Podcast Episode Available
The IcePod – Final Episode with Matt Shupe: The Great Expectations
To access the podcast, go to:
https://theicepodcast.home.blog/
For questions, contact:
Kirstin Werner
Email: kirstin.werner [at] awi.de
A new episode of The IcePod is now available. The IcePod is the podcast about polar science and the people. Hosts talk to scientists who went on board Polarstern, the German research icebreaker, for the biggest research expedition in the Arctic. It is produced in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute and Radio Weser.TV. The IcePod is the official podcast of the Year of Polar Prediction initiative to improve weather and sea-ice forecast in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Episode Description:
Here's the final episode of The IcePod's Season 1. In this episode, hosts meet one of the highest-ranked people of MOSAiC, Matt Shupe. Matt has been the co-lead of the expedition and stayed onboard Polarstern for the first, the dark one, and the fourth, the light leg of the one-year expedition. Matt really is a cloud person. He has been working on the Arctic mixed-phase clouds since basically forever. As a PhD student, he had already been involved into the Arctic drifting expedition SHEBA in 1997, and could thus bring on his experience camping on the ice into the new project. After his return from the Arctic, he always wanted to go back to better understand what's going on there in terms of atmosphere/sea-ice interactions. When he met the German physicist Klaus Dethloff, who by the time worked at the Alfred Wegener Institute, they realized they'd have similar dreams on an Arctic overwintering campaign. It took them quite some years and efforts to champion on these paired ideas, but eventually they got more people convinced and the German research vessel Polarstern on board.
From COVID-19 to logistical issues, not to mention the fast drift of the ice floe, the MOSAiC expedition was sometimes not as they had pictured. But great expectations can only be topped by the unexpected reality, which turned out to be amazing, not only due to the various observations during polar night and day, but also to the team spirit, the human relationships, and particularly the Italian card game connection that built over time on an Arctic island in the sun.
To access the podcast, go to:
https://theicepodcast.home.blog/
For questions, contact:
Kirstin Werner
Email: kirstin.werner [at] awi.de