A student trip to the Arctic ice: ‘This beautiful world may not exist in 20 years’ time’

This ETH Zurich student spent a month in the Arctic setting up a climate research city on a shelf of ice up to 3m thick.

Mauro Hermann had just finished his Masters’ degree in Environmental Science at ETH Zurich when he was offered the trip of a lifetime, a place on the icebreaker Akademik Fedorov, part of MOSAiC, the largest polar operation in history.
The €140 million research project is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to understand climate change. The year-long exploration of the Arctic is bringing hundreds of researchers and state-of-the-art climate-measuring machinery to the heart of the North Pole. It is also mankind’s first bid to observe a whole Polar winter.  

The insights from this 390-day journey into the land of snow and ice could revolutionise our understanding of global warming. “The Arctic is where global warming is happening the fastest,” said Hermann. “It’s very uncertain what’s going to happen in years to come.”

Despite advances in environmental research, key processes in the world’s climate system and changes caused by global warming are not yet fully understood. According to Hermann, this means “we can’t protect the climate and intervene in these processes in the future.”

Understanding how rising temperatures are affecting this polar region will help us to understand climate change events worldwide. “The world’s climate system is all interconnected,” says Hermann, meaning that if we understand what is happening at the epicentre of global warming, we can piece together events around the globe.

Hermann set sail in September 2019 from Tromsø, Norway, with the rest of the MOSAiC team and a group of student volunteers. The volunteers were tasked with a month-long mission to help set up the research stations that will spend a year drifting through the Arctic sea ice taking measurements on the state of the water, ice, snow and weather.

During the 12 day journey to the centre of the Arctic the students from the MOSAiC summer programme received lectures detailing the extent of the mission and the task that lay ahead. Even so, arriving in Arctic waters was an unforgettable sight.

“I was expecting a complete white blanket of snow,” Hermann said. “But the landscape was so varied. The oldest ice is thick, white and blue. The young ice is very thin, appears black and almost looks like the ocean.”

Leading the way was the Polarstern, a German-built icebreaker ship. The 118 metre-long vessel is designed to plough through ice-covered waters, clearing a path for smaller boats to follow. Hermann’s boat was one day behind and brought the last of the measuring equipment.

Both vessels then scanned the area for thick piece of ice. “Once we reached the Arctic it took a few days to find ice thick enough to set up camp,” said Hermann.

As soon as the Polarstern found firmer ground Hermann and the other students and scientists spent about ten days establishing a network of research stations around the main shelf of ice, which the Polarstern was anchored to. 

“The most inspiring part of the trip was seeing all the different scientists working together,” said Hermann.

The ice city was divided into regions for meteorologists, climate researchers, marine biologists and specialists for snow, sea and ice work. Samples of water, snow and ice were then taken back to the Polarstern to be analysed more closely.

“Climate change is happening at the borders of all these academic disciplines,” said Hermann. “If scientists just focus on their own work, their own system, you’re not going to solve the world’s climate problem.”
He was reassured to see such diverse and passionate people working together.

As well as the epic terrain and quicksilver water below the ice, the Arctic team had to be on the lookout for threatening wildlife.

“There was a mother polar bear and cub hanging around, observing our movements,” says Hermann.

To keep researchers safe professional bear guards and certain members of the crew were assigned to ‘polar bear watch’ and as soon as an animal was spotted, everyone had to return to the safety of their vessel.

Hermann in now back in the cosy library at ETH Zurich, working on his doctoral research, thinking of the researchers still out there in the middle of a Polar winter, carrying out their experiments with headlamps, immersed in 150 days of darkness in temperatures as low as -40°C (-40°F).

“At the beginning it was light,” said Hermann. “But towards the end of my trip it started to get dark. All you could see was an incredible glowing orange strip on the horizon. Working in those conditions was hard but in the end you get used to it.”

Hermann has kept in touch with the rest of the students on the programme, who all want to continue playing a part in climate research.

The ETH Zurich student would love to go back to the Arctic one day. “Strangely, I felt at home in the deserted landscape of water and ice, but I kept thinking about how this beautiful world may not exist in summer in 20 or 30 years’ time. That was the most frightening feeling, which I will keep in mind for the rest of my career.”

To find out more about the largest polar expedition in history, visit https://mosaic-expedition.org/