Science and champagne at the Pole
Apr 27, 2004 18: 50 EST
‘The Last Degree’, 60 Nautical Miles of ice and cold walked, skied, sailed, and even run across every season. Seven days ago just one of these expeditions headed into the Artic winds in the name of science and technology.
Today ‘Pole Track 2005’ reached their target and planted not a flag but a buoy. So why is a 2005 expedition at the Pole in 2004? They set off this year “to test all equipment, technology, instrumentation, and procedures for next year.”
“After covering 20 km last night the Pole Track team reached the geographic North Pole around 6:00p.m. (Spitsbergen time).
Among other completely frozen things in the Arctic is the champagne the expedition took with them to celebrate this occasion, so they are working on trying to heat it up right now!
Because of their early arrival there's time to camp out on the pole for one more day and do some more scientific measurements and tests with the beacon.”
Pole Track 2005 is an international North Pole expedition setting out to support climate change research and to call attention to the changing Arctic and world climate. Next year the expedition will go all the way to the Pole (from Russia, probably with air support). During this ski-trek the expedition will deploy a new generation of meteorological instrumentation and make daily readings of the snow cover.
During the last few years, ExplorersWeb and the polar- and scientific community has published reports concluding that the ice mass on the Arctic Ocean has reduced significantly over the last several decades. Scientists documented signs of rising temperatures as well as changes in the atmosphere and sea currents in the Arctic region.
The Polar community has reported on increasingly larger sections of open water, introducing the habit of actually "swimming to the pole" in recent years. According to some, these trends may result in an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the mid of this century.
Team members: Marc Cornelissen(NL, North Pole and South Pole both supported) - Project Leader, Doug Stoup(US, SP supported) and Petter Nyquist(NO)
Image of ice cap in 1979(left) and 2003(right) courtesy of NASA. Image of polar beacon and logo courtesy of Pole Track. The expedition uses Contact 2.0 to transmit images from the ice.
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