Monday, 2 July 2012

Departure of the at the Tegel Airport, photo: Alfred Wegener InstituteTomorrow we will finally leave for our expedition to the north of Siberia, and we are pleased that you want to accompany us on our journey here in the virtual world.

The last few days flew by, while I needed to run some errands and all sorts of small things had to be done. The typical "I have everything that I need" feeling, which I have in the preceding evenings usually ceases right before departure, but this time it disappeared few days earlier. I was quite clear on the fact that one must give up everything familiar for two months. So I bought myself a really effective mosquito repellent and again a few batteries for safety. And who wants to find out in the middle of nowhere that the toothbrush is missing ...

The tour continues tomorrow, first to Tegel Airport in Berlin and after a stopover at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, to the small town of Tiksi, at noon on local time, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. After a brief stay there, we will travel by helicopter to our final destination: the small island Samoylov in the Lena Delta, which for us will be for the next two months a research subject and home.


We fly east towards the sun and will experience an eight-hour time difference. For me, this time difference is a personal record. Since we will stay until September in the Arctic north near the Arctic Circle and the Midsummer was only a few days ago, there will still be the polar night in Samoylov during the coming weeks. The sun will not go down, so it will be almost equally bright during the day and night. The polar night is  just one of many new experiences, which I am already very excited about.

But besides these insights into daily life on the expedition, a great interest to us are also the important scientific questions that we want to introduce to you through the blog: As part of the EU research project PAGE21 our main research questions include: What is the current status of the permafrost in the Arctic, will the area become much warmer in coming decades due to the climate change? And what do these changes in turn do to the future climate on Earth?

We will be posting blogs from the north of Siberia approximately twice a week until the early September. And we would be very happy, if you decide to accompany us during this time as a loyal reader.

So, until the next posting from the Samoylov island,
Max

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Main page of the blog "Tundra Stories": http://page21.org/blogs/59-samoylov