I have great news! I am one of the fortunate 20 who are allowed to join the MOSAIC school 2019. What the hell is MOSAIC? you might justifiably ask and I want to shortly introduce this amazing project to you:
We currently have a huge problem in climate modelling: the climate change in the Arctic region is not fully reproduced by modern climate models.
Why is this problematic?
The global climate is strongly affected by Arctic sea ice loss and the changes in the Arctic climate system. So without understanding what is happening in the Arctic, there is huge uncertainty in predicting and understanding what is happening on a global scale, e.g. your home country.
Why is the Arctic region so poorly modelled?
This is mainly because there are so few measurements. The Arctic is - as you can imagine - a very remote location and there are simply no people living ON the sea ice in the middle of the Arctic who could do regular measurements. There are some measurement-sites like in Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard but this is on land. Also because of the lack of measurements some processes in the Arctic are still not sufficiently well understood. So what we modellers want and need are consistend year-round measurements of all the different processes happening in the Arctic. This is where the MOSAIC expedition comes into play.
What is the MOSAIC expedition?
It is a one year long expedition, where the icebreaker RV Polarstern will be frozen into the sea ice and drift with the ice across the central Arctic. The expedition will start in September 2019 and will set up a big network of observational sites inside an area with a radius of ca. 50km around the ship. Additionally there will be research aircrafts and helicopters complementing the research of the network. Therefore there will be in-situ observations of the atmosphere, sea ice, ocean, the Arctic ecosystem and its bio-geochemistry. MOSAIC concentrates on the processes which couple these elements.
As you have probably guessed by now: this expedition will provide the climate modellers and other polar scientists with extremly valuable data for further research, helping the understanding of Arctic climate change and sea ice loss. Which will improve global climate predictions as well as weather predictions, which in turn will for example help with safety and decision making for maritime operations. If you want to read more about this expedition visit https://www.mosaic-expedition.org.
What is the MOSAIC school 2019?
The MOSAIC partners and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) had the awesome idea to offer the MOSAIC school 2019 on board of the RV Akademik Federov. The RV Akademik Federov is the support icebreaker of the expedition, transporting scientists, material and clearing the way for the smaller RV Polarstern in the Arctic ocean. The 20 early career researchers (Master and PhD students) will join the first leg of the expedition for 1.5 months. This means we start our journey together with the RV Polarstern, have lectures on board about the different topics MOSAIC is interested in, help set up the observational network on the ice and then go back home and tell everyone about the project.
You can find more information about the MOSAIC school here: https://www.apecs.is/events/upcoming-event-highlights/mosaic-school-2019.html.
Of course I will bring my camera along this expedition and I am planning to do a project about it.
