A diverse team of researchers will participate in the first of three research cruises this season in support of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP).

Team researchers will be investigating air-surface chemical interactions in the Arctic, and how these will evolve in future climates. Their efforts are part of the Ocean, Atmosphere, Sea Ice, Snowpack (OASIS) program—an international program that involves scientists from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK.

A diverse research team aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Healy will conduct sampling along a series of transects over the eastern Bering Sea. Research on the ship is multidisciplinary, with scientists using a variety of techniques to document ocean conditions and the productivity of the Bering Sea ecosystem.

For this project, the research team will be collecting and analyzing archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from three widely separated but environmentally comparable sites within the northern circumpolar region, the Yli-li area of Northern Finland, the Wemindji area of James Bay, Canada, and possibly in the Kamchatka Peninsula region of Russia.

A diverse research team aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGS) Healy will conduct sampling along a series of transects over the eastern Bering Sea.

The expedition members will visit several research sites in Greenland as part of an initiative to foster enhanced international scientific cooperation between the countries.

The research team, which includes undergraduate geoscience students participating in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program, will travel to Svalbard, Norway, to investigate how climate change affects sediment transport and deposition associated with the tidewater glaciers, icebergs, meltwater streams, and marine currents. Tidewater glaciers are among the fastest changing systems in the Arctic, offering the team the opportunity to monitor rapidly changing and dynamic systems.

The research team will be studying the foraging behavior of seabirds nesting in the Pribilof Islands. Specifically, they are interested in two piscivorous seabirds—the Thick-billed Murres and Black-legged Kittiwakes—on St. George and St. Paul Islands. The team is conducting this research to determine how climate warming and sea ice retreat from the southern portions of the Bering Sea will impact seabird nesting success and population growth rates on these islands.

The goal of this project is to reconstruct the behavior of atmospheric circulation, specifically the Aleutian Low pressure system, over the past 10,000 years and to assess how its variability relates to past shifts in climate.

Modeling of the ice flow suggests that the annual layers in the Eemian ice are about 7 mm thick. It will therefore be possible to investigate on an annual basis how the previous interglacial started and ended.

Polar bears, Ursus maritimus, spend most of their time on the sea ice—where they travel, hunt, and sometimes even give birth. However, during the summer the ice retreats northward and leaves some polar bears on shore for several months. These bears may not be able hunt and may face warmer temperatures than they do on the ice. The research team will investigate how the bears cope with these difficult conditions on shore, and try to determine if they possess adaptations similar to bears that hibernate in the winter.

The research team will continue to explore remote regions of the seafloor around McMurdo Station, Antarctica with a recently developed remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for underwater research.

Are microorganisms metabolically active in glacier ice? To address this exciting question, the research team will travel to the McMurdo Dry Valleys—one of the harshest environments on Earth—to study the biology, geology, and chemistry of basal ice—the dynamic layer of ice closest to the bedrock at the base of a glacier.

A team of researchers and technicians from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) spent two months documenting conditions at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) divide using a variety of techniques, including weather observations, GPS, ice coring, radar, and seismic sensing.

A large international team of scientists and drilling technicians will be working throughout the austral summer to continue to assemble and test the world’s largest scientific instrument, the in-ice IceCube Neutrino Detector that is about 75% complete.

Check out posts from the 2008 PolarTREC expeditions.