Arctic spring expedition in 2023 to capture the melt onset over Arctic sea ice

 Arrival in Svalbard on Sunday 7 May  After an early morning wake-up in the sunny but chilly Oslo, scientists and crew members headed towards the Oslo airport - with the destination Longyearbyen, Svalbard. There was many happy faces greeting each other at the gate - happy and excited for the coming 6 weeks in the Arctic. The journey to the north starts now! Flying over the snow-covered mountains on Svalbard - almost there! The plane landed in Tromsö on the way to Longyearbyen. It was a beautiful weather flying above the Norwegian Sea over the clouds - until snow-covered mountains and glaciers were spotted from the heights - SVALBARD! Svalbard is an archipelago of mountains and fjords, just around 10 degrees south of the North Pole with over half of the archipelago covered by glaciers. The population of Svalbard is about 2.5 thousand - of which 25 % are students and living mainly in Longyearbyen. On Longyearbyen, which is the capital of Svalbard, there is actually a university ...

Photo by John Prytherch west of Norway, taken on  Oden  at  May  1st 2023 . For about a week ago, the Icebreaker Oden left Helsingborg (Sweden) to head north towards Svalbard (Norwegian archipelago  north of Scandinavia in the Arctic Ocean at around 79N; Svalbard is also known as Spitzbergen). Onboard Oden were, apart from the crew, also a few scientists doing the last preparations before the expedition. Traveling across the Atlantic is not always that of a smooth trip and working out on deck in stormy seas can be dangerous! Taking shelter from the harsh weather conditions, Oden took a more scenic route and partly followed Hurtigruten during the transit (in the western Norwegian islands: see Photo) - but returning back out to the large waves every now and then. After one week's transit along the western coast of Norway, Oden finally made it al l the way to Svalbard and arrived i...

  Figure 1:  Icework on sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean 26 August 2021 during the  SAS-expedition . Photo by Sonja Murto.           This beautiful picture with a circle of light - a halo - over the Icebreaker Oden (Fig. 1), formed by refraction of sunlight when hitting ice particles in the sky, was taken only 20 months ago during the Arctic expedition Synoptic Arctic Survey ( SAS ). That was my first time to be in the Arctic for almost 2 months - what an amazing experience! If you are reading my blog now for the first time - welcome! If you want to read (and see some cool photos) more about the last expedition, please visit my blog: Arctic-expedition Blog , especially take a look at the posting  Why study Arctic climate?  to know more about Why the Arctic is so important to study (it is actually one of the least understood and studied places on Earth!) and more about my background and interest in the Arctic climate. Today I am star...