Tag Archives: antarctica

FESCO diesel-electric ship Vasily Golovnin set off on a new Antarctic expedition

January 25 2023

According to FESCO, the ship left the port of Cape Town last week and is already on its way to the Indian research stations Bharati and Maitri.

The diesel-electric ship will deliver a team of Indian polar explorers, fuel and provisions there. It will also take out household and technical garbage from the stations. Another point on the route of Vasily Golovnin will be the Belgian station “Princess Elisabeth”. The voyage will last until April 2023. This is the second FESCO Antarctic expedition under a new five-year contract with the National Center for Polar and Oceanic Research of the Indian Ministry of Geosciences (NCPOR).

Earlier FESCO has repeatedly participated in government projects in Antarctica to supply research stations of the US, Australia, Great Britain, Chile and Argentina.

FESCO Transport Group is one of the largest private transport and logistics companies in Russia with assets in the field of port, railway and integrated logistics business. The Group owns the Vladivostok Commercial Sea Port, the Transgarant and Dalreftrans railway operators, and Russkaya Troika, the fitting platform operator. The Group operates dry terminal complexes in Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk and Tomsk, manages over 130,000 TEU, and has more than 10,000 fitting platforms. The fleet includes 23 transport vessels, which mainly carry out transportation on their own sea lines.

Source: https://portnews.ru/news/341942/

Extraordinary Antarctica heatwave, 70 degrees above normal, would likely set a world record

By Caitlin Kaiser and Angela Fritz, CNN

March 28 2022

Scientists were shocked this month when a research station in Antarctica reported extraordinarily warm weather.

The temperature at Concordia Research station atop Dome C on the Antarctic Plateau — typically known as the coldest place on Earth — surged to an astounding 11.3 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-11.5 Celsius) on March 18.

The normal high temperature for the day is around minus-56 Fahrenheit (minus-49 Celsius), which puts the March 18 reading at close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (around 38 Celsius) warmer than normal.

If the World Meteorological Organization actually tracked this particular metric, scientists say it would likely set a world record.

While 11 degrees Fahrenheit is not warm by any stretch, it is unheard of for this part of Antarctica, and 70 degrees above average is similarly astounding.

It would be as if the high temperature in Washington, DC, on Monday — normally 61 degrees — was an unthinkable 131 degrees. In reality, the warmest it’s ever been there on March 28 was 85 degrees.

The coldest place on Earth?

Concordia’s temperature was a record for the highest temperature not only in the month of March, but an “absolute record” for any month, according to Etienne Kapikian, a meteorologist at Meteo-France, the French meteorology service.

And it wasn’t the only location to set record high temperatures that day.

Vostok, the Russian research base famous for logging the coldest temperature in the world, reported a high temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit — 63 degrees warmer than the average for the day. The temperature shattered the station’s previous record for March by almost 27 degrees.

With more than 60 years of data, this record “is unheard of in the history of climatology,” according to a Meteo-France analysis.

The extreme warmth in Antarctica raises concerns about long-term effects on the ice, particularly if it persists. An ice shelf in Antarctica nearly the size of Los Angeles disintegrated within days of extraordinary warmth on the continent.

Commentary. One gets the impression that humanity today prefers to deal with momentary problems – the rights of the LGBT community, endless sanctions, “pandemics” (“we will all die!”), “cold” and “hot” conflicts, etc. The fight against global climate change has also become, in fact, another field of economic and political confrontation, in which technologically advanced countries seek to further increase their lead and bind the resources of third world economies to themselves, making them feel “guilty” for environmental pollution.

In fact, we do not really know how our small planet works, what happens in its core, on the ocean floor and in the atmosphere. Such anomalies as described in the article are quite possibly a reminder to all of us from the Creator: stop doing stupid things, move forward, develop knowledge.Otherwise, it will be too late…

ICEBREAKER “CAPTAIN KHLEBNIKOV” WILL ESCORT VESSELS WITH CARGO FOR THE ARCTIC STATION “VOSTOK”

October 14, 2021, PortNews

The icebreaker “Captain Khlebnikov” left the port of Vladivostok on October 6 on an expedition to deliver personnel and cargo to the Russian Antarctic research station “Vostok”. The icebreaker with 114 passengers and scientific personnel as well as 52 crewmembers onboard will travel about 7,500 miles to Tala Bay (Antarctica). The ship will return to the seaport of Vladivostok this December.

“Captain Khlebnikov” was taken over by FSUE “Rosmorport” in 2016. In September-December 2018, it operated a series of voyages with passengers from the seaport of Ushuaia (Argentina) to Snow Hill Island (Antarctica) under an agreement with “Quark Expeditions”. In July-September 2019, it performed a series of cruises with passengers from the seaport of Anadyr to Wrangel Island under an agreement with “Heritage Expeditions”.

The inland Antarctic station “Vostok” (“East”) was opened in December 1957. It has gone through two renovations and three conservations. As it is worn out by 90% and covered with snow in places, the comprehensive renovation of the facility is underway. The aerodynamic shape of the modules of the new wintering complex will protect against snow drifts, a complex insulation system is installed in the 650 mm thick walls, the windows are equipped with pressure drop compensators, and the engineering systems are protected from freezing. The lowest air temperature on the planet (-89.2 ° С) was recorded at the” Vostok” station. For almost 10 months a year, the facility operates autonomously – it is impossible to get here either by land or by air.

Source: https://portnews.ru/news/319942/