The National Academy of Marine Research (NAMR) and National Sun Yat-sen University’s Department of Oceanography participated in artic research this summer after obtaining approval from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research following a year of work, an academy official said yesterday.
In August, the NAMR represented Taiwan on the German institute’s RV Polarstern research icebreaker when the ship traveled to the Arctic Ocean and North Pole on a two-month science expedition, academy president Chen Chien-hung (陳建宏) said yesterday.
On June 25, 2022, the NAMR, the National Central University and Poland’s Nicolaus Copernicus University collaborated in the establishment of an arctic research station, Chen said.
Photo courtesy of the National Academy of Marine Research
The station in the Svalbard islands highlights Taiwan’s growing international recognition in polar ocean science and the country’s marine research, he said.
Through scientific collaboration, Taiwan has demonstrated its concern for global issues and monitoring changes in polar ecosystems, paving the way for future cooperation with experts in Arctic Ocean research, National Sun Yat-Sen oceanography professor Fang Ying-chih (方盈智) said.
NAMR researcher Fu Ko-hsien (傅科憲), who represented Taiwan on the polar expedition, said that the team of 53 researchers from 12 countries traveled more than 12,000km through the arctic.
They conducted ice surveys, collected samples, recorded changes in temperature and more during the expedition, in the hopes of understanding the effects of climate change on the arctic, Fu said.
Ice coverage continues to shrink, with satellite images from September showing that arctic sea ice covered 4.39 million square kilometers, the ninth-lowest in the past 45 years, demonstrating a continuing negative trend, he added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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