We brought out power and data cables and set up a wireless connection between scientific sites and the ship. Lots of this work had to be done with only manpower and snowmobiles to help with transportation! As I learned quickly, an ice floe is quite dynamic. When cracks occurred, a team of logistics people had to go out on the ice at any time of day or night to rearrange the cables.
I also helped scientists take samples and measurements on the ice, so I got insight into how much effort it takes to get all this valuable data. There are many different instruments. Some are very small, like a temperature sensor to measure snow or air temperature. Some are very big, standing many meters tall with multiple instruments to measure what happens under, in, and above the floe. They measure wind, temperature, currents, ice movements, clouds, phytoplankton and much more. Scientists took snow samples, drilled ice cores and collected water. Sometimes they had to walk out on the ice for many hours to take all their measurements or were out all day in the cold to take all the samples they needed.
My job on board was to support scientists to upload all these measurements and information on gathered samples to the MOSAiC Central Storage, a huge file storage providing space for several hundred Terabytes of scientific data. Several backups of the data were made in case data is lost or hardware breaks. To help understand the data and compare it, it is important that we always know the position, time and device associated with the data or samples that were created. I helped the scientists register their scientific devices and actions in the field. This helps us to make sure the information is always available, even long after the expedition ends.
