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Research around the North Pole
Date:10/20/2008

Bremerhaven, October 17th 2008. The German research vessel Polarstern has returned today to Bremerhaven from the Arctic Sea. It has cruised as the first research vessel ever both the Northeast and the Northwest Passages and thereby circled the North Pole. The third part of the research vessel's 23rd Arctic expedition, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute in the Helmholtz Association, started its journey on August 12th in Reykjavik and ended it on October 17th in Bremerhaven. The ship travelled a distance of 10.800 nautical miles, equivalent to 20.000 kilometres. On board were 47 researchers from 12 nations, for example from Belgium, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Korea, the Netherlands, Russia and the USA. Because of the small ice cover, the expedition members were able to research hitherto uncharted waters. The small sea ice cover presents a cause for concern regarding climate change in the Arctic Ocean. The aim of this expedition was to gather data on the development of the geology of the Arctic area.

The researchers around cruise leader Dr. Wilfried Jokat, geophysicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, have discovered large sliding masses close beneath the seafloor of the East-Siberian continental shelf by means of sediment-acoustic parasound measurements. "Sliding masses are witnesses of great sediment relocations which appear, for instance, when large amounts of sediments are deposited", explains Jokat. The continental slope becomes instable and sediments slide down. Such a large amount of sediments causing a shift can only have one reason: the sediments were frozen in the ice masses of the East-Siberian mainland, thawed during an interglacial and unloaded their sediments with the melt water into the ocean. "This is a spectacular finding. Large-scale glaciations in eastern Siberia within the younger geological past of 60.000 years and older are so far unknown", explains Prof. Dr. Rdiger Stein, geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute. Ad
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Contact: Dr. Wilfried Jokat
Wilfried.Jokat@awi.de
49-471-483-11211
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Source:Eurekalert  

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Research around the North Pole
Research around the North Pole