Such an interesting feeling being so unable to respond to problems. We noticed that yesterday at some point our remote atmospheric flux station had a power failure, our fuel cell was no longer charging our batteries. But everything else kept running, living off the slowly draining batteries. We could still monitor the internal temperature, along… Read More

In the past days we’ve put some finishing touches on Met City and I’ve been documenting the detail son our field log book. Truly an amazing place with contributions from at least 14 projects from 5 countries, representing links to all 5 of the MOSAiC science teams. Of course we do atmospheric structure and surface… Read More

Working in the Arctic can, of course, be a huge challenge. The fingers, toes and nose bearing the brunt of it. Delicate instrument work is particularly hard as this often requires taking off warm outer gloves to expose hands with thin or no gloves. But in the end, it is rarely the actual temperature that… Read More

We’ve set up near the Fortress for stability, but I’ve often thought that there will be a potential break zone along the edge of the Fortress where there is a transition of ice types….. right where we have established our measurements, jutting out of the Fortress into the thinner ice of the new Arctic. And… Read More

Time is such an odd concept out here. The sun is long gone; now we have at most only a sliver of lighter skies on the far horizon framing extensive darkness in all directions. No real reference for daily time….. the food schedule onboard providing the only framework. And the days themselves blur together. Same… Read More

Some people from the media team called it “the most professional operation they’ve seen so far” out here. Maybe it was the team safety meeting just before, or all of the careful planning over many days leading up to now.But now we have a met tower standing proudly out at Met City. All systems go,… Read More

We’ve been doing a lot of detail work on our met tower, final checks before we raise it. Little nuts and bolts, setting anchors into the ice, taping up cable connectors….. all of these things require some level of fine motor skills. Thin gloves are sometimes useful, but often when it comes down to it,… Read More

It has been windy out lately. And the thing about wind is that it gets us moving. The ice has been trucking along quickly to the north, and with the recent drift we have finally moved north of our original installation position and are now on our way towards the North Pole. For a while… Read More

My day started out as a “bear guard.” And I really view it as guarding the bears. Of course I want to protect the people as well, but we really do have the advantage. It is certainly best for the bears if they don’t come here and/or if we are able to identify them very… Read More