Real time reports on the state of the Arctic ice pack as it melts through the summer
The North Pole!
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At approximately 0030 UTC on July 24th we reached the North Pole. The ice here was shattered into Cake and Small pieces, occasionally Medium, with a very roughly 50/50 mixture of old and first year ice. Image below.
For those interested in the mysterious material found at the pole, we had it analysed at the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences and it was determined to be mostly Melosira arctica, a diatom that is the most productive alga in the world! This was the Alfred Wegener Institute's Alga of the Year in 2016: https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/service/press/archive/alga-of-the-year-2016-ice-alga-melosira-arctica-winner-or-loser-of-climate-change While it is extremely common in the Arctic, there was a reason this was a new sighting to everyone on board the ship. This alga has never been seen on the ice surface before and never in fresh water. Water samples taken from ponds indicate that it was indeed living in fresh water ponds as well as on the dry surface. If there are further developments we will continue to update the blog.
This morning at 0930 UTC+1 we arrived at the Geographic North Pole. During the night, north of 89N ice greater than 4m thick was reported but we did not observe this.
At the pole we had 10/10 coverage, of which 9/10+ was multiyear. This was heavily weathered and hummocked genuine multiyear and definitely not 2nd year ice. Thickness was not as great as expected and most was around 150cm thick.
Melt was 2/10, frequently-linked ponds with open tops and no thaw holes.
Interestingly, some of the old ice was very dirty as can been seen in the picture. This appeared to be dust/dirt and not algae, and it was clearly present through most of the thickness of the ice and not just on the surface.
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