The Nansen Center participated at the 31^st NORDUnet conference held in Reykjavik, Iceland 13-15 September 2022. NORDUnet is a Nordic research and education network (REN) enabling scientists, educators, and students to work and share knowledge globally.

As part of the Float Your Boat outreach project, hundreds of school children in the US and Norway decorated their own boats in 2020 and 2021. These were set out on top of the floating sea ice in the Arctic, and now the first boat from two years ago has finally made its way back to Norway – to Arnøya at the northernmost part of Norway’s coast.

Boat found on Arnøya. Photo: Guro Kvåle Fredriksen

11 students and researchers from NERSC and the University of Bergen participated in a 3-day cruise to Bjørnafjorden south of Bergen and the surrounding area, with the Norwegian Coast Guard vessel KV Tor. The cruise was a part of the SFI Smart Ocean project preparing for a mesoscale observing system using acoustic technology.

In June, our Acoustic and Oceanography Group organized a research cruise onboard the Norwegian Coast Guard Vessel KV Svalbard. Students and experienced scientists worked side by side to collect sea-ice and oceanographic data. Engagement and involvement are essential to train the new generation of scientists in conducting Arctic field work. 

The mission to rescue moorings in the Beaufort Sea that had to be planned on short notice, has succeeded! All three moorings hold scientific instruments and data recorded for the CAATEX project since September 2019. They have been picked up by Hanne Sagen, her team, and the KV Svalbard crew under extremely harsh Arctic conditions.

Once again, the ice breaker KV Svalbard has set course for the Arctic Ocean. Onboard are NERSC researchers Hanne Sagen and Espen Storheim who plan to retrieve equipment from the CAATEX-project to prevent data loss. This mission was planned on short notice – exceptional circumstances made it necessary. 

In June, ten MSc students from the University of Bergen and the Western Norway University of Applied Science embarked on the coast guard vessel KV Svalbard to participate in the research school cruise near Svalbard, led by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center. Their goal was to get hands-on experience during a scientific cruise in the Arctic.

Who were the participants?

At this moment, the Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker KV Svalbard is on a scientific expedition on the central Arctic Ocean with eleven scientists from different Norwegian and European institutions. Demanding operations are carried out to recover deep-water moorings deployed last summer. The moorings carry instruments to observe the ocean temperatures, salinity, ‘ocean sound’, carbon dioxide, and currents below the Arctic sea ice for one year. All this to calculate the ocean temperature below the sea ice.