Antarctic Sea Ice in IPY (ASPECT) (IPY Project 141)
ASPeCT has a number of associated expeditions investigating Sea Ice. These include:
SIPEX: Sea Ice Physics and Eco-system eXperiment
SIPEX website
International SIPEX flyer (44KB PDF)
SIPEX Press Release
This Australian led expedition to the Southern Ocean will be conducting a range of exciting experiments in the sea ice that surrounds the Antarctic continent during September and October 2007. The cruise involves 45 scientists from 8 different countries, as well as two teachers developing educational activities and real-time opportunities for classrooms around the world.
SIMBA: Sea Ice Mass Balance in the Antarctic Expedition to the Southern Ocean
CliC Marine Cryosphere program
This CLiC Sea Ice Summary is also available on the CLiC website. For hard copies, please contact {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it "}
SOPHOCLES poster, a new project, focussing on sea ice.
DAMOCLES Expeditions (IPY Project ID 40)
DAMOCLES Press Release
including details of current Arctic expeditions on the following vessels: Polarstern, Tara, Akademik Fedorov, Lance, and Viktor Buinitskiy.
DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies) is an integrated ice-atmosphere-ocean monitoring and forecasting system designed for observing, understanding and quantifying climate changes in the Arctic. DAMOCLES is specifically concerned with the potential for a significantly reduced sea ice cover, and the impacts this might have on the environment and on human activities, both regionally and globally.
The DAMOCLES projects is collecting data from a variety of locations, including floating platforms, ships, aeroplanes, and satellites. DAMOCLES expeditions, occurring now include:
---- Polarstern
Weekly reports
Polarstern ship's track.
(This includes the ships position, current meteorological data, and a Google Earth overlay..)
Polarstern webcam images.
Contact In Germany (German/English):
{encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Dr. Eberhard Fahrbach"}, Tel: +49 (0)471 - 4831-1820
On the RV Polarstern, in the Arctic Ocean:
Contact to Ursula Schauer onboard RV Polarstern can be facilitated by press officer {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Angelika Dummermuth"}.
----Tara
The polar schooner, Tara, is drifting on the Arctic pack ice for two years. On board, scientists take turns to study the effects of the climate warming. For more information, please visit the Tara Website or download these articles:
Tara Journal 1
Tara Journal 2
Press and Educators can also arrange direct interviews with the crew about life on the ice by contacting {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Eloise Fontaine"} and {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Caroline Emmet"}.
ANDRILL (IPY project 256)
ANDRILL is a multinational science group drilling geologic sediment cores from the ocean floor under the sea ice in the Ross Sea. Although the project is not studying sea ice specifically, an understanding of its dynamics is essential. The drill has been specially designed to drill through the sea ice and then through the water column to the sea floor.
The rock cores offer a “history book” of stories about the cycles of climate in the Antarctic region over millions of years. ANDRILL scientists are developing tools to unlock those stories as they study the layers of rock in the cores. ANDRILL is finding three main dominant cycles in the sediment layers indicating different environments from the past: open marine, under the ice shelf, and under the glacier. As they find ways to interpret the cores, they are learning more about past climates and how all parts of the cryosphere, including sea ice, advance and retreat over time.
Follow the ANDRILL website for live updates from the field.
NORCLIM (IPY Project 120)
The NORCLIM programme(IPY Project 120) is about human adaptation to rapid climatic change during the last 2000 years. Three key areas have been selected, based on archaeological evidence and potential to obtain high quality marine sediment cores. These cores are excellent archives of climatic and environmental change: variations in iceberg frequencies, sea-ice coverage and current regime can be detected by analyzing the sediments (clay, sand, pebbles) and their biotic content (tests of various marine organisms). After an expedition to Svalbard (area 3) organized by the Norwegian Polar Institute earlier this month, this expedition will focus on the fjords of Newfoundland (area 1) where archaeological evidence on land is well studied.
The Newfoundland expedition takes place the end of September onboard the Russian vessel R/V Akademik loffe with participants from Denmark, Canada, Russia and the Netherlands. We will do seismics and sediment coring in several bays, including Bonavista Bay. One of the main targets is to reconstruct variations in sea-ice conditions during the past 2000 years.
Chief scientist: {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz"}; co-chiefs: {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Antoon Kuijpers"} and {encode=" This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it " title="Simon Troelstra"}.
TRANSDRIFT
The Laptev Sea (see figure below) is a prominent region for coastal latent-heat polynyas and significant net ice production in the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the coast of Siberia, the Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. The expedition TRANSDRIFT XII is the first of seven expeditions to this region during the next 30 months.
The ice regime in the eastern Laptev Sea is characterized by four features: Nearshore bottom fast ice, fast ice, pack ice and flaw polynyas, separating landfast ice from pack ice. Formation and growth of sea-ice in the Laptev Sea is dominated by ice production in flaw polynyas and leads. It is hypothesized that this ice production increases the salinity of the surface water, induces convective mixing down to the sea floor, and is an important source of saline shelf water for the Arctic Ocean.
The role of the polynya and the local circulation system for Arctic Ocean water mass modification will be further investigated within the framework of a Russian-German research project (System Laptev Sea: Frontal zones and polynya systems in the Laptev Sea) and the ESA project EO-500 (Formation, transport and distribution of sediment-laden sea-ice in the Arctic Shelf seas). Currently, a team of 25 scientists is onboard RV Ivan Petrov to study the summer situation in the polynya area. The studies are focusing on oceanographical, biological, geochemical and sedimentological investigations. In addition, two sea-floor observatories were deployed in the polynya region to study the variability of environmental conditions during the next 12 months.