62 SMITHSONIAN | April 2020
Creamean pours
melted sea ice
into bottles in
a lab onboard
the Polarstern.
Among other
things, she plans
to measure how
much methane is
stored in the ice. Researchers
extract cores
from a stretch
of newly frozen
sea ice. In the
polar darkness
they use red
light to minimize
disturbing
light-sensitive
microbes. Study of Arctic Climate. The observatory in
question is the expedition’s research vessel,
a German icebreaker called the Polarstern,
which set sail from Norway last September.
When the Polarstern reached Arctic waters,
the researchers chose an ice fl oe that they
believed was thick and sturdy enough to last
through the summer , then moored the ship
to the fl oe and waited for the ice to freeze
around it. The Polarstern and its fl oe are
now indeed drifting across the Arctic Ocean,
and if all goes well, they will continue to do
so until the expedition ends in September
- The researchers hail from more than 70
institutions across 20 countries, and like the
polar explorers of old they are driven to un-
derstand one of the planet’s grandest, most
mysterious and least hospitable regions.
But this is an Arctic their predecessors
SEE MORE of Esther Horvath’s photographs from
the Arctic at Smithsonianmag.com/polarstern