RV Polarstern -- considered as one of the indestructible ships in the planet -- will soon set sail for the Arctic Ocean. It will depart from Norway in the coming weeks and deliberately travel to the Arctic and get itself trapped in the midst of all the sea ice, drifting along with it as the wind takes charge.
Known as a powerful icebreaker, the RV Polarstern, brings with it an ambitious goal as it is set to sail the Arctic. It wished to determine how climate change has reshaped the Arctic. This expedition is worth $130 million and will last for 13-months and is known as the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of the Arctic Climate (MOSAIC). It took years to plan the project that required the combined efforts of at least 600 scientists and their staff members.
The ship is set to leave Tromso, the coast at the Northern part of Norway headed eastward to travel along the coastlines of Russia. Markus Rex from the Alfred-Wegener Institute (the operator of the Polarstern) also acts as the expedition leader said that the target date when the ship would be entering the floating ice is in mid-October of this year. It is then expected to drift across the Arctic stuck in the middle of floating ice until the turn of Summer next year. By fall next year, it is expected to have returned to its home port in Germany.
For most ships, getting stuck in ice would spell out the end of their journey but Rex is confident in saying that the Polarstern is tough enough to take on the challenge.
"Our ship is one of the toughest icebreakers that exists today. It is the best one to take for research," Rex told representatives from Live Science. "Huge pressure could come from the ice, but we know that our vessel is strong enough to withstand that. We are not worried that our ship might lose."
Climate change is believed to have brought about alterations in the Arctic circle. Each September, the Arctic ice seem to cover only a small area, not even around half of what it used to cover 30 years ago. The scientists feel that their knowledge of the Arctic as well as the lives that thrive in it have become outdated.
Some of the changes that are happening in the Arctic can be spied from afar using the latest satellite imagery. And yet, there remains to be a number of local processes that have changed through time and have become difficult to understand. From its expected location in the midst of the ice, the MOSAIC Expedition will provide an avenue for scientists to take a look at these changes first hand.
The expedition will happen in different phases and in each phase, a goal is set. People may need to be transported in and out of the Polarstern throughout the course by four other icebreakers. But the goal remains the same. Scientists will study the Arctic to better understand how the changes in the region could impact the rest of the world.
