Russia to evacuate floating ice station

Melting ice off Svalbard, pictured 2011

Russia is preparing to evacuate a crew of 16 from a drifting Arctic research station because the ice floe it is sitting on has started to disintegrate. The news agency AFP said Natural Resources and Ecology Minister Sergei Donskoi had set a three-day deadline to draft an evacuation plan for the North Pole-40 floating station. That was yesterday afternoon. (See also Times Live for report and photo!)

“The destruction of the ice has put at risk the station’s further work and life of its staff,” the ministry said in a statement.       The station is currently home to 16 personnel including oceanologists, meteorologists, engineers and a doctor.  It conducts meteorological research, monitors environmental pollution and conducts a number of tests.  If the situation is not addressed, it may also result in the loss of equipment and contaminate the environment near Canada’s economic zone where the station is currently located, the ministry added. The floating station is to be relocated to Bolshevik Island in the Russian Arctic with the help of an ice breaker.

Vladimir Sokolov, who oversees the floating station at the Saint Petersburg-based Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, said the ice was disintegrating due to climate change. Russia created its first floating research station in the Arctic, the North Pole 1 in 1937. The first floating station put up by post-Soviet Russia was put together in 2003. The crew had to be rescued when the ice floe beneath it broke up in 2004.

The experts in charge say the crew’s lives are not in danger, but working conditions have become impossible. They say the fast melt of the ice is making it more difficult for research to keep pace with developments.

Not surprising, but surely another spectacular illustration of what’s happening up in the High North? Has anybody seen this making a big splash (sorry!) in the  international headlines?