5 Aug 2014, Matt Shupe  [73N, 168E]. The sea ice has been very active in this area of the East Siberian Sea. You can tell by all of the pressure ridges around, some protruding many meters above the surface. These ridges occur when large ice floes run into each other, causing little mountain ranges of… Read More

29 July 2014, by Matthew Shupe [76N, 147E]: It really is a mystery, this plume that emanates from Bennett Island in satellite images (you can read about it on Wikipedia). Some have hypothesized that wind riding up over the rather abrupt island causes clouds to form. Others think there is local geothermal activity. Some onboard… Read More

29 July 2014, by Matt Shupe [76N, 147E]: By far the most populous wildlife has been birds. They accompany us through all conditions, often riding the winds that flow up over the ship (A colleague, Ian, actually had these winds modelled so that we can understand their impacts on our measurements).  We have observed what… Read More

20 July 2014, by Matt Shupe [77N, 130E]: It might be nice for you to see where we are and where we’ve been, so I’ve put together a little map. On yearday 186 (5 July) at about 5pm, our path leaves from Tromso, Norway. We took a number of hours to head out through the… Read More

19 July 2014, by Matt Shupe, [77N, 126E]: Our resident wind expert is Paul Johnston. He has been ‘instrumental’ in the first two deployments of a 449-MHz wind profiler from a ship in the Arctic Ocean: The first of these on a trip we took together in 2008 on this same icebreaker, and the second… Read More

18 July 2014, by Matt Shupe, [76N, 124E]: Over the last two days we’ve been in open water, moving towards the Siberian Shelf. Sometime in the night we really started moving up along the shelf break, apparently near a sub-sea canyon feature. The ship went back and forth to map out the area with a… Read More

20 July 2014, Matt Shupe [77N, 130E]:  I’m here for the clouds, and the general adventure. The clouds are a big problem for global climate research. They are poorly represented in numerical models, especially over the Arctic Ocean because we have so few measurements out here. Thus, much of my career has been dedicated to… Read More

14 July 2014, Matt Shupe,  [80N, 118E]: Perhaps a few words about daily life. Sleeping on Oden has been an adventure. I share a room with 3 others, each on his own schedule and each with his own unique nighttime routines and noises. But wait, there is more! This is a ship after all, and… Read More

12 July 2014, by Matt Shupe, [82N, 102E]: Why are we here? I guess after a few entries and a week underway it would make sense to spell out why we have actually come to the Arctic (beyond the simple fascination of the whole experience!). In short, we are here to study the clouds and… Read More

9 July 2014 (4 pm), by Matt Shupe, [80N, 70E]: Perched up on the bridge, I was just sitting down to write about our first bear. It visited as we were stopped in the ice to test some equipment. Relatively far away, so just a small blob in the binoculars. Not much to photograph and… Read More