Tara Arctic 2006-2008

A high-risk 18-month expedition drifting with the sea ice on the edge of the North Pole to see the effects of climate change.

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In brief

Willing prisoners of the sea ice

Although the schooner was originally designed for this polar drift by architects Olivier Petit, Luc Bouvet and engineer Michel Franco, we never got the chance to test the accuracy of the calculations against the many assaults of the sea ice. The first time was a moment of truth…

Goélette

507days of expedition in the cold
5,200 kmcovered on the planet
1,500press articles
4times faster than the Fram in 1893

Etienne Bourgois President of Fondation Tara Océan

It was an incredible experience, unlike any other. The first members of the expedition spent eight months on board, some spent more than a year. Just one seaman, Grant, spent all 507 days on board.

Climate changes are altering this region at a vertiginous speed. These phenomena have consequences, not only on the lives of the five million people who live within the Arctic Circle, but also on the entire world, and necessitate an urgent global response.

Setting sail in May 2006 from Lorient, its home port, the schooner Tara and its crew embarked on a human adventure as risky and unprecedented as that of Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram more than a century earlier. The International Polar Year 2007-08 was an opportunity to invest in polar research, a true watchdog for future climate change. For nearly 500 days, or two nights and one polar day of six months each, in temperatures of -25°C, the schooner drifted across the Arctic Ocean with the ice floe. At an average speed of 10 km per day, the eleven men and women furthest north of humanity took readings and measurements from a depth of 3,500 m to an altitude of 2,000 m with the aim of feeding the IPCC models to try to predict major climatic events in Europe.

Objectives

The North Pole, our climate watchdog

Why is the sea ice disappearing so rapidly?

What are the dynamics of the annual melt according to the seasons?

To convince people of the urgency through a unique and original human adventure at the cutting edge of the collective climatic understanding.

To be able to predict major climatic events in Europe.

Results of Tara Arctic (2006-2008), the transpolar drift

Assesment

The secrets of the accelerated melting of the sea ice

To be there with time
The fact that we had been on the ice, in the ice and with the ice for over a year, enabled us to put our finger on the major aspects of its seasonal cycle via new simultaneous surveys of the three elements which are the atmosphere, the ocean and the sea ice.

The importance of the albedo
We were also able to understand the effects of the albedo, that fraction of solar energy reflected into space, compared to other oceanic and atmospheric phenomena which transfer a large amount of heat from the equator towards the poles, both in summer and in winter.

Lack of cold in winter
We also noticed that the ice was weakened much more in winter. Of course, the melting process takes place in summer, but the massive retreats of ice that we observe are much more associated with the processes of winter. Because winters are much less harsh than before, less cold produces less ice which melts more easily with the return of the summer sun.

Scientific publications

20/09/2008

Meteorological conditions in the Arctic Ocean in spring and summer 2007 as recorded on the drifting ice station Tara.

Vihma, T., J. Jaagus, E. Jacobson, and T. Palo.

Tara Arctic

01/04/2013

Reading and thinking about international Polar years: five recent books.

Dave Carlson.

Tara Arctic

15/01/2008

Exploring Arctic transpolar drift during dramatic sea ice retreat.

Gascard, J.-C., E. Bourgois, H. Bourmaud, B. et al.

Tara Arctic

Quirin Schiermeier. In from the cold. Nature Vol 457/ 26 February 2009.

01/04/2013

Melt pond formation and temporal evolution at drifting station Tara during summer 2007

Sankelo, P., Haapala, J.,Heiler, I. and E. Rinne.

Tara Arctic

16/11/2010

Seasonality of spectral albedo and transmittance as observed in the Arctic Transpolar Drift in 2007

Nicolaus, M., S. Gerland, S. R. Hudson, S. et al.

Tara Arctic

15/07/2009

Ozone in the boundary layer air over the Arctic Ocean: measurements during the TARA transpolar drift 2006-2008

Bottenheim, J.W., S. Netcheva, S. Morin, S.V. Nghiem

Tara Arctic

14/05/2009

Positive trend in the mean speed and deformation rate of Arctic sea ice, 1979-2007

Rampal, P., Weiss, J. and Marsan, D.

Tara Arctic

14/10/2011

Low frequency bursts of horizontally polarized waves in the Arctic sea-ice cover.

Marsan, D., Weiss, J, Metaxian, J-P, et al.

Tara Arctic

14/06/2010

Validation of the Climate-SAF surface broadband albedo product: Comparisons with in situ observations over Greenland and the ice-covered Arctic Ocean.

Riihelä. A., Laine, V., Manninen, T., et al.

Tara Arctic

16/05/2012

Validation of atmospheric reanalyzes over the central Arctic Ocean

Jakobson, E., T. Vihma, T. Palo, L.et al.

Tara Arctic

30/01/2013

The impact of heterogeneous surface temperatures on the 2-m air temperature over the Arctic Ocean in spring

Tetzlaff, A., Kaleschke, L., Lüpkes, C., et al.

Tara Arctic

14/11/2013

Low-level jet characteristics over the Arctic Ocean in spring and summer.

Jakobson, L., T. Vihma, E. Jakobson, T. et al.

Tara Arctic

10/12/2011

Linking the effective thermal conductivity of snow to its shear strength and density

Florent Domine, Josué Bock, Samuel Morin, et al.

Tara Arctic

19/01/2012

Sea-ice thickness measurement based on the dispersion of ice swell.

David Marsan, Jerome Weiss, Eric Larose, et al.

Tara Arctic

19/10/2011

Comparison of seasonal sea-ice thickness change in the Transpolar Drift observed by local ice mass-balance observations and floe-scale EM surveys.

Christian HAAS, Herve LE GOFF, Samuel AUDRAIN, et al.

Tara Arctic

08/05/2009

Sea ice thickness measurement using episodic infragravity waves from distant storms

Peter Wadhams a,b, Martin J. Doble b.

Tara Arctic

24/07/2013

Results from the Damocles ice-buoy campaigns in the transpolar drift stream 2007-2009.

M. Haller, B.Brümmer and G. Müller.

Tara Arctic

Pascaline Bourgain and Jean-Claude Gascard. The Arctic Ocean Halocline and its interannual variability from 1997 to 2008. Deep Sea Research, Part I. Oceanographic research papers. Vol 58 issue 7 pp745-756, 2011.

06/03/2012

The Atlantic and summer Pacific waters variability in the Arctic Ocean from 1997 to 2008.

Pascaline Bourgain and Jean-Claude Gascard.

Tara Arctic

Team

A team at the heart of the adventure

On the ice, a team of mariners, engineers from the foundation and scientists coordinated by the CNRS and the University of the Sorbonne, from twelve countries.