Thank you for sharing your experiences of doing this research. I will pray for you, your crew and all those working in these dangerous conditions that everything goes well and safely this summer. I wish the climate denial crowd could read things like this and realize how completely absurd their idea of scientists conspiring to create global warming to gain funding really is!
I am on my way to northern Greenland and just arrived badly time-lagged in Diez near Frankfurt from Philadelphia. Together with fellow scientists and technicians from Germany, Poland, and Canada, I hope to board Germany’s research icebreaker FS Polarstern early next week in Bremerhaven. Her departure has been delayed by two weeks for engine troubles that needed repairs beyond routine maintenance after she returned from Antarctica last month. She is the most heavily used science ice-breaker and spends more than 300 days at sea every year.
R/V Polarstern in Arctic ice 2008. [Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven]
We hope to deploy instruments to measure ocean currents that transport heat to melt Greenland’s glaciers, but more on that elsewhere. This work is facilitated mostly by Germany’s Alfred-Wegener-Institute and limited funds from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The mooring program on the continental shelf off Greenland near 79 degrees North latitude is…
View original post 530 more words