India commissions permanent research base at North Pole

New Delhi, July 2 (PTI) India Tuesday commissioned its
permanent research base at the North Pole which will enable
scientists to carry out studies on a range of subjects
including climate change in one of the cleanest environments
on earth.

The research station -- Himadri -- was inaugurated by
Earth Sciences Minister Kapil Sibal at Ny-Alesund, on the
west coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard
archipelago of Norway.

Situated only 1,200 km from the North Pole, Ny-Alesund
is the northernmost international research village, managed by
Kings Bay, the Norwegian government-held company that runs the
logistics at the research station.

The research station was set up following two
expeditions by Indian scientists to Ny-Alesund in the last 11
months.

The maiden expedition to the Arctic was launched in
August last year under the leadership of Rasik Ravindra,
Director National Centre for Antarctic & Ocean Research, Goa
which was followed up by another team of seven scientists led
by Prof. A.K. Gwal of Barkatullah University, Bhopal, who
spent four weeks in Ny-Alesund in March.

The research base in the North Pole comes three
decades after India set up a permanent station at Dakshin
Gangotri in Antarctica.

Initially, Himadri would be manned by Indian
scientists on a project-to-project basis and later on
converted into a round-the-year station, as is the case in
Antarctica.

India has access to Svalbard because of a treaty with
Norway, which has sovereign rights over the area. India has
become the 11th country in the world to have a research
station in Ny-Alesund, the others being Norway, Germany,
Britain, Italy, France, Japan, South Korea, China, the
Netherlands and Sweden.

Two-third of Ny-Alesund, which is spread over 63,000
sq km, is permanently under ice, but the climate is mild in
comparison to other areas near the North Pole. The mean
temperature in the coldest month of February is minus 14
degrees while in the warmest month of July, it is five degrees
Celsius.

Owing to almost zero pollution, Arctic is generally
considered by scientists to be better than Antarctica for a
wide range of research activities.

India has one operational station in Antarctica --
Maitri -- and is in the process of setting up another later
this year. India's first permanent station in Antarctica,
Dakshin Gangotri, set up in 1981, today lies buried under the
snow. PTI