North Pole mission may improve forecasts and climate information
A daring attempt to send a research vessel completely trapped in ice across the North Pole could lead to more accurate weather and climate forecasts, say scientists.
Stranded and unable to move,thervpolarsternwillbe carried by slowly flowing ice as the bitterly cold and constantly dark Arctic winter closes in.
During the year-long 1,553 mile (2,500km) voyage, teams of scientists – protected from polar bears by armed guards – will take measurements and make observations that have never been possible before.
The bold venture, called MOSAIC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate), echoes a famous polar expedition more than a century ago.
In 1893 Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen tried to reach the North Pole by allowing his vessel, the Fram, to freeze in place and drift with the ice. He and his crew eventually abandoned the ship, which continued to drift past the pole, emerging between Greenland and the Svalbard island group in what is now known as the Fram Strait.
While Nansen’s goal was the Pole, the purpose of the €50 million (£42.7m) MOSAIC expedition being undertaken in 2019 is purely scientific.
Co-leader Professor Markus Rex, from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany, said: “The plan is to travel in summer when sea ice is thin and sea extent is much smaller. We will make our way with our ice-breaker to the Siberian sector of the Arctic. Then we just stop the engines and drift with the sea ice.
“By late November we’ll sit in solid sea ice. It will get colder; the ice will grow in extent and thickness. By then we’ll have set up a network of stations on the ice, some close and some 20 or 30km away. We’ll have a network of stations on the ice with a central observatory. The whole thing will drift across the Arctic. We’ll just passively drift across the polar cap until we reach the Fram Strait.”
Fifty institutions from 14 countries, including the UK, US and Russia, are taking part in the project.
Knowledge gained from the expedition could transform our understanding of climate change and even help forecasters improve their predictions of weather in the UK, said Prof Rex, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting.
What happens in the Arctic, where climate change is occurring faster than anywhere else on Earth, has a major impact on the weather in northern Europe and North America. Yet the forces at work are not well understood because gaining access to the region is so difficult.