MOSAiC Blog: The Drift Has Begun!

 
Published: 5 October 2019

Editor’s note: Matt Boyer and Janek Uin, ARM instrument mentors from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, are traveling for the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) field campaign. Boyer sent this blog post from the field.

This was an incredible day for several reasons. After a few days of cargo operations with the other icebreaker, the Akademik Fedorov, today marks the first official day that the ship is parked in the selected ice floe to freeze in. The drift has begun! There are already teams of experts out working on the ice to survey and plan the setup of the scientific observatories on the floe. The days ahead will be very busy once a plan is in place.

Also, the weather was clear this morning, and we all woke up to a beautiful sunrise on the horizon. This sunrise was especially sweet for all of us currently on board the ship because it may have been the last direct sunlight the ship will see before the start of polar night!

After lunch, everyone on board was permitted to walk out onto the ice for a bit of recreation. It was a lot of fun to stretch our legs on the ice for a while and explore a little piece of the ship’s home for the next year.

Read other MOSAiC blogs from Boyer and Uin.

Janek Uin, an ARM instrument mentor from Brookhaven National Laboratory, kneels in front of the Polarstern. He shares: “We are finally frozen in by our chosen ice floe, and everybody was allowed to go on the ice near the ship for an hour. People were taking pictures and even playing football on the ice.”