Image: Entering the Victoria Fjord in Northern Greenland. Photo credit: Martin Jakobsson.
Swedish Icebreaker Oden is the first vessel to reach the remote Victoria Fjord in North Greenland and the first ship to acquire marine scientific data in the uncharted Victoria Fjord. The vessel left the Port of Thule, the world’s northernmost deep-water port, at the beginning of August.
The primary geographical focus region of the expedition is the Victoria Fjord in order to assess how much and how fast the ice sheet in North Greenland can contribute to the global sea-level rise.
Data acquired on the expedition will be contributed to The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, which seeks to inspire a complete map of the entire ocean floor by 2030.
To remind, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project (Seabed 2030) is a collaborative project between The Nippon Foundation and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO), with the goal of the complete mapping of the world’s oceans by 2030.
“The GEOEO North of Greenland 2024 Expedition, organised by the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat aboard the icebreaker Oden, has made history as the first vessel to reach the remote Victoria Fjord in North Greenland,” said Nippon Foundation-GEBCO in its release.
Despite being faced with multiyear sea ice and pressure ridges the vessel – with its 40 researchers on board hailing from Sweden, USA, Denmark, Australia and Switzerland – was successful in reaching the remote fjord.
Professor Martin Jakobsson, co-Head of Seabed 2030’s Arctic and North Pacific Ocean Regional Center, is one of the two chief scientists aboard Oden for the GEOEO expedition.
He is joined by his fellow Center co-Head, Professor Larry Mayer, who is a Principal Investigator focussing on geophysical mapping on the expedition.
“This expedition will play a vital role in enhancing our understanding of this remote and sparsely explored area, with potential implications for global climate studies, future sea-level rise and our general knowledge of the Arctic environment,” said co-Chief Scientists Professor Martin Jakobsson and Professor Nina Kirchner.
The GEOEO theme is organised around seven broad scientific goals, which will be addressed by several complementing work packages prior, during and after the expedition:
- Unravelling the Late Glacial to Holocene history and dynamics of the N-GrIS
- Providing new insight into the variability of the marine cryosphere of North Greenland and the adjacent Arctic Ocean
- Investigating the interaction between ecosystem community composition, anthropogenic dynamics and climate fluctuations
- Quantifying ecosystem production and nutrient state in changing marine ecosystems north of Greenland
- Mapping of the remote ocean frontiers
- Mapping the presence of gas hydrates in marine sediments and gas in the water column and atmosphere
- Numerical modelling of the ice-ocean-atmosphere-geodynamic system
All data collected and shared with the Seabed 2030 project is included in the free and publicly available GEBCO global grid.
Source: The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project.
