Polarstern icebreaker is back in Germany after leading the longest Antarctic expedition -

Mohssen Assanimoghaddam / AP / SIPA

Alert cry for the ice floes.

After 389 days at sea, the Polarstern icebreaker from the Alfred-Wegener Institute returned to its home port in northwestern Germany on Monday.

It was the largest expedition ever to the North Pole, but by the time of the return, the mood within the international MOSAIC expedition is far from euphoric.

During this trip, scientists grasped the extent of climate change in the vast Arctic Ocean.

“We watched how the ice floes are dying” in the summer, explained expedition leader Markus Rex.

For this climatologist and physicist, the finding is clear.

"If climate change continues like this, then in a few decades we will have an ice-free Arctic in the summer."

"Melted, thin, crumbly ice"

During the outings on the ice floe to take measurements or take samples, the entire expedition was able to observe this development which the researcher considers "impressive".

"Directly at the North Pole, we found (in summer) melted, thin, crumbly ice", testified Markus Rex, also evoking "surfaces of liquid water as far as the eye can see, up to the horizon line ".

A diagnosis confirmed by satellite observations in the United States which revealed that the summer sea ice had melted to the second smallest area on record, after 2012. In winter when they faced absolute night for several months, scientists have also measured much warmer temperatures than a few decades ago.

"A breakthrough in understanding the

Arctic

climate system

 "

In total, several hundred experts and scientists from 20 different countries have stayed, taking turns on the ship which slipped with the ice according to the polar drift, this ocean current which flows from east to west in the sea. 'Arctic ocean.

The experts collected more than 150 terabites of data as well as numerous samples of ice and water.

For a year, they were able to observe more than a hundred parameters.

This allowed "a breakthrough in the understanding of the Arctic climate system," according to Markus Rex.

The mission, with a budget of 140 million euros, studied the atmosphere, the ocean, the sea ice and the ecosystem to collect data assessing the impact of climate change.

Final results within one or two years

The full analysis until their release in scientific publications should take one or two years.

The goal is to develop climate prediction models to determine what heatwaves, heavy rains or storms will look like in 20, 50 or 100 years.

Since the departure of the German research vessel from Tromsø, Norway on September 20, 2019, scientists have faced long months in absolute night, temperatures plunged to -39.5 ° C and received a visit from a sixty polar bears.

Planet

Warming: Prince William urges to resolve climate crisis before 2030

Nantes

Pays-de-la-Loire: The region creates a group of experts to assess the impact of global warming

  • Weather

  • Global warming

  • Ice floe

  • Planet