Happy New Year 2024 (and sorry for the forum being offline some hours) /DM
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We thank you for what you have done to make this world a better place FOW!I have great respect for you! I fight polluters every day and it pisses me off!I have three kids and I worry about their future because of AGW. I guess we all have our weak spots, mine is my children. Sorry if I get overly emotional sometimes.
Trivia:In this German TV show 'DARK' (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5753856) i'm currently watching there are scenes from the 80s (it's about time travel and whatnot, good show). In one scene you hear the news on the radio. The newsreader talks about how the Polarstern just went for an expedition to research the Ozon hole in Antarctica.Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Polarstern is doing science since 1982 for us. 38 years!
BTW I just started the third season
It’s done! After 119 days in the ice, we past a super sharp ice edge. While the ice gave us a tough time since we left the @MOSAiCArctic floe 2.5 weeks ago, the transition into open water was rather quick. We will reach Isfjorden later today.
By Matthew Shupe6/19/20 Taking things head onWe ran into the floe. Directly. While scientifically we decided it would be best to moor to the floe along the ship’s port side to facilitate CTD operations, others onboard have been concerned about the Polarstern’s ability to hold its position alongside the floe in the face of ice pressure. We’ve, of course, experienced a lot of pressure thus far, which has been a great challenge at times. And so, the decision was made to instead drive straight into the floe and attempt to embed Polarstern. This type of position, the thinking goes, would allow the ship to be effectively protected from some of the ice forces by the floe itself. Polarstern cruised out from our parking spot from the last days and navigated around the floe to the south and then east, then cruised full speed ahead directly into the SE flank of the remaining MOSAiC floe. The ship was eventually stopped by the very thick ice, ridged and chunky. Backed up for another go, trying to embed further, but no such luck. The floe was not allowing such an entrance, and instead a crack opened up to the port side and another chunk of the floe broke off. Ever smaller the floe gets. In the morning the captain maneuvered the ship so that the starboard side was along the ice floe, and we will stick in this position and see how things go.
A lot of open water around the Polarstern these days...Water temperatures are minus 1.4˚C now.
The @MOSAiCArctic ice floe speeds up southwards and goes down the drain in Fram Strait
and finally a half way decent rammb of the 3 eddies in a row
bow radar shows the ship rotating wildly 270º in the last 24 hrs, still attached to the floe but with a large area of open water on the port side and in front of the bow.The PS is moving south at about 22 km/day despite a moderate tail wind of 4-5 km/hr and has just crossed the 80º parallel where nullschool first starts showing EGC currents, of ~14 km/day.
The Central Arctic is currently much warmer than the long-term mean, continuing the trend that has been apparent since June this year. Average air temperatures at the 925 mb level (roughly 760 m above sea level) for the first half of July were unusually high over the central Arctic Ocean – up to 10 degrees Celsius. These above-average temperatures were connected to high sea-level pressure centred over the East Siberian and Chukchi Seas. Arctic temperatures along the Russian coast were near or slightly above average. This represents a significant change from June, when temperatures along the Siberian coast of the eastern Laptev Sea were up to 8 degrees Celsius above average. It is likely that these high temperatures, combined with ice movement away from the coast, initiated early ice retreat along the Russian coast, and the opening of the North-East Passage. At present, the ice extent is extremely low – the lowest level for this time of year since the beginning of satellite observation. Sea-ice extent in the Arctic has been at a historically low level since 1 July 2020. On 19 July, the ice extent was 570,000 km² lower than the former record low in 2019. This sea-ice loss is represents an area roughly the size of France. 26 July this difference reaches still a value of circa 260.000 km². The coming weeks will show how this will affect the overall ice development and the MOSAiC expedition.
Meanwhile, the Polarstern is currently in Fram Strait between Svalbard and Greenland. Prof Markus Rex, Leader of the MOSAiC Project and an atmospheric physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, is currently on board. As he reports: “All the ice around us has long-since broken up or been ground into fragments. But our MOSAiC floe, selected for the expedition back in October 2019, continues to offer an impressively stable basis for our work. Nevertheless, even this floe will soon end its lifecycle in the marginal ice zone. Today we measured a balmy 14 degrees Celsius 300 m above the floe, and the melting is in full swing. For the last phase of MOSAiC, our focus will be on the freezing phase: the last piece of the puzzle in our observations of the Arctic’s annual cycle. Accordingly, in the last phase we will proceed far to the north, where the freezing will soon begin.” This will most likely take place in mid-August, once the last resupply and exchange of research staff and crew have been completed.
The MOSAiC floe’s days are numbered, but Polarstern will continue the expedition further north[31. July 2020] After exactly 300 days of drifting with the MOSAiC floe, the international team around Expedition Leader Markus Rex on Wednesday, 29 July 2020, started the dismantling of the research camp and evacuation of the floe. Just one day later the floe finally broke into several fragments. After accompanying the floe on its journey for ten months, the team will now shift its focus to the last remaining puzzle piece in the annual cycle of Arctic sea ice: the start of the ice formation process.
Polarsterns been sampling that eddy for precisely that reason. This looks like well over 20 gigatons of subglacial outbursts in the NW alone in the last few weeks. Not only are they heavy with up to 90% rock, capable of carving canyons over 1000 km out into deep ocean basins, but the surging of fast glaciers can melt the bedrock at 1500 C plus, so they can be very warm indeed.
Quote from: OffTheGrid on August 06, 2020, 09:13:17 PMPolarsterns been sampling that eddy for precisely that reason. This looks like well over 20 gigatons of subglacial outbursts in the NW alone in the last few weeks. Not only are they heavy with up to 90% rock, capable of carving canyons over 1000 km out into deep ocean basins, but the surging of fast glaciers can melt the bedrock at 1500 C plus, so they can be very warm indeed.Reference? Nothing I've ever heard of.
Rock glaciers are common periglacial denudation features above timberline in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. They occur as porridge-like lobate or tongue-shaped masses of rock and ice which move downslope at rates of as much as 100 cm/yr (Barsch, 1977).
