German Research Vessel Gets Stuck In Thick Arctic Drift Ice
Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) climatologists remain involuntarily stuck in thick pack ice while two sister ships wait in a fjord at Spitsbergen. Let’s see how long this is going to take.
German icebreaker and research vessel “Polarstern” has been drifting through the central Arctic on a 140 million euro MOSAIC research expedition since the beginning of October 2019.
But the Arctic – they have inconveniently discovered – is strongly frozen at its highest level in the last five years.
Stopped by two-year, thick ice
The climatologists had prematurely abandoned their floe on Saturday, May 16, 2020, to make their way to Spitsbergen by Monday, May 25, but had to stop their engines already on Monday, May 18, because the two-year drift ice was too thick, they reported.
On May 20, the researchers on board the Polarstern vessel wrote “two-year ice” is making travel “very difficult to impossible.” Image: MOSAIC.
They wish to reach Spitsbergen by Sunday, May 24, 2020, in order to meet up with two sister ships to take on supplies and a new crew.
This is to avoid further evacuations like the one on April 22, when seven participants of expedition leg 3 were flown out by a Twin Otter. They should have been replaced in early April.
Shortly after Easter the vessel had left the drift corridor and drifted southwards in 2- to 3-meter-thick pack ice toward Spitsbergen.
There, ice masses of 4-meter thickness awaited them and thus the biggest and thickest ice surfaces for many years.
The expedition and crew now aim to meet the German research vessels “FS Sonne” and “FS Maria S. Merian” (ice class E3 up to 0.8 meters of ice thickness) in “calm waters” off Spitsbergen and exchange the entire personnel and to resupply.
However, the current drift calculator shows the Polarstern will unlikely reach Spitsbergen on schedule.
The Polarstern had been planned to reach the North Pole, but never reached it.
Read more at No Tricks Zone
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Please DONATE TODAY
Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.
Trackback from your site.
Brian James
| #
Articles like these need to make it into the mainstream media.
Dec 9, 2019 48 Years of Alaska’s Glaciers by NASA Goddard
New time-lapse videos of Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets as seen from space – spanning nearly 50 years – are providing scientists with new insights into how the planet’s frozen regions are changing.
https://youtu.be/E4Zc_KuXMkA
Reply
jerry krause
| #
Hi Pierre and Brian,
You reported: “German icebreaker and research vessel “Polarstern” has been drifting through the central Arctic on a 140 million euro MOSAIC research expedition since the beginning of October 2019.”
Why is the cost of the MOSAiC Expedition an issue. Maybe we can hope that the many scientists involved will discover that real SCIENCE is based upon actual measurements and observations. For more than once I have read that some fundamental observation are to validate the claimed measurement and observations being made from satellites.
The possibility that the satellite observations and measurements might not valid is a honest admission. For the thickness of ice, as measured of from satellite, might be, or might not be, valid is critically important. The observed fact that the ice sheet is covered by an insulating layer of snow of variable thickness is critically important.
And Brian, he observed fact of white animal predators, far from the coasts of continents and islands, which likely cannot be seen from a satellite, seems important. For these animals tell me that nothing has changed in this isolated portion of the Earth.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply