The German icebreaker "Polarstern" left his port today to be part of the world's largest Arctic expedition for one year. The ship will freeze in the ice and drive with ice floes past the North Pole and on towards Svalbard and Greenland. Markus Rex, head of MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate), believes that the experiment will be of great importance in understanding climate change. This mission is the first of its kind.
- For the first time, we will be able to measure the climate processes in the central Arctic in the winter, he says.
On board are 600 participants from 17 countries, including Sweden. One of them is Pauline Snoeijs Leijonmalm, professor of marine ecology at Stockholm University.
-It feels fantastic that I just got the chance to be with her, she tells TT.
She will carry out two different projects. One, which is funded by Swedish research grants from, among others, the Swedish Research Council, is about microbes.
-I will look at what species are there and what they do for a whole year. There will be many new species. Bacteria, arches, fungi and phytoplankton - there are thousands of species in every drop of water, she says.
-I am interested in how they absorb nitrogen and carbon, and whether they can fix nitrogen from the air. It's great to have a full year to it, including winter, because we know nothing about what they do in winter.