The city of Nadym, in the extreme north of Siberia, is one of the Earth's least hospitable places, shrouded in darkness for half of the year, with temperatures plunging below minus 30 Celsius and the nearby Kara Sea semipermanently frozen.
But things are looking up for this Arctic conurbation halfway between Europe and China. Over the next 30 years climate change is likely to open up a major polar shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, cutting travel time to and from Asia by 40 percent and allowing Russia's vast oil and gas resources to be exported to China, Japan and south Asia much faster.
Nadym stands to benefit from a warmer climate more than any other Arctic city — the Russian government plans to connect it by road and rail to other oil and gas centers; Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, is building a port nearby with French oil major Total; and if the new northern sea route is open for even six months of the year, Nadym could find itself along the 21st-century equivalent of the legendary silk route.