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[♪]

[wind gusting]

[reporter 1] Wildfires are burning out of control...

[reporter 2] At least five people are dead tonight...

[♪]

[reporter 3] Largest storm to hit Japan in at least six decades...

[reporter 4] At least 18 people are confirmed to have died...

[reporter 5] Floods and landslides across South Asia.

More than a hundred people are known to have died.

[reporter 6] Scientists warn no part of the world

will be spared from the climate crisis.

[Matthew Shupe] The Arctic is changing faster

than the rest of the world.

[Allison Fong] Within my lifetime,

there may no longer be permanent sea ice.

[John Cassano] We're playing a game

where we don't know what the outcome is going to be.

[male narrator] The Arctic.

For millions of years,

this frozen ocean has cooled our planet

and controlled our weather.

But this remote world is a scientific mystery.

And it's melting...

fast...

with consequences for all life on Earth.

This is the story of a vital scientific mission:

To understand what's happening...

before it's too late.

A global team of scientists is setting out

on the biggest polar expedition ever attempted.

[Fong] MOSAiC, as a mission,

is the modern climate science equivalent of going to the moon.

If you asked me if I'd ever imagined myself

working in the Arctic,

going to polar bear safety training,

handling a rifle, I would have laughed at you.

I would have been like, you're crazy.

There's no way.

I'm a microbiologist doing microbial ecology

out of Hawaii in the big blue ocean.

I don't even know what you're talking about.

[narrator] The mission, led by Germany's Alfred Wegner Institute,

has been ten years in the planning.

We'll start here.

[Markus Rex] We have hundreds of people

from 37 different nationalities onboard.

It's just a massive operation

on a scale that we have never seen in the Arctic before.

There should be something...

[indistinct chattering]

[Shupe] We have this all-star team

of scientists here together, all with a shared vision,

a shared mission to be here to study

this changing Arctic system.

[narrator] The plan is a world first:

To take the Polarstern,

a high-tech research icebreaker,

and pack it with equipment to study the Arctic

for an entire year.

[Shupe] We're taking a whole new level of sophistication with us.

Onboard the ship will be instruments

that have never been installed in the central Arctic,

that will give us this insight

into details that we just haven't observed before.

We're going out on an adventure,

an international expedition into a frontier, really.

I mean, the Arctic is still a frontier.

[wind gusting]

[narrator] From Norway, the team will head deep into the Arctic ice cap...

a frozen ocean that grows and shrinks with the seasons.

Once there, they'll shut off the engines

and let the ice freeze around the ship.

Locked in place,

they'll explore every aspect of the Arctic

as never before:

through the constant darkness

of an Arctic winter,

and some of the harshest conditions on earth.

If successful, we will better understand

our fast-changing world...

and what we can do to save it.

[laughter]

[Esther Horvath] This is, for me,

the most beautiful environment on the planet.

The ice constantly changes,

and every hour you can experience something different.

It's...

so fragile.

It's such a unique place on this earth.

And full of life.

[camera shutter clicks]

I feel that I have a calling,

and I can tell stories about what is happening here.

It just feels sad that this can disappear.

[narrator] The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast

as the rest of the planet.

Today, sea ice in the summertime

covers only half the area it did just 40 years ago.

The world's cooling system is breaking down.

[Shupe] Decades ago, when there was more extensive ice cover,

a lot of the sunlight that comes in in the summertime

would just reflect back off that really bright white surface

and go back to space.

Now we have progressively less and less sea ice,

and that exposes more ocean.

And that open ocean is dark.

It absorbs the sunlight,

and therefore warms up the ocean and melts even more ice.

So you can imagine this runaway process

of more warming of the Arctic system,

more ice melting,

and therefore the Arctic is going to continue to warm faster

than the rest of the globe.

[narrator] As the Arctic melts,

global temperatures will spiral

and our weather will change dramatically.

To combat climate change,

we first need to understand this little-explored world.

With time running out for planet Earth,

the mission aims to gather the vital data needed

to inform policy makers.

[Rex] We need to take the right decisions now.

We need to be able to tell our societies

what the consequences of today's decisions will be

for future generations.

For that, we need a good understanding

of the climate system,

and that is why we are here.

[indistinct chatter]

This looks great, I think, as far as size.

