Surveying the Arctic
On September 20th, a unique expedition will start: For one year, the research vessel "Polarstern", frozen in the ice, will drift across the North Pole. Expedition leader Markus Rex explains what insights he is hoping for.
Professor Rex, you are about to embark on a very special expedition: in an icebreaker you will be carried along the transpolar drift from Siberia across the North Pole to Greenland. How can you imagine that?
For the first time, we want to conduct research in the Central Arctic with a modern icebreaker all year round: beyond 80 degrees North, for a long time also in the immediate vicinity of the North Pole. Because the ice is too thick in winter, even the best research icebreakers can't get to these places at this time of the year. So we start already on September 20th from Tromsø, then sail in open water along the Siberian coast until we set course north at about 130 degrees East. There we break through the sea ice, which is quite thin in summer. With our German research icebreaker, the "Polarstern", and supported by the Russian icebreaker "Akademik Fedorov", we can reach a latitude of about 85 degrees north. Here we switch the machines to idle and let ourselves freeze into the ice. The "Akademik Fedorov" then sails back and the natural drift of the ice carries us past the North Pole, from the Siberian side of the Arctic across the North Pole towards Greenland, so that about a year later we are in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard come out again…
