Alfred Wegener

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The largest Arctic science expedition that has ever been conceived under way.

The German research vessel "Polarstern" to the port left late on Friday for the high North, to block where it intends to drift in the sea-ice, and for a whole year.

hundreds of scientists visit, to use The Ship in this time, as a Basis for the study of the climate.

A large crowd gathered at the quay in Tromsø, Norway , to see The Ship off.

It is accompanied on The First leg of his mission by the Russian icebreaker, the Akademik Federov. to find

The couple in the direction of the Siberian sector of the Arctic Ocean , The Most appropriate place in the clods for the "Polarstern" to begin your drift.

The (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the study of Arctic climate-the project is expected to cost approximately €130 m (£120m/$150m).

with Its size, it is an international effort. RV "Polarstern" is also supported by icebreakers from Sweden and China.

In the depths of winter, if this container provides drill through to reach the ice, the German ship, aircraft and long-range helicopters and relief teams.

MOSAiC-the aim of the study of All aspects of the climate system in The Arctic . Instrument stations are Set Up on the ice around the polar star, some of them located up to 50 km.

The ice, the sea, the atmosphere, even in the animal world - everything will be scanned. The one-year studies are designed to provide more certainty in the projections of future change.

Prof Markus Rex of the German Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Potsdam, the leader of the expedition, is. He said that The Arctic was warming currently twice the rate of the rest of The Planet , however, that the climate models were very unsure of how the temperature will develop trends that would be in the coming decades.

"We have no robust climate projections for The Arctic and the reason is that we do not understand the processes very well there," he explained.

"That is because we were never in the situation, the ice is most of the year as a whole, and certainly not in the winter, when the thick, and we can't break it with our research ships," he told Bbc News .

embedded in the sea ice, will be done in the vicinity of 85 degrees North and 130 degrees East.

the Exact positioning is important. Modeling the winds and currents, suggests that The Ship should drift over The Top of The Planet , road within a few hundred km from the North Pole before then ejected from the frozen clods between northeast Greenland and Svalbard -the FRAM.

But there is a critical point in this 2500-km trip, where, if The Ship winds its way to far to The West , it could get moved to the Beaufort Gyre - the large clockwise movement of the water and the ice in The Arctic . Once caught in this vortex, it would take a huge effort to escape.

Something similar to the mosaic has been tried before.

The expedition has Nansen distinct echoes of the Norwegian Explorer Fridtjof's attempt in the 1890s, The First man to reach the North Pole by drifting locked up in a ship in the ice.

The assembled drift mission in the late 1990s, was known as Ice Station SHEBA.

The drift expedition in the year 2015, as that crosses the frozen sea, again and again, from the Siberian waters in the FRAM Strait - 2006/7.

But none of these earlier activities can be compared to the German mission for the size and the international Input .

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rate of The Planet as a whole

The conditions, which The Scientists in the course of the next few months will be hard.

For half the year The Sun does not rise above the horizon and the temperatures dip to minus 45C.

And the teams are working on the ice to be in constant alert for the predatory bear.

"Different scientists have been trained on night-vision goggles guard for the polar bears," said Prof Julienne Stroeve from University College London (UCL).

"You can't always go on the ice without someone there with a gun. [The bear] was finally able to smell The Ship , and if you are curious enough, come and check us out. "

Prof Stroeve is in the seven participating teams from the United Kingdom.

you will join the North star in the middle of winter Your experiments will be the evaluation of the accuracy of the radar satellite, which can be used to map the thickness of sea ice, from orbit.

the spacecraft work by Bouncing a microwave pulse from the floes, but there is some uncertainty about where exactly this reflection is carried out in a column of snow and ice.

If the UCL scientists confirmed the suspicion that, while the mosaic-cruise, it would have an impact on our current assessment of the status of The Arctic sea-ice.

"It would be thinner than what we estimate have so far," she told the.

polar bears, earth science, germany, arctic, climate change, polarstern arctic expedition

Source of news: bbc.com