Press release: Kinnvika - Arctic warming and impact research - Change and variability of Arctic systems, with focus on Nordaustlandet, Svalbard

Kinnvika is a project within the International Polar Year 2007 2008 that focuses on Arctic warming and impact research. Its a multinational and multidisciplinary initiative to enhance the understanding of the Arctic climate systems, to monitor environmental change due to global climate warming and to study effects of human activity in the Arctic. Kinnvika is also a logistic platform for scientists to manage research, with a base at the old Kinnvika station in Svalbard.

There are 25 working packages in the project and the science involves several disciplines in the Earth Sciences including studies among others on atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere and glaciers, but Human Sciences are also represented. All together 69 people are working in the project of which 62 participates in the Kinnvika expeditions. In August 2007 fifteen Finnish high school students spend a week at Kinnvika in order to get a realistic and multidisciplinary picture of the Arctic.

Historical Kinnvika station
The Kinnvika station was built for the International Geophysical Year 1957-58 by a Swedish-Finnish-Swiss expedition. The buildings are made from wood and in the main building there is room for 15 people, electricity was produced by generators, and there were separate storage and research buildings as well as a sauna. All together there are ten buildings and some of them were also used during the expeditions in 2007 and 2008. For example the sauna was heated in 2008 and the temperature went up to 50 degree Celsius.

The last time the station was used during 1959 and after that there was no funding to keep the station running. Since then research and field work has carried out sparsely, but the station has never been forgotten and there are plans to protect the Kinnvika station as a part of the cultural and science history of the Svalbard.

Why Kinnvika?
Modeling of the future weather of the Arctic predicts that the average warming over the High Arctic will probably be in the range of 57