Objectives and Expertiments of 23rd and 24th Indian Antarctic expedition - Backgrounder
	17:26 IST

The Winter team of 23rd IAE and Summer Team of 24th IAE have just returned back from Antarctica in the month of March 2005. The 23rd Indian Antarctic Expedition was launched in December,2003 from Cape Town, South Africa. A total of 15 scientific experiments were mounted under different themes of IAE. The total 23rd IAE team comprised of 55 members (30 summer and 25 winter) headed by Shri. S. Jayaram, Director, GSI, Bangalore. Similarly a total of 26 members comprised the summer team of 24th IAE which was launched in December 2004. The following Scientific /logistics Tasks were assigned to the XXIII and XXIV Indian Antarctic Expedition. Logistics objectives An exclusive task team headed by Shri. Rasik Ravindra , Director (Antarctic Division) of Geological Survey of India (GSI), Faridabad in the XXIII IAE team conducted survey with the assistance of Ship/crew and Helicopters/crew around 75 ° East Longitude. This team explored the proper spot for mooring the ice-class vessel to operate Expedition cargo and a suitable spot in-land to establish station /camp for enhancing the Indian Scientific Research activities in the years to come. This was an additional logistic task from routine operations in the XXIII IAE team. Environmental tasks: In conformity to the Environmental regulations/requirements, Maitri station and its surroundings are well maintained by the IAE team. A containerized storage yard, solid-waste incinerator module and liquid-waste soak-pit of Maitri were maintained and operated by the logistic team in the XXIII IAE. Civil construction jobs: The scientific team from National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) , Hyderabad in the XXIII IAE team installed the Absolute Gravimeter at Maitri for Geophysical observations. Engineers of Indian Army in the XXIII IAE were assigned a summer period logistic task to create base and the structure to house the Absolute Gravimeter at an appropriate location adjacent to Maitri building. They were also assigned to create base pillars to fix the Difuse Solar Radiation instrument of Indian Meteorological Dept.(IMD). The Survey of India (SOI) scientific team in the XXIII IAE had Global Positioning System (GPS) observations during summer period . GPS pillars for sixteen positions to construct was the task assigned to the logistic team. Scientific Objectives Some salient experiments undertaken during 23rd and 24th IAE were: installation of Direction finding Experiments to study the path of Whistlers and comparing with SANAE (South African Antarctica Station) data; to study the relationship between the large and small scale ionospheric structures in the polar caps; to understand the global electric circuit, especially to understand the contributions of the ionospheric and magnetospheric generators; to characterize Antarctic aerosols and precursor in terms of their optical, physico-chemical and radiative properties. And to estimate direct radiative forcing due to aerosols under different meteorological conditions; to identify global signature in the atmospheric electrical parameters and distinguish atmospheric, ionospheric and magnetospheric signature; to document the different types of flora/fauna (diatoms, pollen, spores etc.); and to study the seasonal variations of sleep pattern of Indian and Russian expedition members during summer and winter months in Antarctica etc. The establishment of National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) at Goa as an exclusive polar research laboratory by the Department of Ocean Development is a reflection of India’s sustained and far-fetched interests in Antarctic science and protection of its environment. The Centre has been designated as the focal coordinating agency for the Indian Antarctic program and is responsible for maintaining the Indian permanent station, ‘Maitri’ in Antarctica. The Centre has further helped to consolidate and focus our scientific activities in the domain of polar sciences and also aims to conduct in-house R&D activities in exclusive areas ice-ocean - atmosphere interaction & climate modeling, global change & Antarctica, palaeo-climate & palaeo-environment and southern ocean oceanography. The ice-core laboratory complex is now operational at the Centre. It will serve as repository of cores both from the Antarctica and the Himalayas. This will be used to infer past climate and environmental changes and will help the scientists to refine the climate models. The Indian Antarctic missions have contributed to several international SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) mounted programs in Antarctica like Global Change (GLOCHANT), VLF monitoring, ice berg monitoring, hydrographic survey, tele-seismic networking etc. UM:SPS:NC