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The Polarstern ship of the German Institute Alfred Wegener returned to the port of Bremerhaven after 389 days of drift ice in the Arctic. During the mission, the scientists collected vital information on the effects of global warming in the region. They brought home shocking evidence that the Arctic Ocean was “dying” and warned that the Arctic would be completely ice-free in a few decades.
“He’s back,” Antje Boetius, director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, said of Polarstern, which brought mission scientists from 20 countries.
“I have been waiting for this moment for so long that my heart beats … It is good to know that our ship and all the people on board are already home and that everything is fine,” Boetius said of another ship that accompanied Polarstern back. . to the port of Bremerhaven.
Mission Chief Markus Rex said he and his team of 300 scientists had seen “a place of truly extraordinary and unique beauty.”
“We really should make every effort to save this world … for future generations and take advantage of this little opportunity that we still have to do so,” he told a news conference.
Before the ship returned, Rex told AFP that scientists had seen with their own eyes the enormous impact of global warming on the ice in a region considered the “epicenter of climate change.”
“We have seen the Arctic Ocean die,” Rex said. “We saw the process right outside our windows or walking on brittle ice.”
The fact that a large amount of ice covering the ocean has melted is also demonstrated by the large sections of open water that have been traversed, in the words of M. Rex, sometimes extending “to the horizon.”
“At the North Pole itself, we found ice very melted, melted, thin and brittle,” he said, referring to an area where the ice is usually about two meters thick.
Arctic without ice
If the warming trend in the North Pole region continues, there will be no more ice in the Arctic in summers for a few decades, Rex stressed.
The Polarstern MOSAIC mission, which lasted more than a year, collected data on the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and ecosystems to better assess the impact of climate change on the region and the world.
Four sea ice monitoring sites were installed within a radius of up to 40 km around the ship.
The researchers took water samples from under the ice during the polar night to study phytoplankton and bacteria, and to better understand how the marine ecosystem functions under extreme conditions.
140 million The expedition also transported 150 terabytes of data and more than a thousand euros. ice samples.
The team measured more than 100 parameters almost continuously throughout the year and hopes that the information gathered will lead to a “breakthrough in understanding the Arctic and the climate system,” Rex said.
Sea ice physicist Thomas Krumpen added: “We are beginning the second phase: the data analysis. The ship was carrying a lot of data and we will probably have to work with it for the next 10 years. “
Many parameters will help create models that help predict what heat waves, rains, or storms will look like in 20, 50, or 100 years.
60 polar bears
Since September 20, 2019, when the ship set sail from Tromsø in Norway, the polar night lasted for many months, with air temperatures reaching -39.5 degrees Celsius.
During the mission, the team saw more than 60 polar bears. A bear that was too close had to be startled by a gunshot.
A bigger threat, however, was a coronavirus pandemic in the spring that left the crew stranded at the North Pole for two months.
An international team of scientists had to fly on board and replace scientists who had already spent several months on the ice, but the plan had to be changed after flights around the world were canceled, as governments rushed to stop the spread of the virus.
During the expedition, the German ship zigzagged 3.4 thousand. km, carried by the transarctic current. The trip was a huge logistical challenge and involved a large number of catering staff. In the first three months, the ship’s cargo was 14 thousand. eggs, 2 thousand. l of milk, 200 kg of rigor.
Radiance Calmer of the University of Colorado, who sailed the Polarstern from June to September, told AFP that he had had a “magical” moment when he came out of the ice.
“If you focus, you can feel it move,” he said.
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