Three Arctic researchers at North Pole
Three NTNU researchers have visited the North Pole during a research cruise in their efforts to better understand sea ice.
Three NTNU researchers arrived at the North Pole on 22 August aboard the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat’s icebreaker Oden. The three researchers are all PhD candidates from NTNU’s Sustainable Arctic Marine and Coastal Technology Centre for Research-based Innovation (SAMCoT).
The six-week-long research cruise is being conducted in association with the Canadian government and the icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. Its primary goal is to allow the Canadian government to collect information about the seafloor in the Arctic Ocean in support of the country’s application to the UN to extend the limits of its continental shelf.
However, other researchers are collecting data on a range of topics, including heavy metals in the Arctic, boundary layer meteorology, seafloor mapping, and sea ice measurements.
The SAMCoT researchers, Runa Skarbø, Hans-Martin Heyn and Jon Bjørnø, are testing a system to monitor ice drift around the Oden, as well as a camera system that will monitor ice conditions and thicknesses around the ship, and a system that will measure vibrations in the Oden that are caused by its travels through the ice.
Heyn posted a photo of the group photo taken at the North Pole that was captured by the researchers’ camera systems.
SAMCoT researchers are testing ice monitoring systems, which accidentally also captured this image of all the researchers on the ice at the North Pole. Photo: Hans-Martin Heyn, NTNU SAMCoT
The cruise concludes 20 September. Skarbø is blogging about the cruise, while Twitter users can follow a number of participants including Skarbø and Heyn or by using hashtag #arcticocean2016. You can also read about the cruise on the Canadian government’s pages, and at the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat’s blog.
