India's first South Pole expedition on climate

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NEW DELHI: India's first national expedition to the South Pole to study climate change patterns over the past few hundred years will be flagged off on Monday. Science and technology minister Prithviraj Chavan will flag off the expedition on November 1 to kick off the international celebrations of the centenary of the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911.

Being led by Dr Rasik Ravindra, 62, this is the first time that India is leading a 40-day expedition to the South Pole. The team will leave for Maitri, India's second permanent research station in Antarctica, and will be back in mid-December.

It will conduct various scientific experiments on their way to the South Pole, including raising short cores at regular spacing along Maitri for the study of variability of snow chemistry and particulate matter.

The team will also study bed rock topography and sub-surface ice structure, glacial-geomorphological landforms along the plateau. It will collect meteorological parameter along the 2000-km long traverse, data on atmospheric aerosol and magnetic data.

The eight-member expedition team will bring samples, which will give vital information about climate change that has taken place in the last thousands of years. The news of India's maiden expedition to South Pole is well received by Antarctic Treaty nations.

Read more: India's first South Pole expedition on climate - The Times of India India's first South Pole expedition on climate - The Times of India

 

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India already has a permanent research base at North Pole.

India commissions permanent research base at North Pole​

New Delhi
, July 1: India on 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 2007 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 in 2008. India's first permanent station in Antarctica, Dakshin Gangotri, set up in 1981 today lies buried under the snow.

 

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Indian Navy at the North Pole​

Cricket mania at North Pole – Indian Navy North Pole Expedition team playing cricket match with their British counter part at the North Pole on 10 Apr 08.Ski Poles as wickets and shovels as bats.

 

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great pics

 

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The Search Engine Google is showing this animated Doodle in many Countries for the 105th Anniversary of First Expedition to Reach the South Pole

The first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four others arrived at the pole on 14 December 1911, five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and later learned that Scott and his four companions had died on their return journey.
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