Farewell to the MOSAiC ice floe.

Bremerhaven, 31.07.2020

Balloon measurements by TROPOS and Leipzig University completed. Lidar measurements continue on Polarstern.

Press release by AWI:

MOSAiC Expedition: Time to Say Goodbye

The MOSAiC floe’s days are numbered, but Polarstern will continue the expedition further north

After exactly 300 days of drifting with the MOSAiC floe, the international team around Expedition Leader Markus Rex on Wednesday, 29 July 2020, started the dismantling of the research camp and evacuation of the floe. Just one day later the floe finally broke into several fragments. After accompanying the floe on its journey for ten months, the team will now shift its focus to the last remaining puzzle piece in the annual cycle of Arctic sea ice: the start of the ice formation process.

It came as expected: with a loud bang, on 30 July the MOSAiC floe broke into several fragments, which will drift out to the open ocean of Fram Strait within the next few days. Momentarily, the floe fragments are five kilometres apart from the ice edge. But the experts’ timing was flawless: they continued their work with the complete research camp until the very end, before efficiently dismantling it and bringing all their equipment back on board, all within a day. Thereby it was possible to also document the very last phase of the life of the MOSAiC floe as planned - an impressive success for the expedition.

“We’ve successfully monitored the lifecycle of the MOSAiC floe from early October last year to its end. It carried us through the Arctic Ocean for a total of 1700 kilometres, from the Laptev Sea, past the North Pole and all the way to Fram Strait. Here at the sea-ice edge its natural lifecycle comes to an end: the fragments will continue to grow thinner and be broken up by waves, until they ultimately melt and once again become part of the seawater, from which the floe was formed nearly two years ago off the Siberian coast. Accordingly, the concept for the expedition has been completely fulfilled,” says Expedition Leader Prof Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. “Now we’ll focus on the last piece of the puzzle in the annual cycle: the start of freezing at the end of the summer. For this phase we’ll be heading farther north, where the ice formation will soon begin.” ...

BELUGA in use on the MOSAiC ice floe. Photo: Lianna Nixon, University of Colorado

Last time 'Beluga' is being taken down, the second tethered balloon and 'Miss Piggy's' big brother, which has been up in the air since spring 2020. Flying several hundred metres high, sensors can be send up and down to measure radiation, temperature, humidity etc. in the lower atmosphere. Photo: Lianna Nixon, University of Colorado

Tethered balloon 'Miss Piggy' has regularly been up in the air since autumn 2019. Photo: Lianna Nixon, University of Colorado

All teams work together to recover instruments from the central observatory on the ice floe. The so-called ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) for oceanographic measurements has been deployed in the ocean under the ice and is now fixed on a sledge to transport it back home to Plarstern. Photo: Lisa Grosfeld, AWI

Packing up instruments in Met City, which is situated directly next to a melt pond. Photo: Lianna Nixon, University of Colorado

Lowering a tower in Met City, which has been picked with sensors to study atmosphere-seaice interactions. Photo: Lianna Nixon, University of Colorado

Aerial of the MOSAiC ice floe during Leg 4, 30 June 2020. The measurements will be continued over the next few days on board Polarstern. Photo: Markus Rex, AWI

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