An Ilyushin Il-14 flying low over a Soviet icebreaker. Throughout its history, the AARI has organized more than a thousand Arctic expeditions, including dozens of high-latitude aerial ventures.
The Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, or AARI (Russian: Арктический и антарктический научно-исследовательский институт, abbreviated as ААНИИ) is the oldest and largest Russian research institute in the field of comprehensive studies of Arctic and Antarctica. It is located in St.Petersburg.
Throughout its history, the AARI has organized more than a thousand Arctic expeditions, including dozens of high-latitude aerial expeditions, which transported 34(?) manned drifting ice stationsSeverniy Polyus ("Северный полюс", or North Pole) to Central Arctic. In 1955, the AARI participated in the organization of Antarctic research. In 1958, it began to organize and lead all of the Soviet Antarctic expeditions, which would later make many geographic discoveries. In 1968, the institute engaged in research of the areas of the Atlantic Ocean contiguous to the Arctic and Antarctica.
The AARI has numerous departments, such as those of oceanography, glaciology, meteorology, hydrology or Arctic river mouths and water resources, geophysics, polar geography, and others. It also has its own computer center, ice research laboratory, experimental workshops, and a museum (the Arctic and Antarctic Museum).
