At the moment the temperature is around 0°C up in Alta, Finnmark so not terribly cold. Of course it is colder inland but it seems NATO left it a bit late this year.
Here's Ventusky's weather map:
Still chilly in interior Greenland though.
Ah, my mistake. Though the story is written in the present tense and dated late April, the training exercise began in January.
From Bloomberg, April 25:
As tensions with Russia rise, 13 Norwegian soldiers have been sent to the far North to test the cold’s effects on their minds, bodies and equipment.
It’s the middle of the night in the hills of northern Norway as a group of soldiers skis silently toward an enemy target. The cold drains the batteries on the patrol leader’s night vision goggles and stiffens his skis, making them hard to maneuver. GPS is glitchy. It’s -37°C (-34.6°F) outside, but wind chill makes it feel even colder.
The soldiers, members of a Norwegian military intelligence regiment, are among 13 men taking part in an exercise to test the effect of Arctic conditions on their equipment, bodies and minds. Their mission is to survive 100 days, more than double the length of previous military expeditions to this part of Norway.
“It’s kind of like going to the moon. We don’t know what to expect,” said the patrol leader. (For security reasons, the military requested that none of the soldiers mentioned in this article were named.)
The Norwegian expedition comes as Europe is grappling with the reality of its defense capabilities, especially in light of the Trump administration’s shift in attitude when it comes to supporting Western European allies.
There is also a growing sense that the Arctic could be a forum for future conflict. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. In recent years, Russia conducted a major military exercise north of Siberia, NATO focused part of its largest military exercise since the Cold War on the Arctic, and China’s Coast Guard entered the Arctic Ocean for the first time, patrolling alongside Russian ships. President Donald Trump brought more focus to region with a pledge to acquire Greenland, describing ownership of the territory as a “necessity” for national security.
Military experts say all of these factors are creating new urgency to understand and overcome the human and technological limits of military operations in extreme Arctic conditions. Almost everything about a soldier’s work has to be rethought in such low temperatures, from how the body reacts to the use of new technologies and dealing with casualties.
Technologically, Arctic warfare can seem like a step back in time. “Satellite positioning for radars as well as anything linked to the electromagnetic environment is highly disrupted by both distance and also the constant chaff that exists in the region,” said Mathieu Boulègue, a transatlantic defense and security fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, referring to disruption that includes solar flares and the reverberation of sunlight upon water or ice. Battery life and detecting targets are also more challenging. “You name it, everything is made more complicated,” Boulègue said.
The range for electric vehicle batteries can be reduced by half in extreme cold, said Heidi Andreassen, co-founder and partner at Testnor, which helps test military and civilian products in the Arctic. Another problem: Arctic winds strong enough to rip the doors off a car, which Andreassen said can also whip up saltwater that causes equipment to malfunction. “It’s often a surprise for many how harsh the environment can be to different kinds of technology,” she said.
Rikke Amilde Seehuus, a principal scientist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, has tested drones in -30°C. “If the wind is stronger than your [drones’] max velocity, you have a problem,” she said. Her team has been trying to teach drones to detect and avoid bad weather by using estimated wind speed to calculate how much battery power they need to return home, and to alert their operators to the threat of ice....
....MUCH MORE
On the other hand, -37°C (-34.6°F), is a lot colder than I care to experience.
