A one-of-a-kind scientific expedition is currently heading to the Arctic, aboard the South Korean icebreaker Araon. This joint initiative of the US and Korea will measure atmospheric, sea ice and ocean properties with technology developed under the EU-funded ICE-ARC project. Some of the most worrying environmental trends related to climate change can be observed in the Arctic. The region is warming up twice as fast as the average change in the rest of the World, with Arctic summer ice having hit an all-time low in 2012 when the EN Environment Programme (UNEP) observed that it had decreased by 50% compared to the average levels of the 80s and 90s. Launched in January 2014, the ICE-ARC project aims to better understand and quantify the multiple stresses involved in these changes while assessing the climatic, environmental, economic, and social impacts they have on a regional and global scale. The 21 organisations involved in ICE-ARC, coordinated by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, hope to meet this ambitious objective through the use of autonomous platforms which will monitor some 26 parameters in a cost-effective manner. Araon has already begun the deployment of ICE-ARC's autonomous platforms, along with others. The platforms relies on two ...
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