7 months on a drifting ice floe

Drift expedition NP 35 has produced unique data about the hibernal atmosphere above the central Arctic

This release is available in German.

Panorama view on the Russian Drift Station NP 35. Click here for more information.

Bremerhaven, April 14, 2008. For the first time, a German has taken part in a Russian drift expedition and has explored the atmosphere above the central Arctic during the polar night. Jürgen Graeser, a member of the Potsdam Research Unit of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, has just returned home to Germany. As a member of the Russian expedition NP 35 (35. North Pole Drift Expedition), which consisted of 21 persons, he has spent seven months on a drifting ice floe in the Arctic. The 49-year-old scientific technician has gained observational data from a region, which is normally inaccessible during the Arctic winter and therefore widely unexplored. Ascends with a tethered balloon up to an altitude of 400 metres as well as balloon borne sensor ascends up to an altitude of 30 kilometres provided data which will contribute to ameliorate existing climate models for the Arctic.

In spite of its importance for the global climate system, the Arctic is still a blank on the data map. Up to now, continuous measuring in the atmosphere above the Arctic Ocean is missing. „We are not able to develop any reliable climate scenarios without disposing of data series with high temporal and local resolutions about the Arctic winter. The data which Jürgen Graeser has obtained in the course of the NP 35 expedition are unique, and they are apt to considerably diminish the still existing uncertainties in our climate models“ said Prof. Dr. Klaus Dethloff, project leader at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.

Russian-German co-operation

Since 1937/38, the Russian Institute for Arctic and Antarctic Research (AARI) has already operated 34 Russian North Pole drift stations. In the course of the International Polar Year 2007/2008, for the first time a foreigner was allowed to take part in a drift expedition (NP 35). Due to their close co-operation with the AARI, the scientists of the Potsdam Research Unit of the Alfred Wegener Institute now could realize a project to research the polar atmosphere in the hardly accessible region of the Arctic Ocean.

The expedition NP 35