U.S. satellite images show Arctic sea ice hit its second-lowest summer minimum on record, after 2012.
Berlin, Germany:
Researchers from the world‘s largest mission to the North Pole will return to dock on Monday, bringing home the devastating evidence of a dying Arctic ocean and warnings of ice-free summers just decades away.
The German Institute’s Polarstern ship Alfred Wegener is set to return to the port of Bremerhaven after 389 days spent drifting in the Arctic trapped in ice, allowing scientists to gather vital information on the effects of global warming in the region.
The team of several hundred scientists from 20 countries saw for themselves the dramatic effects of global warming on the ice in the region, considered “the epicenter of climate change”, according to the chief of mission Markus Rex.
“We have witnessed the death of the Arctic Ocean,” Rex told AFP. “We saw this process right outside our windows, or when we walked on the fragile ice.”
Emphasizing how much the sea ice has melted, Rex said the mission was able to navigate through large bodies of open water, “sometimes stretching out to the horizon.”
“At the North Pole itself, we found very eroded, melted, thin and brittle ice.”
‘Arctic without ice’
If the warming trend of the North Pole continues, then in a few decades we will have “an ice-free Arctic in the summer,” Rex said.
The researchers’ observations were supported by US satellite imagery showing that in 2020, Arctic sea ice reached its second-lowest summer minimum on record, after 2012.
The Polarstern mission, dubbed MOSAIC, has spent over a year collecting data on the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and ecosystems to help assess the impact of climate change on the region and the world .
To carry out the research, four observation sites were set up on the pack ice within a radius of up to 40 kilometers around the ship.
Researchers took water samples under the ice during the polar night to study plant plankton and bacteria and better understand how the marine ecosystem works under extreme conditions.
The 140 million euro ($ 165 million) shipment also brings back 150 terabytes of data and over 1,000 ice samples.
“The expedition will, of course, produce results on many levels,” Rex said.
The team has measured more than 100 parameters almost continuously throughout the year and hopes the information will “lead to a breakthrough in understanding the Arctic and the climate system,” he said.
It will take up to two years to analyze the data, with the goal of developing models to help predict what heat waves, heavy rains or storms might look like in 20, 50 or 100 years.
20 polar bears
Since the ship’s departure from Tromso, Norway on September 20, 2019, the crew have experienced long months of total darkness, temperatures as low as -39.5 Celsius (-39.1 Fahrenheit) – and around 20 polar bears.
The mission was nearly derailed by the coronavirus pandemic in the spring, with the crew stranded at the North Pole for two months.
A multinational team of scientists was to fly as part of a scheduled relay to relieve those who had already spent several months on the ice, but the plan had to be redesigned when flights were canceled around the world as governments s were trying to stop the spread. of the coronavirus.
During the expedition, a rotating crew of 300 researchers spent time aboard the German ship as it traveled with the ice along a wind-driven route known as the transpolar drift.
Radiance Calmer, a researcher at the University of Colorado who was aboard the Polarstern from June to September, told AFP that going out on the ice was a “magical” moment.
“If you focus you can feel it moving,” she said.
The trip was a huge logistical challenge, especially when it came to feeding the crew – for the first three months the ship’s cargo included 14,000 eggs, 2,000 liters of milk and 200 kilograms of rutabaga.
The ship’s cook, Sven Schneider, did not underestimate the importance of his role in the mission.
“It was my job to keep the spirits of 100 people living in total darkness up,” he said in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
