By Tom Metcalfe – Live Science Contributor 3 days ago Planet Earth
It’s studying the interactions between the Arctic and the global climate.
The RV Polarstern will soon set sail and deliberately trap itself in Arctic sea ice. Hundreds of scientists from 17 countries will study the ice, oceans, and atmosphere during the expedition across the Arctic Ocean.
(Image credit: Stefan Hendricks/Alfred Wegener Institute)
The German icebreaker RV Polarstern will spend about a year adrift in the Arctic Ocean, surrounded by thick floating sea ice.
The Polarstern is the most advanced research icebreaker in the world, and the expedition leaders calculate it will be unharmed by being stuck in the Arctic sea ice.
(Image credit: Mario Hoppmann/Alfred Wegener Institute)
One of the world’s most indestructible ships will depart Norway in a few weeks, bound for the Arctic Ocean, where it will spend the winter deliberately trapped in sea ice, drifting wherever the winds take it.
The powerful icebreaker, called the RV Polarstern, has an ambitious goal: to determine how climate change is reshaping the Arctic. The 13-month-long, $130 million expedition, called Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAIC), has been planned for years and will require more than 600 scientists and technical staff.
The ship sets sail Sept. 20 from Tromsø, in northern Norway, and it will head eastward along the coast of Russia. Expedition leader Markus Rex, of the Alfred-Wegener Institute (which operates the Polarstern), said the ship will likely enter floating sea ice in mid-October, and then will drift across the Arctic, surrounded by ice, until next summer, before returning to its home port in Bremerhaven, Germany, in the fall.
Getting stuck in floating sea ice would spell the end for most ships, but Rex said the Polarstern is tough enough to handle it.
Related: Images of Melt: Earth’s Vanishing Ice
“Our ship is one of the most powerful and most capable research icebreakers that exist,” Rex told Live Science.”There could be huge pressure from the ice … but we know the strength of our vessel. We are not in danger of losing our ship.”
HT/Yooper
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“Erebus at 378 tons (bm) and Terror at 331 tons (bm) were sturdily built, and were outfitted with recent inventions. Steam engines were fitted to drive a single screw in each vessel; these engines were former locomotives from the London & Croydon Railway and enabled the ships to make 7.4 km/h (4 kn) on their own power”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin's_lost_expedition#Ships,_provisions_and_crew
I wonder if RV Polarstern is this well-equipped.
Any ship of that size will carry one or two ship service electrical generators with diesel engines sized for efficient operation at the rated load.
Quick search was unable to find the exact engineering specs for the Polarstern. Also, she was retrofitted in 2017 for more modern systems.
Guessing a one year on station electrical load of 300000 kilowatthours. A modern diesel electric plant might deliver around 3 kWh per liter of diesel. Therefore, the Polarstern will use at least 100000 liters of diesel during the expedition.
Rounding off the density to 1 kilogram per liter, that comes to 100 metric tonnes.
For many years scientists lived and did science on ice islands. An Ice Island is a large piece of floating ice protruding about 5 m above sea level, which has broken away from an Arctic ice shelf. They have a thickness of 30-50 m and an area of from a few thousand square metres to 500 km2 or more.
Scientists Rescue Historical Data Taken on Floating Ice Island.
https://eos.org/articles/scientists-rescue-historical-data-taken-on-floating-ice-island
bwegher: I think you’re assumptions are a wee bit light on power needs. First the gensets will have to carry more that the traditional electrical load, they will also have to provide heat and water. Traditionally heating was captured from waste heat from the main engines which will be shut down in this case. Similarly with distillation plants, they used waste heat from the main engines. All that plumbing is hard wired in the design of the vessel so changing the heat sources for a single, ambitious, expedition is unlikely. AND, they will have to use the propulsion plant to maintain the safe attitude of the ship and to orient it for the prevailing sea/ice conditions. I doubt she can carry enough fuel for a year on her own. In my distant youth I studied ships and (as I recall) here’s an amazing factoid: the Iowa Class battleships carried 8800 TONS of fuel.
Iowa had a 212,000 hp powerplant that could make a 45,000 ton ship go 33 knots….
This has been done twice before, by Fram in 1893-96 and by Sedov in 1937-40.
Fram found the ice to be about 3 meters thick on average and Sedov about 1.5 meters.
The latter figure is still about right:
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/sidata/thk_ts_0.large.png?version=1
tty (also for Mosher,
Three times actually. In fall 1997, the SHEBA (Surface Heat Exchange Balance of the Arctic) expedition, based onboard the Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker Des Groseilliers forced its way into the Arctic ice. Stayed there overwinter through summer 1998. Finally broke free of the sea ice in October 1998 at latitude 79 degrees and was able to head south. NOTE! Only the crew of the ice breaker stayed onboard over-winter! The scientific members flew in and out over the spring and summer months as they saw fit to tend experiments and equipment.
Dr Judith Curry was aboard for many months, Dr Perovich was lead researcher. Their data is the ONLY available information on the vital mid-summer, July, August, and Sept ice albedos since the mid-70’s!
The Russian ice stations NP-2 through NP31 were based on top of the sea ice in huts and tents for months to years at a time. Their solar radiation data of direct radiation, diffuse radiation and upward LW radiation for all observed clear days and cloudy days, albedos and solar elevation observations data is available in Handbook of the Radiation Regime of the Arctic Basin (Results of the Drift Stations) by M.S. Marshunova and AA. Mishin, translated and published in English in the APL-UW TR 9413, December 1994. Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, 98105-6698.
See also the excellent book The Arctic Ice Station, results from the Russian Drifting Stations, by Ivan E. Frolov, Springer-Praxis Publishing, 2010. History, observations, meteorology (air temperature, wind speeeds, pressures, humidity, and drift directions), sea temperatures and sea depths and salinity is essential in developing a history of the Arctic conditions from Fram through the 30 Russian stations through next years (hopefully successful!) next ice breaker.
Let us hope they have it on board.
I was only considering ships that have drifted across the whole Arctic basin.
Among shorter drifting expeditions you might also have included the Papanin expedition (NP-1) in 1937-38 and the Maud expedition (1918-20, 1922-25) and perhaps even the Jeanette (1879-81).
Do I detect a bit of hubris here? My goodness, I think this is very dangerous. On second thought, this is a joke, right?
It’s going to have a huge carbon footprint so it may at least contribute to the greening of the Sahara:
Four icebreakers from Russia, China and Sweden are going to keep up the fuel supplies and change personnel.
The German research aircraft Polar 5 and Polar 6 will be operated to complement the measurements at the central MOSAiC site. A landing strip will be built especially for these research planes and for resupply flights in spring 2020.
Helicopters will be employed. Fuel depots for long-range helicopters have been set up on Bolshevik Island to broaden the spectrum of response options to potential emergency situations during the expedition.