Tuesday, December 08, 2020

following Nansen's drift

The polar research vessel Polarstern recently returned from a year-long expedition into the Arctic, essentially retracing the voyage of Fridtjof Nansen with the Fram in the 19th century. The comparison of observations and measurements made by both expeditions is troubling. What was a slowly drifting but largely solid ice cap in the 19th century is now turning into a puddle.

I've rounded up Fram, Polarstern and some other Arctic news in my latest feature which is out now:

Arctic meltdown

Current Biology Volume 30, Issue 23, 07 December 2020, Pages R1391-R1393

FREE access to full text and PDF download

Researchers onboard RV Polarstern experienced a “dying Arctic” with temperatures 10 degrees warmer than what Fridtjof Nansen recorded 125 years earlier. (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute/Stefanie Arndt (CC-BY 4.0).)

In other news, the last feature of the year is about Covid-19 genomics, due out December 21, but you can read a preprint here (open access).

PS only after my feature came out I discovered that the expedition leader, Markus Rex, has published a book about the expedition, which has turned up in the Spiegel bestsellers chart this month:

No comments: