Posted on behalf of Jane Qiu.

China will start building a new icebreaker later on this year and the vessel is expected to be in operational in polar expeditions in 2013, Chen Lianzen, deputy director of the State Oceanic Administration of China, announced last week at a national polar-expedition working conference in Beijing.

Together with M/V Xuelong (or Snow Dragon), a 21,250-tonne icebreaker and research vessel purchased from Ukraine in 1993, the new ship will help maximise annual expedition time in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

With a displacement of 8,000 tonnes, the new vessel, which will cost about $300 million, is smaller than Xuelong. But it will be able to break through thicker ice (up to 1.5 meters) and will house state-of-the-art research facilities.

In addition to the new icebreaker, fixed-wing aircraft will be available to expedition teams in the Antarctic by 2015, allowing aerial studies of the Antarctica’s Grove Mountains and transport of researchers between stations.

In the next five years, China will step up its efforts to understanding polar environmental changes in response to global warming, and it will also explore oil, gas and biological resources in polar regions, says Chen.

China currently has one research station in the Arctic and three in the Antarctic, including the Kunlun station at Dome Argus, or ‘Dome A’, at 4,093 metres above sea level, which was built in early 2009.

Credit: Polar Research Institute of China