[Shupe] The start of our expedition is really important.

We're going into the sea ice to try to find an ice floe.

An ice floe is a discrete chunk of ice.

It's maybe a couple of kilometres across.

Ideally, our ice floe will be thick enough

so that it can support all of our equipment

that we want to put out on the ice.

And, yeah, this stuff that's right there

is the drop layer that's underneath.

It often breaks off...

[Shupe] And this will be our home for the next year.

So this is really a crucial moment in our whole expedition.

[narrator] The success of the mission

depends on taking advantage of a natural phenomenon.

The plan is to hitch a ride on the constantly moving sea ice.

Freezing in near Russia,

this trans-polar drift

will carry them close to the North Pole...

and then out towards the Atlantic.

[Shupe] If we pick the right ice floe,

then we'll stay in the ice pack for a full year.

If we pick the wrong ice floe...

it might drift out to the ice edge

faster than we anticipated.

It might break up.

And so we're walking a thin line here.

[man, over radio] We are standing by.

-Copy that. -We'll take over now.

OK, door is closed.

[Shupe] We have to understand the ice.

To put boots on the ice is really essential.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

[speaking German]

[speaking German] Thirty three centimetres.

[Rex] Our dream would be an ice floe that is thicker

than one metre 20.

Just a stable island of ice.

[speaking German] Thirty eight centimetres.

So far, we haven't seen any of those.

Well here, this one isn't it.

[Rex] We had a record-breaking hot summer in the Arctic

that has affected the ice around us.

In many parts, it's only 80 centimetres thin,

and only half of that is stable ice.

OK, OK, this is not our floe.

[Rex] So the results of these surveys

are that the floes are all thin...

[Shupe] The ice floes are weaker.

They're thinner.

They seems to be not as strong

as some of the ice floes in the past.

I mean, we could get into a state

where we can't fly for the next week.

[Fong] People are nervous.

We have spent so much time

preparing for this scientific endeavour.

We can't afford for anyone's equipment

to not be out on the ice.

[speaking German]

[Fong] I feel this immense amount of pressure that we have,

that we're creating a benchmark of measurements

that we may never be able to repeat in the future.

I feel a huge sense of responsibility.

[wind whistling]

[Shupe] This is interesting.

This whole area here looks somewhat homogeneous.

Yeah.

[Rex] So we have looked at a number of floes now.

They all look the same.

[Shupe] We'll look over here.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. Thanks for this.

[Rex] But there is this one

which looks a little different.

[indistinct chatter]

So we first go some 50 metres that way,

and then we go--

Try to walk parallel to Polarstern over there.

[Shupe] There are quite a few potential hazards out there.

How thick is the ice?

Is it stable? Is it safe?

With every step further away from the ship,

you're getting out into the unknown.

It's an exposure, a vulnerability.

[Rex] Matt, this is Markus. Matt, this is Markus.

[Shupe, over radio] Markus, Matt.

So we right now are standing at about 3 o'clock from you.

I think our thinnest ice was 70 cm

and we've seen some up to multiple metres.

And there's quite an extensive area of that thicker ice.

[Rex] All right, Matt. thanks.

That sounds great.

[narrator] After days of uncertainty,

it's a massive relief.

From now on, they'll be in the hands of nature.

[Fong] You suddenly recognize,

oh, this is real.

We have arrived.

And just when you think that you've been working,

the real work begins.

[♪]

[man shouting in German]

I think we should build this up and we should get it moving.

[Verena] Yes, bring the sledge back to the boat,

and then you can send your team here.

[man, over radio] Received.

[narrator] The team needs to unload

a hundred tons of equipment...

and set up bases out on the ice.

With just a few days remaining before the perpetual darkness

of Arctic winter arrives, the pressure's on.

[Fong] Every day, we're looking out the window,

and light is diminishing.

And it's a race against time.

Hey, Ian, can I grab your team

and we just kind of all pull it.

[narrator] The plan is to build a series of research stations,

they call ice cities,

each with a specific purpose.

[Fong] So there's Balloon Town,

and Ocean City, and Met City.

And these are places that are supporting the scientists

as they do work in the field.

