Scientists forced to wait for polar mission

SCIENTISTS waiting to join an Arctic research mission aimed at improving the models used for forecasting climate change had prepared for the icy temperatures and trained to be on the alert for polar bears, but a pandemic was not part of the programme.

Now they are waiting in quarantine for the all-clear to join the year-long expedition, just as it is reaching a crucial phase.

For a while it looked likely that the international mission would have to be called off, as country after country went into lockdown because of the coronavirus, scuppering plans to take fresh supplies and crew to the German research vessel Polarstern, which has been moored in the high Arctic since last year.

News of the Covid-19 pandemic caused jitters among those already on board, said Matthew Shupe, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado and coleader of the MOSAiC expedition.

“Some people just wanted to be home with their families,” he said in a video interview from the German port of Bremerhaven, where he and about 90 other scientists and crew have been kept in isolation to ensure they are virusfree.

Organisers at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Ocean Research managed to fly out a handful of people via Canada last month. The rest of the crew will be exchanged with the help of two other German research ships that will meet the Polarstern on the sea ice edge.

That forthcoming rendezvous will force the Polarstern to abandon its current position for three weeks at a critical time in the Arctic cycle.

“We are on the cusp right now of the onset of the sea ice melt season and that’s a really important transition,” said Mr Shupe.

“That could happen when the ship is gone,” he said. “It’s a distinct risk we face.”

To avoid missing out on key data, researchers will leave some instruments behind, including a 36ft (11m) tower used for atmospheric measurements, and hope that it is still there when they return.

“The ice could just come together and destroy everything,” said Mr Shupe. “Hopefully that doesn’t happen.”

Scientists on the €140m (£122.2m) expedition have already gathered valuable data since setting out last September with 100 researchers and crew from 17 nations including the United States, France, China and Britain.

The intense interest into research about the coronavirus could have a positive knock-on effect for fields such as climate science, said Mr Shupe.

“Everybody is now looking at the new for models of how this [virus] spreads,” he said.

“Perhaps this actually opens the door to more people to understand the climate problem.”