Scientists participating in the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) have finally found the ice floe that will freeze around the research icebreakers they boarded for a full year.
For months, the team surveyed satellite images to find the perfect slab of robust and thick ice, which will trap them into the Arctic sea and carry them across the North Pole. However, due to the rapid increase in global temperature, they encountered extreme thin ice conditions that are too flimsy to keep the icebreakers stable.
The ice floe has to be large enough to accommodate an entire research village complete with roads for snowmobiles, power lines, and towers for gathering data from the atmosphere.
On Oct. 4, the team caught a lucky break. They officially announced that they had found an ice floe that was four to five meters thick, just the right specification for the mission. With this discovery, MOSAiC is one step closer to its goal.
MOSAiC set off to the North Pole on Sept. 20, the most ambitious and unprecedented polar expeditions of all time, to investigate climate change in that part of the planet. Two research icebreakers, Germany's Polarstern and Russia's Akademik Fedorov, along with roughly a hundred scientists, are to be frozen into the Arctic ice and drift across the North Pole to gather a vast array of data.
The science mission aims to bridge the large gap between the uncertain climate model projections and the current state of the region's climate. It will observe and gather data on every aspect of the Arctic region, including cloud cover, cloud properties, atmospheric conditions, sea-ice changes, ocean chemistry, and the ecosystem.
A conference was hosted by the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco to discuss why scientists are having difficulty in capturing what is happening to the Arctic sea in climate models. Participating delegates concluded that the scarcity of data on the parameters mentioned above, and on the physics that govern interactions between the sea ice, the ocean, and the atmosphere, lead to the failure of climate models to fully capture the effect of rising global temperatures on the rate at which the Arctic sea ice is diminishing.
MOSAiC's data can, therefore, pave the way to a better understanding of the Arctic system, improve the existing climate models not just for the region but for the whole planet as well, and validate data gathered by satellites. Needless to say, the deluge of data will benefit the scientific community. Moreover, it can serve as a justification for policy decisions regarding climate change action and adaptation.
Even if the first critical hurdle of finding a suitable ice floe was solved, the MOSAiC team is bound to face more challenges. The exact destination of the icebreaker is still unknown. Statistical data on the trans-polar drift of Arctic ice predicts that Polarstern will end up in the Fram Strait located between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago. Until then, the team will have to brace themselves against the unpredictability of the Arctic.
