On September 26th, 2019, Marcel Nicolaus, marine physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), placed an ice buoy on a floe during the passage of the Polarstern to the Central Arctic. It was the first buoy to be sent off during the MOSAiC expedition. It was part of the “Distributed Network,” a large buoy network that drifted around Polarstern at distances of up to 50 kilometers and continuously and precisely monitored this area. For almost two years, the buoy was on its way until its journey now ended near Tromsø.
Researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute were able to collect the buoy from a small rocky island. Along the way, the instrument sent its position data via GPS to show the drift of the sea ice on which the buoy was floating. The Polar Research Institute of China had sent it on the MOSAiC expedition.
Source: AWI, Bremerhaven
