The observatory is located at Karholl, some 66 km east of Akureyri in northern Iceland. It can accommodate 15 people in a work/live facility for research on aurora, atmosphere, glacier and remote sensing. In 2013, the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) and the Icelandic Centre for Research (RANNIS) decided to jointly build an aurora observatory. In 2017, it was decided to upgrade the aurora observatory to the China-Iceland Arctic Science Observatory that will enable not just aurora observations, but also research on atmosphere, oceanography, glacier, geophysics, remote sensing and biology. China has already set up four research stations in Antarctica and one Arctic research station on Svalbard, Norway.

CAS news release, October 22, 2018