[narrator] The cities are packed with cutting-edge equipment

to explore every aspect of the Arctic--

its atmosphere, ice...

and the deep oceans beneath.

Power cables stretching up to half a mile

connect them all to the Polarstern.

More remote still,

a network of satellite science sites

and isolated monitoring stations.

The entire complex stretches across an area

of around two and a half thousand square miles.

[Shupe] There's different aspects of science--

atmosphere, ice, ocean,

looking at physical processes, chemical processes,

biological processes.

Different measurements, different equipment.

Such a huge collection of activities out there.

[wind gusting]

Radio check on 16.

[Shupe] Yeah, this is Matt with the tripod team for the day,

and we're going to be heading out now.

[Fong] I think the day-to-day challenge

is how you handle the cold.

You talk about minus 40 degrees,

but it's a different thing to experience it.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[Shupe] The Arctic can be harsh.

If you have to fix some little piece of an instrument,

sometimes you need to take your bare hand out to do that.

That could be a huge challenge

and could lead to frostbite in your fingers.

[narrator] But the cold is not the only danger.

Did you feel that little...?

And you hear the sound?

Interesting.

Well, be ready.

[man] Yeah, right here, look at this.

[Shupe] Well, you get to see a crack play out

right in front of your eyes.

[man, over radio] From our position, there's a big crack

directly from the open water to Met City.

Width, approximately 8 to 10 centimetres.

[Shupe] Bridge, bridge. Matt at Met City.

See that crack? It comes right over by where I'm standing, right by our tower.

A crack going right through Met City is a huge challenge.

It could just pull the whole tower down.

Out here, it's about 1 cm right now.

But it seems to be opening a little bit.

The ice appears to be different than it has been in the past.

I didn't anticipate seeing so many cracks

so early in the expedition.

We're just setting up our equipment,

and already our installations are under threat.

[narrator] And out in the darkness,

there's another threat.

[boat horn blowing]

[Esther] I'm standing there on this small hill at Met City,

on my very first polar bear guard duty.

[Esther, over radio] Bridge, bridge.

[man, over radio] Pack your stuff together.

You have to evacuate.

[Esther] Suddenly, I hear from the bridge

that two polar bears are approaching us.

[indistinct murmuring]

[Esther] They are a thousand metres away.

Nine hundred metres away.

And we all have to go back immediately.

In that second, I start to shout.

[Esther] Stop doing what you are doing and go to the Ski-Doo.

Polar bears, if they are hungry,

they will hunt for a person.

[Rex] These huge animals can reach

speeds of 60 kilometres per hour.

And everybody has to have that in mind.

Once a polar bear is close,

it can be at the person in seconds.

[Esther] I am the only person who has a rifle,

and am I going to be able to use it

protecting all the people around me?

And there's a lot of people there.

[Shupe, over radio] Bridge, bridge, Matt...

We are actually really full here.

[Esther] And I'm just counting the people and then wondering,

like, are we going to fit on the Ski-Doos?

[Shupe] We're going to try to load everybody on these.

It's going to be really full but we'll...

try to make it out with what we have here.

Guys, hurry up!

[Esther] In my mind,

I don't care how small the sleds are.

Everybody has to fit.

We all have to go back now.

As we are driving back...

my fear is suddenly

I will have a bear ahead of me.

As we all got onboard...

[man, over radio] Bridge, bridge, this is Gaute. Over.

[Esther] ...that was a second when I saw them.

[man 2, over radio] Yes, bridge?

Polar bears are at a hundred metres.

[Shupe] Once we have everybody safe,

the story's not over.

We really don't want the polar bears

messing around with our equipment,

both for the sake of the instrumentation,

but also for the sake of the bears.

[man 1, over radio] I will inform you when you have to shoot with the flare guns.

Where is Trude?

She is right next to me.

The main goal is to have everyone safe,

and then scare the polar bears away.

[man 1, over radio] We have two rifles and two flare guns.

[man 2, over radio] Put the light on the bears.

Please put the light on the bears.

[Gaute, over radio] Bridge, this is Gaute. Over.

Do you see the polar bears?

[man 1, over radio] I see you and I see the polar bears.

[Trude] We are invading their space.

[gun pops]

I don't want to harm them.

[gun pops]

I do not want to fire my rifle at the polar bear.

