German AWI Research Vessel Gets Stuck In Arctic: “Two-Year Drift Ice Too Thick”

Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) climatologists remain involuntarily stuck in thick pack ice while two sister ships remain waiting in a fjord at Spitsbergen. Let’s see how long this is going to take.

Hat-tip: Snowfan

Inconvenient sea ice. German Polarstern research vessel stuck in “two-year” ice, 500 km from Spitsbergen. Image: MOSAIC

German icebreaker and research vessel “Polarstern” has been drifting through the central Arctic on a 140 million euro MOSAIC research expedition since the beginning of October 2019. But the Arctic – they have inconveniently discovered – is strongly frozen at its highest level in the last five years.

Stopped by two-year, thick ice

The climatologists had prematurely abandoned their floe on Saturday, May 16, 2020, to make their way to Spitsbergen by Monday, May 25, but had to stop their engines already on Monday, May 18, because the two-year drift ice was too thick, they reported.

On May 20th, the researchers on board the Polarstern vessel wrote “two-year ice” is making travel “very difficult to impossible”. Image: MOSAIC

They wish to reach Spitsbergen by Sunday, May 24, 2020 in order to meet up with two sister ships to take on supplies and a new crew. This is to avoid further evacuations like the one on April 22, when seven participants of expedition leg 3 were flown out by a Twin Otter. They should have been replaced in early April.

Shortly after Easter the vessel had left the drift corridor and drifted southwards in 2 to 3-meter thick pack ice towards Spitsbergen. There ice masses of 4-meter thickness awaited them and thus the biggest and thickest ice surfaces for many years.

The expedition and crew now aim to meet the German research vessels “FS Sonne” and “FS Maria S. Merian” (ice class E3 up to 0.8 meters of ice thickness) in “calm waters” off Spitsbergen and exchange the entire personnel and to resupply.

However, the current drift calculator shows the Polarstern will unlikely reach Spitsbergen on schedule.

The Polarstern had been planned to reach the North Pole, but never reached it.

21 responses to “German AWI Research Vessel Gets Stuck In Arctic: “Two-Year Drift Ice Too Thick””

  1. German AWI Research Vessel Gets Stuck In Arctic: “Two-Year Drift Ice Too Thick” — NoTricksZone | Climate- Science.press

    […] über German AWI Research Vessel Gets Stuck In Arctic: “Two-Year Drift Ice Too Thick” — NoTricksZone […]

  2. John F. Hultquist

    Add a “Till Eulenspiegel” to the ship and this could provide the script for a movie.
    Subtitles in English, please. I had to search up that Till character.

    1. Shoki Kaneda

      Is this one of Till’s merry pranks? (apologies to Richard Strauss)

  3. Shoki Kaneda

    The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
    Gang aft agley,
    An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
    For promis’d joy!

  4. ahlam st

    I wish them safe, and back as soon as possible.

  5. Petit_Barde

    140 millions euros wasted to discover that when it’s cold there is ice … WOOAAOOHH !

    Who payed this clown show ? (OK, I know, we the taxpayers).

    It’s high time to stop this farcical masquerade.

    Feed the polar bears with those clowns !

    1. Lasse

      It is worth every penny!
      They are showing us that
      -Ice is thicker.
      -Ice is moving fast not melting away at place.
      They even showed us some healthy ice bears.

  6. Rick Bradford

    Being on a Ship of Fools seems to be a rite of passage for climate zealots these days. The only choice, like a university gap year, is where to go – Arctic or Antarctic?

    1. TBeholder

      Good old “Credo Quia Absurdum Est”.

  7. Lorne Newell

    And that would leave the Polar bears with a very bad taste in their mouth. That would animal cruelty.

    1. TBeholder

      If they can take taste of red tide, they can eat granola & weed flavoured meat.
      As long as rabies or Madkow disease won’t spread there…

  8. RoHa

    That ice is PROOF of Man-Made Global Warming

  9. Phil Salmon

    These ships of fools are coming so thick and fast, maybe we should call it the “convoy of fools”.

    Every time a research ship full of scientist-activists sets out to research/publicise polar warming, you just know they’re going to get stuck in the ice. And they never disappoint!

  10. Robert Christopher

    Déjà vu, again!

    This must be at least the fourth event in the last few years where the explorers were highlighting the lack of ice either near the North or South Pole and ended up stuck in the preverbial, pack ice.

    We need an official tally, really. It would highlight the migration patterns of Climate Alarmists.

  11. George Lawson

    Not to worry. It’s a comfortable ship, and there’ll be plenty of good food and evenings drinking to while away their time now they have done their research to prove that water freezes at very low temperatures.

  12. Lasse

    Ship of fools is an expression of these expeditions.
    Ice is hard to brake. The Russian ice braker that was used on the other change procedures had a hard time to make the trip back. It had to be rescued half way back.
    A lot of media cover in Germany I guess?
    Nothing in Swedish media as we only report on missing ice!

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