An international team of 50 scientists from 30 countries are conducting a full scientific exploration of Antarctica with emphasis on pollution and climate change, The official launching to be held on Monday and the expedition will last for almost three months.
The scientists will be boarding the Russian research ship, Akadermik Treshnikov, in Capetown on December 20, 2016, travel to Antarctica, and expecting to be back on March 18, 2017. They expect to experience the hostile environment of Antarctica when they explore the snow-filled continent.
The expedition hopes to collect valuable data on the continent since very little is known about the island-continent, especially on the melting of the Southern ice caps and its effect on the Southern Ocean.
While there is much information known about the Arctic Pole, very little is known about the Southern Pole so scientists all over the world eagerly await the findings of this multinational endeavor. The expedition will be referred to as the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition (ACE), the first research mission to study all the major islands in the South Pole and climate of the Antarctic continent.
According to Frederik Paulsen, co-founder of the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) and ACE benefactor, all the islands in South Pole will be explored and the collected data will be collated and studied.
Scientists have been waiting for the launching of this research expedition where scientists from different countries are given the chance to work together and work for the same goal, that of collecting information for scientific studies.
This type of expedition has never been organized before and it poses a challenge to the scientists to confer with one another in the fields of oceanography, biology, climatology, geology and other scientific fields of study.
Data from this research mission will soon be within the reach of scientists in schools and universities all over the world, providing information that, hopefully, can make our planet a better place to live in.
