Today we publish a collection of stories written by our researchers on Oden, August 15, 2026. Hanna Winge becomes stranded on an ice floe as the mist rolls in, Irene Bellagente has to repair a broken aerosol research instrument, Linnea Huusko explores the on-board gym and Matthew Shupe shares his thoughts on the mood of the crew.
The threatening thaw: climate professor on heatwave risks to tipping point of permafrost
We are steaming northward at 88 N through a vast ocean of open water embedded within the ice pack. In two directions I cannot see the next ice, while in the other two the ice is very far away.
Tellus is proud to be an official partner and sponsor of the conference "Integrating Scales in Planetary Biology: From Cells to Biodiversity & Planetary Resilience", taking place in Uppsala, Sweden, on 28–30 October 2026.
On 29 September 2026, the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat and a number of Universities and Institutes will host the Swedish National IPY V Scoping Workshop.
Surely it must be melting? As we are moving northward in our journey I’m surprised to find almost no active melt ponds on the sea ice. Instead, in the middle of August, the ice floes are the bright white of fresh snow; The surface reflecting as many photons as it can to preserve the ice from its potential future demise.
One of the things we in the met team do is launch radiosondes (weather balloons). A radiosonde is a small instrument that is attached to a helium-filled balloon. The balloon is released and allowed to rise through the atmosphere. As it rises, the instrument measures the temperature, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity. On Oden, we release radiosondes four times a day, every day, at 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, and 18:00.
On Monday evening, we arrived in Longyearbyen and boarded I/B Oden to start our six-week journey into the Arctic. We got to the ship in the evening, around 21:00, tired after travelling all the way to Svalbard (some of us from Sweden, some all the way from Canada), but you probably couldn’t tell. The energy in the group was bubbling; I was giddy with excitement about finally getting to start the expedition!
After more than a year on hold, Sweden's research satellite MATS is returning to science operations this month. The mission is led from the Department of Meteorology (MISU) at Stockholm University, where project leader Linda Megner and principal investigator Jörg Gumbel head the scientific team. Operations were paused from April 2025 until June 2026 because of a clerical error in the licensing of the radio frequencies MATS uses to communicate. With the paperwork corrected, the satellite is once again cleared to send its data home.
From the past to the future: how does the study of natural climate archives advance our understanding of future climate change? by Dr. Valérie Masson-Delmotte
Can we deliberately influence the climate to slow warming — and should we? These are the central questions in a new interdisciplinary research project led by Frida Bender, professor of climate modelling at the Department of Meteorology.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2026 report reveals the true scale of the biodiversity crisis has not yet been fully understood, but rapid data and technology advances offer hope.
