The German icebreaker and research vessel Polarstern at the shore in Tromso, Norway. (Image source: AP)Climate scientists across 19 countries are going on a year-long expedition to the Arctic region to understand the global climate change better, news agency Reuters has reported. The expedition is the longest one of its kind.
The Polarstern, which is a German research icebreaker, will be setting sail from Tromsoe located in northern Norway and it will be taking hundreds of researchers on board who are going to spend the next one year around the north pole, the report said.
The expedition is named Mosaic. This is the first-ever opportunity for the researchers to study the Arctic region during the upcoming winter season. The scientists have lacked the necessary equipment for icebreaking.
Markus Rex, who is an atmospheric scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, told Reuters that climate researchers want to go to the Arctic as that region is the epicentre of climate change.
“We don’t understand the climate system in the Arctic well because we have never been there in winter,” the report said quoting Rex as saying.
During this expedition, for the first time, scientists are going to be able to observe the major climate processes in the central Arctic across the year, and they will also hope to provide more strong climate predictions going ahead in the future.
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At present, all the climate models have to guess about how the processes in the central Arctic region work, the report said quoting Rex.
