VLADIVOSTOK, October 28. /TASS/. The North Pole 2020 expedition to study climate change should continue the tradition of exploring the Arctic’s high latitudes. The data gathered will help clarify, in particular, how to respond to the ongoing climate change dilemma, said Sergey Khrushchev, director of the Department for State Policy and Regulation of Hydrometeorology, Study of the Arctic, the Antarctic and the World Ocean at Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources at a ceremony devoted to the end of the Trans-Arctic expedition organized by the Russian Meteorological Service.
Organized at the behest of the Russian government, the Trans-Arctic 2019 is a large-scale project by Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring. Its main goal was to renew the research traditions of sea and air expeditions, and the North Pole drifting ice stations in the Arctic’s high latitude. The expedition was carried out in four stages: four vessels of the Russian Meteorological Service performed scientific work one by one in the Arctic seas for more than five months. The expedition set off on March 20 from Murmansk, with the fourth stage being wrapped up on October 23. The project was paid for through the federal budget under the Science National Project.
"We plan the ‘North Pole 2020’ expedition in 2020, which will continue the traditions that initially the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation established in exploring the Arctic’s high latitudes. <...> The Arctic’s future developments are very important to us, along with how we should adapt to the changes that are taking place in the climate, and how the planet should adapt to the changes that we forecast. We have to prepare the best and highest-quality scientific forecast of our future operations in the Arctic," Khrushchev stressed.
Director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of the Russian Meteorological Service Alexander Makarov said that climate change had been observed across the world recently, and in the Arctic they occur two to four times faster than in the other regions. The maximum speed of changes can be observed in the Taimyr area. It leads to an increase in the number of dangerous meteorological phenomena in the Russian Arctic that also occur on land, and ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean area change as well. On the one hand, the quantity of ice is slightly decreasing, yet on the other hand dangerous ice phenomena and icebergs are growing in number.
The world ocean exploration program and the growth of the number of marine expeditions are part of the Science National Project. According to the endeavor, by 2024 Russia will be among the five world leaders that carry out scientific research and development. A total of 636 billion rubles ($10 billion) were included in the national project’s budget. By 2024, in total, 50% of the entire equipment base will have been modernized, and more than half of the scientific staff will be young experts aged under 39.