Kapil Sibal inaugurates ice station Himadari in the Arctic

Union minister of science and technology and earth sciences Kapil Sibal yesterday inaugurated India's first permanent research station in the Arctic region, located at the the old school building in the Norwegian town of Ny-Ålesund, once famous as a coal mining settlement.

Situated on Svalbard (Spitsbergen), midway between Novaja Zemlja and Greenland, the manned research station is located in one of the world's northernmost human settlements and represents an ideal land-based entrance to the European Arctic.

The Norwegian Government has designated Ny-Ålesund as the centre for environmental research at Svalbard.

Called Himadri, the research base will be equipped with sate of the art facilities that will be used for conducting round the year scientific research in contemporary fields of Arctic science with special emphasis on climate change.

Situated at 78⁰55' N, 11⁰56'E, Ny-Ålesund is only 1200km from the North Pole and offers the ideal land-based entrance to the Arctic. The whole Svalbard archipelago in Norway is part of the high Arctic region with permafrost – which means that the ground is frozen all year round. The vegetation in the area varies from sparse ground cover to the meadows like vegetation of the bird sanctuaries.

Current areas of research in Ny-Ålesund include marine science, aurora physics, biology, glaciology, geology, environmental science, geodetic studies, rocket probe studies, atmospheric physics, terrestrial studies, climate change monitoring, among others.

The Himadri base stattion will be managed by the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR), an autonomous institute under the ministry of earth sciences. This premier Polar institute based in Goa has been coordinating entire gamut of Antarctic research for the country.

With the opening of Himadri India has become the 10th country to have established its full fledged research station at Ny-Ålesund - other countries to have similar research facilities in the region are the UK, Germany, France, Italy, China, Japan, South Korea, The Netherlands, Sweden.

The environmental research and monitoring programmes presently running at the stations in Ny-Ålesund are concentrated mainly on atmospheric and biospheric research, with significant emphasis also laid on ionospheric research, solid earth physics and glaciology, with permanent monitoring of the mass-balance of glaciers.

Sibal was joined at the inauguration by Dr Annette Schavan, federal minister of Germany, Tora Aasland, Norwegian minister thanked India for its interest in establishing a station in Ny-Ålesund, Christian Gaudin, French senator besides many eminent polar scientists, diplomats and scientific policy makers from various countries.

While inaugurating the research base Himadri, Sibal expressed satisfaction at the rapid progress of the Indian Arctic Programme which started in August 2007 as a small contingent of five scientists, which has expanded to a full fledged research station in less than one year.

Rasik Ravindra, director, NCAOR highlighted the advantages and possibilities that now lie open for Indian researchers, and the opportunities for international collaboration between the research community from the other countries with similar research facilities at Ny-Ålesund.

NCAOR also signed a memorandum of understanding on Polar research  with the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI).

India already has a station in Antarctica.