AWI’s Polar-5 Returns from Successful Mission in High Arctic
16.05.2011 - Atmosphere & Space, Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow
The Polar-5, the research airplane of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), returned from a six-week expedition in the high Arctic on May 6th. An international team of 25 scientists and engineers conducted a series of joint flights over the region with ESA and NASA, collecting data to assess the accuracy of ice measurements taken by CryoSat-2, an ESA satellite launched last year to procude more accurate measurements of sea and land ice on Earth. The team also collected data on trace gases, aerosols and meteorological parameters.
The main aspects of the mission include large-scale in-situ measurements of the sea ice thickness in the inner Arctic, for which the scientists used a long electromagnetic ice thickness sensor towed on a rope above the ice surface. Preliminary results show that first-year sea ice in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and Canada is about 20-30 cm thinner this year than in the two previous years. According to the scientists, this thin first-year sea ice is unlikely to survive the summer melt melting period.
Another major aspect of the mission was mapping aerosol distribution and the carbon content of aerosol particles in the Arctic by taking several vertical and horizontal profiles at various altitudes. The team also carried out meteorological soundings in the central Arctic as well as measurements of trace gases that con firmed measurements taken in 2009, which showed very low ozone (O3) concentrations over large sections of the Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice. Combining all trace gas measurements with meteorological measurements should make for a better understanding of the processes of ozone depletion in the air layers up to the troposphere (15 km altitude).
