MOSAiC Mission – Arctic mission to study climate change 07/07/2019 – Posted in: Daily News

MOSAiC MISSION – ARCTIC MISSION TO STUDY CLIMATE CHANGE

 

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topics covered: MOSAiC mission, Objectives, Fundings

 

News Flash

Researchers from 17 countries will participate in the year-long mission. They anchor the ship to a large piece of Arctic sea ice.

Scientists from the United States, China, Russia, and other countries will be rotating every two months.

 

MOSAiC

The MOSAiC mission stands for Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate.

 

MOSAiC Mission Objective

Scientists will study the impact of climate change on the Arctic and how it could affect the rest of the world.

 

Why this mission is planned?

  • Arctic sea ice is changing dramatically.
  • With rapid declines in summer sea-ice extent and a move toward generally progressively first-year ice and less multi-year ice.
  • Ultimately sea-ice decline is connected to broader global climate change.

 

Highlights

  • Scientists plan to sail the ship into the Arctic Ocean and allow the water to freeze around them over the North Pole.
  • Scientists will build temporary winter research camps on the ice to perform tests. These tests wouldn’t be possible at other times of the year or by satellite sensing.
  • Researchers lack even the basic observations of the climate processes in the central Arctic from winter.
  • By combining collected data, scientists hope to improve the models for weather and climate predictions.
  • Scientists believe that the cold cap that forms each year is key to regulating weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere.

 

Funding

The mission has received funding from U.S. institutions such as:

  1. National Science Foundation
  2. The Department of Energy
  3. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  4. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration

 

Background

The mission comes about 125 years after Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen first managed to seal his wooden expedition ship, Fram, into the ice during a three-year expedition to the North Pole.

 

Source: The Hindu

 

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