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The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time

The Arctic Mission to the Epicenter of Climate Change

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

​​For readers of Endurance and other seafaring adventure stories comes a thrilling account of a twenty-first-century Arctic mission.

The Greatest Polar Expedition of All Time vividly describes one year aboard the Polarstern, a powerful ice-breaker ship that journeyed deep into the Arctic in 2019, carrying over 100 scientists and crew known as the MOSAiC Expedition. Hailing from across the world, they would become the largest expedition to ever survive a polar winter. Their purpose was to understand—and predict—the impacts of climate change on the Arctic.

Written by the expedition's leader, the renowned atmospheric scientist Markus Rex, this page-turner reads like a captain's log of daily life aboard the Polarstern. Living in one of the most remote, dangerous, and electrifying places on earth, Rex describes incredible sights: polar bears playing with scientific equipment, Christmas parties in the bitter cold, frostbitten scientists, and hair-raising storms that threaten to break the Polarstern's cables and send it flying across the ice. He also reveals breathtaking science from deep inside the sea ice.

Filled with sobering, heart-warming, and bone-chilling moments, this book is a testament to Rex's extraordinary drive to save a precious ecosystem. It's also an ode to a place that has beguiled sailors and explorers for centuries.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Markus Rex is a serious scientist who is on a unique mission to gather data and experience conditions in the Arctic Ocean by spending an entire year there, including purposely trapping his ship in the ice. Paul Boehmer's sonorous voice and deliberate pace match the scientist's seriousness of purpose. His delivery sounds a bit ponderous at the beginning, but Boehmer soon relaxes into the diary entry format with a more conversational style and varied pacing. Rex recounts polar bear encounters, crew efforts to present scientific findings in song and dance, and the difficulty of finding an ice floe thick enough to remain stable. The overarching sense of urgency for governments all over the world to take quick and significant action on climate change is loud and clear. A.B. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 28, 2022
      Rex, the head of atmospheric research at the Alfred Wegener Institute, vividly captures 2019’s MOSAiC polar expedition in this show-stopping account. In September of that year, the icebreaker Polarstern set sail from Tromsø, Norway, to spend a year monitoring and measuring conditions in the Arctic Ocean; the mission involved hundreds of scientists, technicians, and crew members. Rex, the director of the project, recounts it in diary format, describing the logistics of finding a suitable ice floe thick enough to support the weight of their equipment, polar bear encounters, and ever-shifting conditions. Research successes large and small come along the way, as when one team had an “amazing” ice coring day, and Rex has a knack for vivid and startling imagery. (On the myriad ice formations, “One looks like a huge mushroom, another like the teeth of a mighty Arctic monster frozen in the ice.”) His conclusion that immediate action is needed to preserve the Arctic ice won’t be a surprise, but his point that any changes to that effect will need to be relevant and have broad support is well made. This is required reading for anyone interested in seeing science in action.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

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