The Nicolaus Copernicus University (Nicolaus Copernicus University) Polar Station in Toruń (UMK) on Spitsbergen has joined the POLARIN (Polar Research Infrastructure Network) consortium, which brings together 50 partners with world-class infrastructure in the polar regions.

POLARIN is an international network of polar research infrastructures and their services to help scientists meet scientific challenges in the polar regions. It brings together partners with world-class infrastructure in the polar regions and with well-established scientific polar programmes. The consortium has secured nearly €14.6 million from the HORIZON-INFRA programme for the period 2024-2029, of which the UMK Polar Station will receive €105.3k.

The consortium has assembled a unique set of 64 polar scientific infrastructures, ranging from small research stations in the Arctic and Antarctic to large research icebreakers operating at both poles. It focuses on regions particularly vulnerable to climate change, such as Greenland, Svalbard and the Atlantic sector of the Arctic Ocean in the northern hemisphere, and the Antarctic Peninsula and the Weddell Sea/ Queen Maud Land in the southern hemisphere.

These are complemented by ice and sediment core repositories, offering several thousand metres of cores from both poles, and databases that offer virtual access to data collected over nearly half a century in the polar regions. Such a wide range of research infrastructures has never been available before.

“The polar regions play a key role in the Earth system. They are the guardians of climate change, human expansion, and the search for new resources. To understand and predict key processes in the polar regions and to provide science-based information, the research community needs access to world-class infrastructure operating in these places”, says Dr Ireneusz Sobota, director of the Centre for Polar Research and head of the UMK Polar Station.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński