World’s biggest Arctic expedition will strand hundreds for a year to explore climate change

Hundreds of scientists are about to strand themselves in sea ice in the North Pole – an ambitious effort to understand the consequences of a changing climate in the fastest-warming part of the globe.

A decade in the making, the project costs at least $134 million. Its members come from 60 institutions in 17 countries, led by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute. Soon after departure, the project’s coordinators will face a crucial decision: To which floe should they link their fates? If it drifts too far in any direction, the Polarstern could end up beyond the reach of emergency rescuers, or in waters where Russia prohibits the collection of scientific data.

Most of the researchers will live and work aboard the Polarstern for two months at a time, then switch with the next team, like participants in a gigantic intellectual relay race. Virtually their only link to the rest of the world will be the ships and aircraft scheduled to arrive at the end of each leg – winter blizzards and stormy seas permitting – to swap out passengers and restock food and fuel.

But the deep cold and impenetrable dark of the central Arctic make it almost impossible to study during the winter; planes can’t fly, and even the strongest icebreakers can’t traverse the frozen seas. Drifting with the ice, as the Polarstern is doing, is the only way to access this remote part of the planet in its harshest season. But a successful transpolar drift has been achieved just twice before, and never by a modern research vessel.

But MOSAiC is “not just an intellectual exercise,” Perovich added. Research suggests that rising temperatures and declining sea ice in the Arctic are having dangerous ripple effects across the globe.

Funny thing... the planet moves in and out of ice ages. There are ice caps on both poles at the moment. Ask any geologist: we are presently slowly exiting the current ice age.

See that big glowy thing in the sky? It decides the temperature.

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