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R/V Knorr crew member knocking ice of the ship's hull in the North Atlantic.

R/V Knorr crew member knocking ice of the ship's hull in the North Atlantic.
R/V Knorr crew member knocking ice of the ship's hull in the North Atlantic.
R/V Knorr crew member knocking ice of the ship's hull in the North Atlantic.
R/V Knorr crew member knocking ice of the ship's hull in the North Atlantic.
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Coffman, Derek
R/V Knorr crew member knocking ice of the ship's hull in the North Atlantic.
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04/20/2008
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Date is approximate.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 46, No. 3, Pg. 9:
Crewman clears ice from deck.
Knorr skirts ice to search for ‘Arctic haze’ In the late 1950s, pilots flying over the Arctic began having trouble seeing long distances, their vision cut short by a mysterious reddish-brown fog. What they were seeing is now known as “Arctic haze,” a mix of dust, black carbon, and chemical pollutants churned out by factories and vehicles in Europe and Western Asia. With little springtime rain to clear the Arctic air, it tends to float for weeks at a time over parts of Earth’s northern pole.
This spring, crew members on the research vessel Knorr joined scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the impacts of the chemically reactive industrial particles on cloud formation, ozone destruction, and Arctic warming. The ship, operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, took scientists 7,394 nautical miles over six weeks on expeditions to sample and study Arctic water and air. It was the northernmost journey on record for the 39-year-old Knorr.
Knorr’s forward decks had undergone $240,000 in structural modifications to accommodate 11 heavy, instrument-filled steel containers resembling small mobile homes, called vans. Each van was secured to decks on the bow, upwind from the ship’s smokestacks, so that dozens of instruments inside, and mounted on their exteriors, could draw in air samples.
Photo by Derek Coffman, NOAA/PMEL
Copyright © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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