Arctic explorers ski to the North Pole
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The international team of Marc Cornelisson (Holland), Doug Stoup (USA), and Petter Nyquist (Norway) returned May 5th, 2004 from a test expedition on the North Pole ice. In this short expedition the explorers tested the newest materials and technologies for their two month long POLE TRACK expedition to take place early in 2005. Next year's POLE TRACK expedition will leave from Cape Artichesky in northern Russia next year to survey more than 1000 kilometers of polar ice. The Arctic Ocean is extremely sensitive to temperature change and changes in the air and sea currents. The North Pole' s sea ice is melting rapidly, at least 9% every 10 years.
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The explorers, in close connection with the World Wide Fund for Nature, Dutch energy company Essent, and the European Space Agency (ESA), are contributing to scientific work to understand these changes and to capture them in a reliable climate model. Next year the team will deploy specially designed, lightweight weather stations to monitor changes in the polar ice. The beacons will transmit daily temperature, barometric pressure, and GPS data from the sea ice to the Alfred Wenger Institute in Germany. The data will be used for references for the observations of CryoSat, a new satellite mission of the ESA to chart the exact volume of the polar ice with unprecedented level of detail.
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This trip the explorers skied to the North and tested prototypes of sleds, clothes, solar cells, and instruments to be used next year. They also tested web applications that will allow the team to communicate live from this remote region with the international public following their remote work. Doug Stoup, a Suunto athlete for the last five years reports that, in addition to their special equipment for the scientific expedition, the team was able to test the new Suunto X9 GPS wristop, "In the past five years I have counted on my Suunto wristop and would not leave home without it." With Stoup the team also used the Suunto X6 and Suunto X6HR wristops.
The POLE TRACK team are all skilled polar explorers. Doug Stoup has lead more than a dozen expeditions in the Arctic Ocean and Antarctic content and is a cinematographer skilled in filming in some of the world's harshest environments. POLE TRACK's leader is Marc Cornelissen, a Dutch polar explorer who has reached both the geographic North and South Poles. The Norwegian Petter Nyquist has rapidly developed a career in polar expeditions while also being a skilled photographer and Mac designer.
You can follow the POLETRACK expeditions and learn more about climate change at www.poletrack.com. Additional images and polar exploration video clips are available on Doug Stoup's website: www.iceaxe.tv.
*photos courtesy of Doug Stoup © 2004
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