The Ice Base Cape Baranova research station is located in Bolshevik Island of the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago (79°18'N 101°48'E). The research station, operated by Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), opened in 1980’s and reopened in 2013 after an almost 10-year temporal close. National Institute of Polar Research and the University of Tokyo had just started a joint observation research with AARI at the research station when I visited the Cape Baranova in November 2017.
To visit the Cape Baranova, I needed to fly first to Krasnoyarsk and then to Khatanga, one of the northernmost inhabited areas in Russia. From Khatanga, I flew to the Cape Baranova by a chartered helicopter with some AARI members. At the Cape Baranova research station, there are about 20 buildings scattered in 1km around, such as living quarters, dining, communication facilities, medicine, generator, laboratory, as well as some huts for observation. Around 20 people stay at the station throughout the year, including researchers, engineers, mechanics, cooks and a medical doctor, and carry out several researches and observations such as standard meteorological observations, standard and advanced solar radiation observations, heat balance observations, etc. I watched the daily operations at the station and also confirmed a small hut built for a newly installed black carbon monitoring system by Japanese research team in the darkness due to the polar night. Considering that the Cape Baranova research station is located in one of the least investigated regions of the Arctic Ocean, we hope Japan would be more actively involved in the researches and observations there.
Yuji Kodama (NIPR)
The chartered helicopter flying to the Cape Baranova
A hut newly built for Japanese black carbon monitoring system
Operations for upper air observation
