India to expand polar research to Arctic as well

India to expand polar research to Arctic as well

News:

1. The government is focusing priorities to the Arctic pole because of opportunities and challenges posed by climate change.

Important facts:

2. Despite having new priorities, the annual missions to maintain India’s three bases in Antarctica will continue.

3. The new priorities mean that there will be more expeditions and research focus on the other poles.

4. Climate change was a decisive factor in India re-thinking priorities

5. Recently, the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research(NCAOR) has been renamed as the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research.

6.The NCAOR was charged with conducting expeditions to India’s base stations to the continent.

7. The government is also in talks with Canada and Russia, key countries with presence in the Arctic cycle, to establish new observation systems.

8. Presently, India only has one Arctic observation station near Norway.

9. India’s earth science community also views the Himalayas as a “third pole” because of the large quantities of snow and ice presence and proposes to increase research spends towards understanding the impact of climate change in the region.

10. It has already established a high-altitude research station in the Himalayas, called HIMANSH, at Spiti, Himachal Pradesh.

11. India is an observer at the Arctic Council – a forum of countries that decides on managing the region’s resources and popular livelihood and in, 2015, set up an underground observatory, called IndARC, at the Kongsfjorden fjord, half way between Norway and the North Pole.

12. Impact of climate change on India:

• A big worry for India is the impact of melting sea ice on the monsoon.
• Scientists across the world are reporting that the rapid ice-melt in the Arctic is leading to large quantities of fresh water into the seas around the poles.
• This impedes the release of heat from the water and directs warm water into the seas around India.
• This weakens the movement of the monsoon breeze into India.