The cooperation agreement with the shipping company Ponant has been extended in 2025 to the year 2027.
The thickness of sea ice is one of it’s most important properties affecting the energy and freshwater balance, ecosystem functions, and navigability of ice-covered waters. Sea ice thickness is also an important climate indicator revealing the state of the ice at a given time. Therefore, we have observed ice thickness in the high Arctic Ocean and near the North Pole for over 30 years, beginning with the first Polarstern voyage to the North Pole in 1991. These data provide impressive evidence of the more than 50% thinning of Arctic sea ice in the last 30 years, from more than 2.5 m thick in 1991 to only about 1 m thick since 2007. Consequently, within this project we carry out ship-based ice thickness observations during all past and upcoming North Pole voyages of Le Commandant Charcot (LCC) using it’s on-board Sea Ice Monitoring System (SIMS). In addition, we conduct in-situ measurements on ice thickness and mechanical strength properties measurements at each ice station and on ice floes accessed by Zodiacs.
The repeated North Pole cruises of LCC in a given summer provide unique opportunities to study occurring changes while increasing the data base for deriving trends.
Ice thickness, together with ice concentration and ice properties, is also the dominant environmental parameter governing navigability of sea ice regimes. Efficient and safe ice breaking requires knowledge of ice conditions, ship-ice interactions, and icebreaking performance under various scenarios. In order to better understand navigability, ice loads, and ship-performance, corresponding measurements are conducted by the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). Furthermore, within an ongoing PhD work the TUHH-M10 has developed an icebreaking simulator based of first principles which requires further validation and comparison with full-scale data. TUHH developed a testing device for mechanical properties which gained much attention in the academic community and corresponding publication in two leading international conferences in 2025.
Furthermore, the valuable and rare full-scale data have been proven invaluable assets in other research projects.
