AWI sea-ice research: Our best photos from the field

Quiet moments rarely happen in the AWI sea-ice section. In spring and summer the scientists focus on the Arctic sea ice, in autumn and winter they are gathering sea-ice data on the Southern side of the globe - for instance in the Weddell Sea, Antarctic, and close to our research base Neumayer-Station III. See some of their best expedition photos here. 

Anyone who wants to accurately predict the summer ice extent in the Arctic has to first know how thick the ice is at the end of the long winter, which is why the AWI sea-ice physicists set out each spring to measure major sections of the arctic sea-ice cover. Their flight route usually begins in Svalbard, taking them west over Greenland and Canada and ending in Alaska. The following gallery presents a selection of snapshots taken during flights in the spring of 2015 as part of the NETCARE campaign.

Ever-changing and ever new: In the Arctic and Antarctica, frost and the sun, waves, water and the wind create perpetually changing tints and shades, shapes and patterns. In order to capture the beauty of this interplay, one must take-off and take a bird’s eye view on the polar landscapes. A perspective that only polar researchers like AWI sea ice physicists on their routine survey flights above the ice are lucky enough to slip into. On each of those flights, one or two photographic cameras keep record of the landscape at the scientists’ feet. Pointing vertically downwards, the camera is mounted in the hull of the research aircraft or installed in the torpedo shaped body of the EM-bird – a sea ice thickness measurement device that can be dragged by the research aircraft or a helicopter. The past years of research did hence not only result in new scientific knowledge about sea ice, but also in truly fascinating images, picked by AWI sea ice physicist Stefan Hendricks.