India will join Russia’s ice-resistant North Pole Platform as it seeks to expand its presence in the Arctic Region, a top Indian official told Sputnik India.
The official said that the final decision was arrived at after hectic negotiations between the two sides. India expects its scientists to begin joint work at the platform by next year, the official said.
India’s involvement in the Russian project is a result of the memorandum signed between Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) and India's National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) on bolstering cooperation in the polar region. The pact was after leadership talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last July.
The North Pole platform is being operated by AARI.
At present, India operates a permanent research station (Himadri) in Norway, an Arctic Atmospheric Observatory in Gruvebadet and IndARC, an underwater observatory, in the region. Over 200 Indian researchers have used the Himadri station till date, which is manned for around 180 days per year.
According to India's Ministry of Earth Sciences, there is a direct correlation between the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events in India and the melting of the ice in the Arctic region, making it a critical component in predicting future events.
An official said that an extreme rainfall event in India leads to the escaping of heat, which reaches the Arctic region in 7-8 days and leads to the melting of ice there. In turn, the melting of ice is directly linked to extreme weather events in India. "This is a feedback loop," the official said.
India, which launched its own Arctic Policy in 2022, has shown a growing interest in the region not only due to climate change, but also due to vast deposits of oil, natural gas, critical minerals as well as the gradual opening of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The inaugural meeting of the India-Russia Joint Working Group (JWG) on the NSR was held last October, following the consensus reached between Modi and Putin last July.