ST. PETERSBURG, June 21. /TASS/. Research at the Snezhinka (Snowflake) international Arctic station in the Yamalo-Nenets Region will begin in early 2025. The station will host about 80 people at a time, Executive Director of the Institute of Arctic Technologies at MIPT (the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) Yuri Vasilyev told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
"We plan for December, 2024, to commission the first part, that is the work at that station will begin from early 2025," he said. "The station will be built fully in December, 2025."
The construction is due to begin in 2023. The Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry for Development of the Far East and Arctic will organize a competition to pick a company to work on the project. The station is planned to accommodate up to 80 people: 60 specialists, working in shifts, and guests, for example, representatives of various businesses.
The Snezhinka international Arctic station is envisioned to become a fully autonomous facility powered by renewable energy sources and hydrogen without any diesel fuel. The station will be comprised of several dome-shaped buildings connected via passages. If observed from above, the station will resemble a snowflake, hence the name. The objective is to conduct studies in nature-saving life support technologies, telecommunications, biotechnologies, aquaculture, new materials, and artificial intelligence solutions. At the Snezhinka station, world-class researchers will carry out joint work on the problems of ecology, climate changes, environmental pollution and the world ocean.
Earlier, the state commission on the Arctic development announced the plans to build another research station - in the Murmansk Region.
Necessary Arctic studies
At the forum’s session Science and Strategic Decisions in the Arctic, experts stressed the macro region still remains "terra incognita" for the scientific community, and all processes there require detailed studies and monitoring, especially since the rate of climate change in the Russian Arctic is higher than in the country’s other areas. It is important to conduct systematic studies of processes in the Arctic Ocean’s seas, on the Northern Sea Route, they said.
Igor Ivachev, Director of Roshydromet’s Oceanographic Institute, said the entire fleet’s work on the Northern Sea Route depends on the hydrometeorological services’ monitoring and on correct weather models, so the number of monitoring stations needs to be increased from year to year.
It is equally important to study soils in the Arctic regions, said Taisiya Shepitko of the University of Transport. Results of the institute’s work showed that in the area of Norilsk - the northernmost city in the Russian Federation - the soil temperature was positive. Scientists insist every construction object must be supported by a team of scientists, including during the construction of the Northern Sea Route’s overland twin - the Northern Latitudinal Railway. Otherwise, the construction may fail and the infrastructures may collapse due to unreliable soils.
Mikhail Grigoriev of the Melnikov Permafrost Institute (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), in his turn said, scientists believe that the warming continues not only in the upper soil layers, but also in the underground permafrost in the Russian Arctic.
"Not by degrees, but by tenths of degrees, and yet nevertheless, it is very important to forecast when the permafrost will become so warm that it will be dangerous to build infrastructures and houses. According to experts, by 2050, only direct damage to fixed assets will make 5-7 trillion rubles ($90-126 billion). This is a most important strategic decision - to conduct such monitoring in order to exclude damage to both the nature and to man-made objects," the expert said.
Processes on the Sun are another reason for the warming in the Arctic. The closer to the North Pole, the higher is the influence of the Sun processes on the Earth’s magnetic field and on equipment.
"We expect the solar activity peak in 2025. The Sun’s high activity may cause technical failures. The impact is also on long pipelines, on electricity power transmission lines, and on railway lines. In 1985, when the magnetic pole was above Canada, magnetic currents destroyed electric transformers, and millions of people were left without light and heat. Presently, the magnetic pole is moving towards the Taimyr, so you can imagine what may happen in the Russian Federation," said Vladimir Minligareev, Deputy Director of the Fedorov Institute of Applied Geophysics.
Right now, he continued, the Arctic is one of the best places to observe the North Pole’s magnetic field, and its changes must be monitored permanently.
About the forum
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum organized by the Roscongress Foundation took place on June 15 through to 18. In 2022, the forum was dubbed: ‘New Opportunities in a New World’. A number of other events took place beyond the business program. Among them were the SME Forum, the Creative Business Forum, the Drug Security Forum, the SPIEF Junior Dialogue, and SPIEF Sport Week. TASS was the event’s official photo hosting agency and information partner.