News

THE 46th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM 46) and 26th Meeting of the Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP 26) took place from 20 to 30 May 2024 in Kochi, India, hosted by the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), an autonomous research institute under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India.
The Parties to the Antarctic Treaty meet every year at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting (ATCM) to exchange information, to consult together on matters of common interest pertaining to Antarctica, and to formulate, consider, and recommend measures to their Governments. The Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) also meets annually to discuss the status of the Antarctic environment in general and the implementation of the Environment Protocol specifically.
As the project POLARIN will provide access to research infrastructures in the Antarctic region, the project was presented to the audience by the Project Coordinator Nicole Biebow (AWI). An Information Paper was submitted by Germany on this respect and endorsed by multiple nations.

The Ukrainian research vessel Noosfera has completed her third Antarctic season. Late in the evening of May 8, 2024, she docked at the port of Cape Town (South Africa).
This was Noosphere’s longest Antarctic season with the largest scientific program. It began on November 17, 2023 along the route Cape Town – King George Island (Arctowski Polish Antarctic station) – Galindez Island (Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station).
The icebreaker

Reconstruction of slips and renewal of water supply and grounding systems – important modernization works were carried out at Vermadsky station; they were started even before the full-scale war. They were performed by a technical team of five specialists – Anatolii Andreiev (team leader), Volodymyr Khrapach, Oleg Ganzha, Vadym Neshko, Yurii Shovkaliuk. This team was part of a seasonal expedition and worked.

WP2 has during May arranged four online meetings where the infrastructure operators have met to discuss and provide input on the logistic evaluation procedure for the POLARIN transnational access. In addition to getting to know each other, great input was received and the minutes and recordings from the meetings are currently being prepared and compiled.

The POLARIN Newsletters will be published quarterly and will be sent to subscribers and will also be available here. Soon we will start providing a subscriptions so that you can follow up about project activities and infrastructure access calls.

POLARIN Kick-off meeting is on the way at AWI in Bremerhaven, where over 80 participants are paving the way for novel calls for access to polar research infrastructure in the Arctic and Antarctica.

In a press release dated February 29, 2024, from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), project coordinator Dr. Nicole Biebow highlighted: “What sets POLARIN apart is that, for the first time, we’ll be offering access to research infrastructures in the Arctic and Antarctic alike through a single project. We’ve created …