July 9 2008 Local vessel to explore Arctic climate change
The coast guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier left Victoria last week with 20 scientists aboard on a voyage that will document climate change in the Arctic.
"It's the second year of an attempt to encircle Canada with a climate and biodiversity watch," said project leader Eddy Carmack from the Institute of Ocean Sciences.
The scientists "will measure just about everything they can measure in the ocean," said Carmack, a climate research oceanographer with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
second ship with scientists aboard is leaving Halifax at the same time to head north via Canada's East Coast.
"We're trying to understand all these types of problems like invasive species [and] disappearing ice cover in the Arctic," said Carmack.
This project of creating a baseline of data is part of the International Polar Year, and hopefully the data will bring more understanding to climate change.
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July 7 2008 Scandinavian Royals Visit The Arctic
In the International Polar Year, many people try to help with focusing on polar science. On June 26, we had a visit of Royal ambassadors, the heirs of the Scandinavian thrones: Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Crown Prince Frederick of Danmark and Crown Prince Haakon from Norway. They were on a boat trip with the Swedish ice breaker Oden and arrived per helicopter.
There was a program with informal presentations and an excursion to the Zeppelin and marine station. During the city walk, they visited the Netherlands Arctic Station.
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July 4 2008 India commissions research base at North Pole
India 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 most 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.
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June 16 2008 New Russian nuclear icebreaker 'will be built by 2015'
new nuclear icebreaker will be built in Russia by 2015, the head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Monday after signing an agreement with the leadership of the northern Murmansk Region.
"It is important to not only use the existing fleet of icebreakers, but also to build new ships, and the first nuclear icebreaker of a new generation will be built by 2015," Sergei Kiriyenko said.
The agreement aims at uniting efforts to implement programs to use nuclear power, nuclear icebreakers, and ensure nuclear, radiation and environmental security in the Murmansk Region.
Kiriyenko said the Iceberg Design Bureau in St. Petersburg would prepare the design of the icebreaker by 2009. "This should be an icebreaker capable of moving in rivers and seas," he said.
Responsibility for Russia's nuclear icebreaker fleet will be handed over to Rosatom from the Murmansk Shipping Company on August 27.
The Russian nuclear chief also said Russia would allocate 800 million rubles ($33.9 million) to the maintenance of nuclear icebreakers in 2008.
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