Five DAMOCLES expeditions currently in the Arctic
Five DAMOCLES research ships are carrying out ground breaking research in the Artctic this autumn. Read more about Tara, Polarstern, Akademik Fedorov, Lance and Viktor Buinitskiy.
The polar schooner Tara is embedded in ice and drifting in the style of Fram.
Tara
On September 3, 2007 the polar schooner Tara celebrated its first year in the polar ice. She is embedded in ice and drifting in the style of Fram. The drift however, is twice as fast as expected and Tara could reach the Arctic Ocean as soon as December. Scientists on board are running ten different reseach programmes and are collecting data related to sea ice, atmosphere and ocean. Its location, in the heart of Arctic Ocean will allow to service a sophisticated autonomous buoys web, disseminated in a 500km range around the ship.
The summer crew is being replaced by a new winter crew in week 38.
Polarstern
The German ice breaker Polarstern has recently dicovered that large areas of the Artic ice is only one metre deep which means the thickness of the ice has halved since 2001. The ship belongs to the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and the main objective of the researchers is to to quantify and understand past and present environmental and social changes in the polar regions, and to improve projections of future change.
On bopard Polarstern are scientists from Germany, Russia, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, US, Switzerland, Japan, France and China. They are deploing oceanographic measuring buoys which are able to drift freely in the Arctic Ocean while collecting data on currents, temperature and saltiness of the sea water.
Akademik Fedorov
Scientists from the US, Russia, Germany and France are installing the new Russian drifting station NP35 which are vital to the DAMOCLES data collection programme. The 36 participants left Tiksi on 29 August 2007 and will locate a stable ice floe to base the drifting station near Wrangle Island. The ice floe will drift in the Arctic Ocean and across the North Pole. During the drift, the station's measurements will provide current climate change data. The project is scheduled to last eight months, but that depends on how stable the ice floe turns out to be.
Researchers will also collect atmospheric measurements and investigate the upper ocean layer and sea ice, along with the snow cover.
Lance
Scientists from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, UK and Norway are investigating ice melting and changes in ocean currents in the Fram strait.
Viktor Buinitskiy
Scientists from US, Russia, Canada, UK, France, Germany participate in the NABOS cruise. They will be recovering and deploing moorings (MMP) along the continental slope north of Spitsbergen and north of Severnaya Zemlya.
The cruise is split into two legs. The first half will take place in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas and include mooring recovery and deployment and oceanographic observations. The ship will then return to Longyearbyen, Svalbard to pick up more scientific equipment and personnel and then the voyage will continue to the Barents Sea for mooring work and other measurements.
