Have you ever desired to pit yourself against nature and see who comes out on top?
Have you ever wanted to go off into the wild blue and bring back enlightenment?
Have you ever seen a gladiator movie?
OK, I have a deal for you – join a Russian Arctic drift expedition and spend 7 months drifting around on a piece of ice. You can follow the path blazed by Jürgen Graeser, the first German to take part in a Russian expedition. But floating around on a slab of ice and sending a weather balloon up every day wasn’t all fun and games (unlike playing peek-abo with Polar Bears):
In spite of its importance for the global climate system, the Arctic is still a blank on the data map. Up to now, continuous measuring in the atmosphere above the Arctic Ocean is missing. “We are not able to develop any reliable climate scenarios without disposing of data series with high temporal and local resolutions about the Arctic winter. The data which Jürgen Graeser has obtained in the course of the NP 35 expedition are unique, and they are apt to considerably diminish the still existing uncertainties in our climate models” said Prof. Dr. Klaus Dethloff, project leader at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.
Eh, what’s this, you mean there’s still some real science to be done in Climatology? Say it ain’t so, Al, say it ain’t so.
I have to applaud Jürgen Graeser’s dedication to science. Adventure and learning in one package – what a deal. Who says adventure is a thing of the past?
