MOSAiC
MOSAiC - Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate, is the largest field expedition to the Central Arctic ever. Key element is the drift of the research icebreaker Polarstern frozen into the pack ice over an entire year. Over all, more than 300 scientists from 17 countries will contribute to the field observations between September 2019 and 2020, while many more will contribute to analyzing and exploiting the data over the coming years to decades. Beyond an ice camp around Polarstern, a distributed network of observations, airborne and satellite observations contribute to the field program. Beyond this, various modeling improvements and studies are performed, covering all spatial and temporal scales from process to climate models. The overall goal of MOSAiC is to improve our understanding of the climate and eco systems and to take this research and the resulting forecasts to the next level.
We, as the sea ice physics section, are heavily involved in sea ice and snow observations and simulations. This work is strongly linked to atmospheric and oceanographic studies and is well coordinated to the ecosystem and biogeochemical research. Our observational and modeling strategies range over all tools and cover all research foci.