We just had an amazing blizzard, at least for Arctic standards. The snow was coming down, like one of those powder days back home in the Colorado mountains when you can’t wait to get up to the slopes to ski some light and fluffy turns.
For the second year in a row, students and faculty from the University of Cincinnati visited the Bolin Centre for Climate Research at Stockholm University, continuing an exchange focused on climate, environment and human health.
There has been a fascinating transition happening in the past two days. The open, ocean water in between ice floes has started to freeze. This process begins with the formation of grease ice. It is clearly some sort of “solid” interface sitting on top of the water, although it is still quite flexible allowing waves to propagate through.
The water cycle is changing in different ways across the world as the planet warms. A new study shows that the amount of water evaporating from land is increasing in the Northern Hemisphere but decreasing in the Southern Hemisphere. Looking only at the global average hides these differences, with implications for drought, flooding and water availability.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we reached the North Pole and now we are moving around the other side of the Arctic Ocean. Since we left from Svalbard we have lived in constant daylight, but lately we have been experiencing almost a day-night cycle. In the morning when we wake up, it’s very bright outside.
One of my main scientific interests in the Central Arctic is the interaction between the atmosphere and surface. Surface exchanges of heat, moisture, movement, gases, and particles are very important for the Arctic and the global systems.
Yesterday we saw a polar bear! It is actually not the first one we have come across, we also saw one a couple of days ago, but that one was so far away that it was hard to see it even with binoculars. But last night I got a call on my ship phone as I had just gone to bed, and Faustine told me that there was a polar bear close to the ship. I called Melissa, in the met team phone chain we had established in case there was a bear sighting – no one wants to miss that!
I’ve felt increasingly uneasy about the state of the Arctic system as we’ve travelled north, and then south after passing the North Pole. So much open water. Large stretches, and one after another. It made for smooth sailing, but it’s not a good sign for the ice. At the same time, apart from our first day in the ice, we’ve seen almost no open melt ponds (perhaps a better sign for the ice!).
I was asked if I went on vacation prior to this expedition. Several people I have spoken with spent time on holiday before the expedition. I have spent the summer working almost every day, preparing major projects for my PhD before I departed for Oden, knowing that I will not be able to attend to them while I am away.
Today we arrived at the North Pole! When we started getting close to the pole we all gathered on the bridge as the crew guided Oden as close as possible to 90°N. As far as I was able to tell, we reached 89°59.9960’N, which is only a few meters from the true North Pole (measured from the center of the ship). We celebrated reaching the pole with (nonalcoholic) bubbles and a fanfare on cornet and clarinet.
Researchers from Stockholm University are part of an international research team that has discovered a previously unknown source of methane beneath the northern Greenland Ice Sheet.
What happens to carbon when glaciers retreat? This is the central question for researchers heading to the fjords of south-east Greenland this week.
