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.
The effort begins Friday, when the German icebreaker RV Polarstern sets sail from the Norwegian port of Tromso with scores of researchers and hundreds of tons of scientific equipment onboard. As winter darkness descends on the Arctic, the adventurers will allow the sea to freeze around their vessel, trapping them. The Polarstern will spend the next 12 months drifting slowly across the pole as scientists collect crucial observations on the water, the ice, the air and the living inhabitants, until summer melting finally sets the ship free.
The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) is the largest Arctic research project in history and one of humanity’s greatest efforts to understand how melting at the pole will affect the rest of the planet.
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