Ice Warrior Science Citizen science - making a real difference to our knowledge of the Earth

Citizen Science – ordinary people cutting through commercial, political and personal agendas, searching for and discovering change

Ground-truthing - gathering vital, simple data over areas seldom if ever visited and for significant periods of time – expeditions planned up to 2028

On our next flagship expedition #LASTPOLE we will be specifically looking at Sea Ice, Weather, Pollution, Polar Bears and Oceanography

Scientific Innovation – furthering the understanding of sea-ice geophysics to make modelling and therefore predictions more accurate

Leading Technologies - to facilitate, enhance and support all of our operations

"When I started Ice Warrior in 2001, I wanted it to be accessible to everyone, to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the Polar Regions and to show that ordinary people, from all walks of life, with the right attitude and training can achieve extraordinary things. (I was living proof!) That’s exactly what we do.

I call this modern-day exploration and I feel it is about as close as we can get to emulate the golden era of exploration, when we knew so little of our World and the risks were much higher. But although the discoveries we make these days are more about climate change, pollution and changes in biodiversity than mapping undiscovered areas, it doesn’t make them less important.

Arguably, more so, because if we are to be true guardians of our Earth (and for me this is part of being civilised), then we have a great deal to learn from it, still, and the fact that Ice Warrior can contribute to this makes me feel very proud indeed." Founder, Jim McNeill.

Ice Warrior expeditions have been making a unique contribution to Arctic science and the study of global change since 2001 and continues to do so. There is a great deal of scientific interest in our citizen science.

"During the #LASTPOLE expedition we will uniquely enhance the development of sea-ice growth and decay models both for the study of global climate change, whereas the so-called Arctic change is at twice the rate of warming in the rest of the world. And because of the reduction of the sea-ice the need for enhanced operational support as Arctic shipping is on the rise.

The study of the role of the sea-ice growth and decay processes in global circulation model studies is hampered by deficiencies in sea-ice mechanical process models. The ice deformations, - the ridging and rafting dictate the sea-ice volume transports within and out of the Arctic. The cooling "heat" of southerly ice transport dominates the heat exchange between the Arctic region and the mid latitudes.

The call for better support for navigation in the Arctic sea-ice is also calling for enhanced operational support, especially with regards to the ice pressure. International consortium of stake holders in sea ice operational support like the International Ice Charting Working Group have been highlighting the need for development in that area. The Ice Warrior Citizen Science programme is addressing key issues in that development, offering a unique observational programme and advanced scientific research data. The program is multinational in nature and its outcome will be shared, coordinated and used by the consortium of key international players the Polar Prediction Project with state of the art and facilities of the World Weather Research Program of the WMO." Bjorn Erlingsson

“Measuring sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic, using satellites, has long been a 'holy grail' for polar research. The annual growth and decay of this system-the sea ice and underlying ocean - represents a huge cycle of heat, fresh water, and salt in Earth's climate, yet we've never had a good way to measure its total volume. The measurements that the Ice Warrior team will take, plus simultaneous observations from space using the NASA satellite, ICESat, promise to give us the best possible chance of resolving this system to a new degree of accuracy. Furthermore, we will be able to use the team's on-the-ground ice and snow measurements to compare against past measurements by sub-marine and buoy-sonar. This comparison will help us evaluate how quickly Earth's northern ice cap is thinning." Ted Scambos

“There is consistent and complete satellite data on aerial extent dating back to the late 1970s. Other data extend the record back to the early 1950s with good confidence. However, while there are some records of ice thickness dating back to the 1930s, the data is extremely sparse in both space and time. New satellite sensors are now providing more complete information on thickness, but these sensors are still new technologies and better validation is required. The best validations are from ground measurements taken by ice auger. A major uncertainty in the satellite data is an accurate knowledge of the snow thickness and density. Only surface measurements can provide quality information on snow cover.

The Ice Warrior expedition to the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility will allow such measurements to be taken and will provide an important dataset for satellite validation. In addition, the Ice Warrior expedition will collect measurements far into the central Arctic Ocean, a region that has rarely been sampled from the ground. This is a region that appears to have thinned quite dramatically in recent years and is therefore an important region to gather data. Thus, the measurements collected by Ice Warrior will add valuable information to our knowledge of the Arctic sea ice cover.” Walt Meier

"The MBA researchers are working on marine microbes. These marine microbes are the first to respond to the rapidly changing arctic environment. All arctic marine animals depend on these vital marine microbes either directly or indirectly. We urgently need information on ice melt and dynamics of these microbial communities to better understand food webs and to calculate predictions for the future of the arctic ocean.

In Ice Warrior's expedition we will be using new technology to instantly record scientific data in these extreme environments. We will take photographs of algae from the surface of the sea ice, which are an indicator of ice melting capacity. By using field microscopes, we can photographically capture the types of algae growing on sea ice, and images can immediately be saved to cloud platforms for expert analysis. This allows us to explore diversity of algae in some of the more isolated environments that most scientific expeditions cannot reach. Along our three and half thousand mile sea voyage to the arctic we will be using the plankton indicator to capture the diversity of plankton life at the surface.” Dr Rowena Stern, Marine Biological Association.