MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. The flagship of the Russian scientific fleet, the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, departed from Murmansk on an expedition to the Barents and Kara Seas to study greenhouse gas emissions as part of work to create a national system to monitor climatically active substances, the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology (the Russian Academy of Sciences) told TASS.

"Scientists will carry out research in atmospheric physics, hydrochemistry, hydrophysics, geology, geochemistry, paleo-oceanology and hydrobiology in the exclusive economic zone of Russia, Norway and around Spitsbergen; they will study natural and anthropogenic climatically active substances: greenhouse gases, atmospheric aerosol, black carbon. These studies are under a most important innovative project of national importance - the unified national monitoring system for climatically active substances," the institute's press service said.

The expedition is organized under the program "European Arctic - 2024: a geological chronicle of environmental and climate change." Its purpose is to study the contact between the cold polar and the warm Atlantic water, regional specifics of methane emissions, to monitor climate change, including by automatic deep-sea observatories.

The project aims at independent climate forecasts and data on climate change origins. Scientifically based data and environmental monitoring will be the basis for making managerial decisions regarding the Russian economy's decarbonization and its adaptation to climate change.