Texas, radio operator on board the Esperanza in the Arctic, tells us about their journey to Svalbard and what will be happening there soon.
Sunny days! 24 hours of it. It's been like that for a week or so now but the cloud cover has not let us bask in the endless sun. Until now.
We just reached Ny Ålesund under clear skies and calm seas. This remote research base is nestled along the shores of a snow covered, mountainous fjord in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the high Arctic. This ex-mining-town-come-research station claims to have the world's most northerly post office. I wonder what the folks of Alert on Ellesmere Island have to say about that...
This station is where we will be deploying the Mesocosms that we brought up from Kiel. These giant test tubes will sit off the coast for the next few weeks where varying amounts of CO2 will be added and measurements taken to add to the data of effect of CO2 in the oceans. CO2 when added to water becomes carbonic acid, which increases the acidity of the water. CO2 is entering our oceans from the air from natural occurring sources and recently, large volumes are being released into the atmosphere from human activity. The effects of this CO2 induced acidification are what we are here to study with IFM-GEOMAR, a German marine research institute.
There is a lot of other fantastic research going on here, but you will have to look it up on your own. I am destined to play in the snow.
--Texas
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