Saprunova's Arctic photos win New Scientist Editors Award
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- Natalya Saprunova won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo 2026 competition for a series documenting climate change across the Canadian Arctic.
- The series includes an image of a hunter in Tuktoyaktuk holding a goose decoy, illustrating how rising temperatures have shifted bird migration and forced Indigenous hunters to adapt both materials and methods.
- Saprunova photographed Victoria Island, where thawing permafrost accelerates coastal erosion and introduces mercury into fish habitats, endangering a key food source for Inuit residents.
- At Sachs Harbour, crumbling permafrost cliffs sit dangerously close to homes; the source notes Canada has the world's longest inhabited Arctic coastline and that some residents risk becoming Canada's first climate refugees.
- Pelly Island is captured as a vanishing landmass whose melting permafrost releases greenhouse gases that could, per Saprunova's submission, accelerate the warming driving its own destruction.
- The award-winning series is on display at the Royal Geographical Society in London until 24 July.
Why it matters: Saprunova's series captures a self-reinforcing climate loop already underway in the Canadian Arctic: permafrost thaw erodes homelands, contaminates fish with mercury, and releases greenhouse gases that accelerate further melting. For Inuit communities on Canada's longest inhabited Arctic coastline, the photographs document a present-tense displacement risk — residents could become Canada's first climate refugees as the land beneath them physically disappears.
