I am Matthew Shupe, a research scientist from the University of Colorado and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and I have just returned from four months in the Arctic! As the Earth’s climate changes, the biggest changes are happening in the Arctic. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting, permafrost is thawing and the Arctic sea ice is declining. It is this declining sea ice that motivated me and a large group of scientists to organize a major, international scientific expedition into the middle of that changing sea ice.
We want to go there to study how and why the ice is changing so much. We want to understand why the ice is thinner now than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and why the spatial extent of sea ice is declining so rapidly. We also want to understand how the changing ice impacts the rest of the Earth system. For example, how does the changing Arctic affect the weather we experience at home, and how might that alter the food web? With this expedition, we hope to get the right information to build and improve models that help us forecast the weather, predict the climate and monitor the ecosystem. Since the Arctic is changing so quickly, it is important for us scientists to go there and unravel some of its mysteries now.
