Partnership

TO OVERCOME THE CRISIS, TO BECOME STRONGER THROUGH COLLABORATION

Sergey Pryamikov,
Head, Department of International Scientific Cooperation,
Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute

        International cooperation in Arctic research is implemented in various forms. This is especially connected with the fact that in the Arctic (in contrast with the Antarctic) this research has just begun to develop after the long period of the Cold War. Currently cooperation in various fields of Arctic research is coordinated by a large number of international committees and commissions, and cooperation with Russia is also implemented by various charitable projects and foundations such as the International Scientific Foundation, the European Scientific Foundation, and the European Commission's East European Programs. Many countries that carry out Arctic research, especially Germany, Norway, Japan, and the US, have their own bilateral programs of cooperation with Russia. The diversity of cooperation and the large number of official institutions involved in cooperation with Russia in the Arctic, on the one hand, create certain difficulties in terms of choosing optimal strategy. But on the other hand, they provide an opportunity to choose partners and develop cooperation aimed at solving practically all actual problems confronted by the Russian side in such research. This matter is of considerable concern for our institute.
        The main goal of cooperation had always been hydrometeorological support for the activities in the Northern Sea route area. This support consists not only of information about the actual development of environment processes, but also of long-term (six-month) forecasts of the conditions for navigation in ice. (The latter is necessary in order to specify navigation strategy.) Short-term forecast of weather and ice conditions and sea level changes, is necessary in order to choose navigation routes for vessels along the Northern Sea route. It also includes the delivery of instructions for navigators concerning the optimal strategy of navigation, which defines the safest maximum speed and recommends a route for the concrete vessel to its place of destination.
        The implementation of such international projects in recent years as the International Northern Sea Route Program, or INSROP (Russia, Norway and Japan) and the Arctic Demonstrational Exploratory Voyage ARCDEV (Russia and European Union) brought everyone closer to implementing these plans. Suffice it to say, for instance, that in the final document of the shipboard expedition to the ARCDEV project particular attention was given to the efficiency of the investigations performed by our institute, something that made for a successful expedition.
        In our cooperation with US research centers we are creating digital Arctic climate atlases within the framework of the activity of the Joint Russian-American Commission for economic and technological cooperation. Two CDs are already available. They contain the digital climatic atlas of the Arctic Ocean for winter and summer conditions and have been accepted by scientists all over the world.         The World Ice Date Center is successfully working at our institute. It collects information from countries that conduct ice observations. These databases including the digital atlases, among others, make it possible for researchers to use modern storage systems, generalized data and state-of-the-art computer software. The Arctic environment models and their long-term climatic variability can be significantly improved upon by using the climatic fields of the hydrometeorological elements in regular grid cells, which are developed within the framework of preparing the atlases. Use of these climatic fields also makes it possible to view and develop various scenarios connected with the influence of the climatic changes on economic and transport activity in the polar regions. More than 10 automatic meteorological buoys of our own design were developed at AARI and mounted in the Arctic. This work has been done within the framework of cooperation on the International Arctic Buoy Project (IABP), which is implemented by eight countries and a number of international institutions. The new generation ARGOS automatic polar meteorological drifting buoy, which drew the interest of specialists and users, was also developed and mounted. This is a valuable Russian contribution to IABP. The American partners of this program put at the long-term disposal of our institute a modern receiving terminal, by which AARI researchers can receive information directly from the drifting Arctic meteorological buoys.
        An agreement was recently signed on the joint project "Otto Schmidt Russian-German Laboratory for Polar and Marine Research". Named after the famous Russian polar explorer, it will be implemented using our institute as a base. It is aimed at performing detailed analysis of the experimental data collected within the framework of the Laptev Sea System Project.
        As is planned, the laboratory will be equipped by the most modern analytical and computer systems including electronic microscopes. International seminars, courses, and language classes will be held at the laboratory.
        International cooperation may become the means by which Russian science will overcome its current crisis situation and gain energy for future advances.