Our expedition into the Arctic is called MOSAiC, which stands for Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. In late September, I joined nearly 100 researchers from all over the world and tons of scientific equipment onboard a 400-foot long icebreaking ship called Polarstern. We left Norway, sailed into the Arctic Ocean, and then broke our way into the sea-ice heading towards the North Pole. After lots of searching, we found a nice chunk of ice and anchored our ship to it; this is the ice that we will drift with and study for a full year!
On board the ship, we set up instruments that look up at the sky, and others that suck in air or ocean water. Some instruments measure the amount of sunlight, and others measure how cold the air temperature is. The ship also has laboratories with fancy instruments for testing ice and water samples for their different chemical and biological properties. Out on the ice around the ship, we used helicopters and snowmobiles to install equipment to look at the amount of energy that reaches the ice from the atmosphere and ocean; to measure the sea-ice thickness; and to observe how the ice moves and breaks. All of these measurements together will teach us about how the Arctic functions and how it is changing.
With my research, I want to understand how clouds affect the heat at the surface of the ice and therefore be able to assess how much the sea ice grows or melts. When I was in the darkness of the Arctic this winter, the clouds were acting like a blanket and were warming the ice. So, even though it was very cold outside, when the clouds were present they would slow down the wintertime ice growth. It is so interesting to discover how things work!
