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April 12, 2007
BY AIRSHIP TO THE
NORTH POLE -- ZEPPELIN
EXPEDITION WILL SURVEY SEA ICE IN THE ARCTIC
In 2008, scientists
will, for the
very first time, create a continual profile of ice thickness in the
Artic,
extending from the Canadian coast across the North Pole to Siberia.
At the core of the project lies the crossing of the North Pole by
zeppelin. The
airship will be equipped with an electromagnetic sensor developed at
the Alfred
Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, one of the 15 research
centers
within the Helmholtz Association. The sensational project of French
physician
Jean-Louis Etienne is financed by the French oil company Total and will
be
presented in Berlin
on April 5.
Background
The extent of sea
ice cover in
the Arctic Ocean
is declining strongly. This
reduction in the North represents a stark contrast to sea ice cover in
the
Antarctic where even a slight increase is detectable. “There
is almost no
information about regional distribution of ice thickness in the Arctic and Antarctic”,
explains Dr Christian Haas,
geophysicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute. “This lack of
knowledge is a
consequence of major methodological problems associated with measuring
ice
floes of only several meters thickness, and of the logistical
difficulties of
venturing into the central Arctic.”
The
development of ice cover in the polar oceans represents one of the key
questions in climate research, and hence is among the core research
topics
during the International Polar Year 2007 / 2008.
An
Electromagnetic Bird Above the Arctic
The Alfred Wegener
Institute is
the only research institute worldwide to have been conducting sporadic
measurements of sea ice thickness in the High Arctic, i.e. between Spitsbergen, the North Pole and
the Canadian coast.
Facilitated by the privately organized, French PoleAirship project,
this
research can now be significantly advanced. The physician and explorer
Jean-Louis Etienne, financially supported by French oil company Total,
is
providing the unique opportunity to cross the Arctic
by airship. During the crossing, the so-called EM-Bird, an instrument
specifically developed at the Alfred Wegener Institute to measure ice
thickness, will be able to collect ice thickness data for the first
time
continually and across extensive regions of the whole Arctic.
In April of 2008, the airship will fly from Spitsbergen to the Canadian
coast
via the North Pole, and then on to Alaska,
whilst surveying the main sea ice regions in the Arctic.
The resulting data set will permit comparisons with previous
measurements and
can serve as a reference for future campaigns. A continual ice
thickness
profile, extending from the Canadian coast across the North Pole to the
Siberian Arctic, will be the unparalleled first-time product of the
expedition.
The PoleAirship mission should also be viewed within the context of the
large-scale EU project DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modelling and
Observing
Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies), ongoing since 2005
and
uniting 44 scientific institutions from 10 European countries in their
extensive investigations of ocean atmosphere and sea ice.
In April 2007, the
PoleAirship
project will first venture towards the North Pole without the airship,
in order
to collect an initial set of reference data by helicopter, as well as
to test
the accuracy of the measuring technique. For this purpose, scuba divers
and a
remotely operated vehicle will be used to compare the actual with the
electromagnetically determined thickness of press ice backs up to 50
meters
thick. The research team will stay in tents on the ice, and will be
supplied
from aircraft.
##
Contact:
Angelika
Dummermuth
Alfred
Wegener Institute for Polar
and Marine Research
49-471-483-11742
Angelika.Dummermuth@awi.de
This
text
derived from:
http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de/index-e.html
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