With all the ice movements and openings, travel across the ice becomes a big challenge. We have to hop from floe to floe to get to Met City, sometimes over ridges and sometimes across cracks. Today was especially challenging because there was fresh snow that had blown across everything, covering cracks and thin ice. Blowing… Read More

There are some interesting sounds out here. The wind howling, you can even hear the snow blowing along the surface with little tinkles. The pops of a new crack forming. Water lapping up against the side of an open lead. But today were some great sounds. The squeak of a ridge being formed. Sheets pressing… Read More

“Continuity” is a very important concept for MOSAiC. But it’s also a huge challenge in the current Arctic conditions. In the last week we’ve had so much ice movement, right out in front of the ship. We watched Met City move back and forth across the view from the bridge. Intermittently we are able to… Read More

The days fly by quickly now. The end of this leg is in sight and there is still so much to do and re-do! So it seems that the time speeds up. And the chaos has contributed to this feeling as well. Major ice dynamics running from the northwest to the southeast of us, across… Read More

I was startled by the phone call shortly after midnight. Trouble at Met City. Felix had just arrived on the bridge for his night watch from 12-4am. He always takes a look around camp when arriving for his duties. And there was no 30m mast. Simply gone. So I was roused from my sleep to… Read More

It started small, as they all do. About 1m across at the point where the spine road leads past Ocean City out towards Met City. The crack meandered and there were places to easily just step across. No major changes over the day. We went on with our daily work at Met City….. In the… Read More

Back on the 9th we had a bear around camp. He was chased away with snow machines and flares. And headed off to the north…. But then in the following day, just after we performed the major power system transplant on our L1 site, our L2 site failed. I examined all of the available information,… Read More

Our path so far has been an interesting one. The design of MOSAiC was to follow the Transpolar Drift, to follow in Nansen’s footsteps. With tons of modelling and observational analysis led by Thomas Krumpen, we selected our starting location and developed a reasonable idea of our projected or expected drift path for the year.… Read More

It all went off without a hitch or at least without a big hitch. Well planned in advance, we had the right tools and our specially concocted power system in a box. Beautiful clear skies and cold…. Below -30C for the first time at MOSAiC. The helicopter dropped us off. Dave, Hans, and I at… Read More

L1 flight as high on the agenda today… but kept getting pushed back. Including by a bear visit, which closed down most operations. But finally in the afternoon we were able to hit the air. Loaded our gear on the helicopter….. sled, ladder, shovel, feather duster (great for instrument cleaning), tool box, numerous safety bags,… Read More