the Arctic ecosystem," according to McGill University in Montreal. Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, then refreezes each winter. The amount of summer sea ice in the Arctic has been steadily shrinking over the past few decades because of global warming. Since satellite records began in 1979, summer Arctic ice has lost 40% of its area and up to 70% of its volume, the Guardian said.

A research team led by McGill University geochemist Peter Douglas has used a new method for measuring the rate at which methane is produced by microbes breaking down thawing permafrost. “There is a lot of concern about methane being released from permafrost, but we don’t know how available carbon that has been frozen for thousands of years is to microbes,” says Douglas, an assistant professor in McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.