MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Russian scientists are evacuating a research station built on an ice floe drifting in the western Arctic Ocean because global warming is melting the ice early, a spokesman said.
The North Pole-35 station, where 21 researchers and two dogs live in huts, will be pulled out this week instead of late August, said Sergei Balyasnikov of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg.
"The evacuation is ahead of schedule because of global warming," Balyasnikov said.
The nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika will escort a research vessel to the station, which is drifting between the Franz Josef Land archipelago and the island of Novaya Zemlya in the western Arctic.
The researchers are packing up their winterized huts and equipment to prepare for the arrival of the icebreaker and the research vessel Mikhail Somov, Balyasnikov said.
The research crew landed in early September on the 2- by 4-kilometer (1.2- by 2.5-mile) ice floe in near the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. During its westward drift of more than 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles), the floe has shrunken to just 300 meters by 600 meters (1,000 feet by 2,000 feet).
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