Neumayer Station, Antarctica - A new research base in Antarctica inaugurated Friday by Germany is built on stilts and can be jacked up higher so that it always remains above snowdrifts.

Two previous building complexes named Neumayer Station, at the Antarctic coast opposite Cape Town, South Africa, have been wrecked and buried as the ice shelf under them deformed. The ice surface is raised by about 1 metre of new snow every year.

Neumayer III was built on 16 stilts and with enough hydraulic power to raise the 2,200-ton complex even higher above the Ekstrom Ice Shelf, a vast sheet of ice which floats on the sea off the Princess Martha Coast.

German Science Minister Annette Schavan, who officially opened the station from Berlin by video link, said, "Neumayer III is a marvel of engineering," adding, "It means a new era for the scientists on the ice."

Aides said the scientists would collect ocean and atmospheric data that are a key to climate-change policies, with a focus on the state of the ice shelf and changes in world sea levels.

Nine people will be able to stay all winter long in the station, while more scientists will visit in summer, when it is sunnier though still bitterly cold. The annual temperature range is between plus 4 and minus 48 degrees Celsius.

The site has 40 beds in 15 apartments, as well as offices, laboratories and a small clinic.

The 1,850-square-metre station is run by Alfred Wegener Institute of Bremerhaven, the German federal polar research agency. (dpa)