[flares explode]

So it is so nice when they understand

that we are making too much noise for them.

[wind gusting]

[narrator] Arctic winter arrives.

For the next four and a half months,

the team will endure 24-hour darkness.

[wind gusting]

[Esther] I've never been into the complete darkness,

you know, 24-hour darkness.

It's an incredible experience to live,

exist and work here in the wintertime.

[camera shutter clicking]

It looks unreal.

It feels like we are somewhere else in the universe.

This is not the Earth.

This is something completely different.

[Fong] The darkness...

working in the dark for months on end,

not really being able to see

beyond where your headlamp shines.

That's scary.

Yeah, that's pretty scary.

[narrator] One of the most complex

and important research camps, Met City,

is up and running.

All systems green.

Tower's alive today.

[woman, over radio] Bridge...

Man...

That's pretty cool.

My thumb is steaming from where I wiped my nose on it.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[Shupe] Met City is a really important part of MOSAiC.

It's a few hundred metres away from the ship.

And the reason we're out there is because we want to get away

from the influences that the ship has on the atmosphere.

These are radiometers.

They're measuring the sunlight in the summertime.

In the wintertime, they're measuring the emission

from the atmosphere.

Our tower here is about 11 metres tall,

and this can tell us about the turbulent exchange of heat,

of energy, of moisture at the surface.

We need to understand what the sea ice is experiencing

and how that affects the melting of the sea ice,

or the freezing of the sea ice.

So these are really important for us here, out at MOSAiC.

[narrator] The data from Met City

will be combined with all the other experiments

over the entire year

to build the most complete picture ever created

of the complex interactions shaping the Arctic.

Another crucial piece of the puzzle

is the hidden world under the ice.

[Fong] It doesn't look like much, I mean, right?

At the surface.

You're like, it's just snow. It's quiet.

But actually below the ice, there's a flurry of activity.

[whirring]

I'm used to making lab experiments with a pipette.

Delicate work.

And here I am with a 60-centimetre-long chainsaw.

[man] OK...

[speaking foreign language]

This hole and this access point to the ocean

is super critical for MOSAiC.

Some of the big outstanding questions are,

what are the activities of organisms in polar night?

From the central Arctic,

there are basically no measurements whatsoever.

So this will be the first chance in history

for us to do that work.

[narrator] This device can collect water samples

at specific depths right down to the ocean floor...

[man, speaking German] I'll close a bottle.

[narrator] ...two and a half miles below.

[woman] What?

[Fong] At this place in the world at this time of year...

there's never been data like this.

And that's incredible.

And so every time we put a piece of equipment out

and we collect a sample successfully,

we're the only people that have been able to do it.

OK, so Jen, you're done for DIC on one.

Uh, that means you can do salinity on number one.

I think winter in general is thought of

as a time of hibernation or low metabolic activity.

But what we're seeing is that organisms have adapted

over millennia to this...

what we consider an extreme environment.

In one millilitre of seawater,

which is basically like a teaspoon of seawater,

are one million bacterial cells.

And from there,

the diversity is extraordinary.

There's also phytoplankton cells--

tens of thousands per litre of seawater.

[narrator] These microscopic plant-like organisms

might seem insignificant,

but they're crucial to all life on Earth.

Like forests of the sea,

they produce more than half the oxygen we breathe.

And they consume vast amounts of carbon dioxide.

It's thought the oceans absorb around a quarter of the CO2

produced by the burning of fossil fuels.

For our climate,

these tiny creatures play a huge role.

[water splashing and bubbling]

[Fong] Given that the Arctic is experiencing so much change,

we need to understand what impact reductions in sea ice

and global warming is having on these organisms

and how these components of the climate interact.

We have no idea yet what the ecological response

to that loss of sea ice will be.

[narrator] Just a month in,

and the team is already learning more

about life in Arctic winter

than has ever been possible before.

But there's one thing they're yet to find:

fish.

[Pauline Snoejis-Leijonmalm] I am so nervous.

[man chuckles]

-Nervous? -I'm not nervous, I'm excited.

[man] Excited.

[Fong] The fishing is a difficult.

You spend a lot of effort and a lot of time,

and most of the time you don't catch fish.

There aren't that many in the central Arctic.

[Pauline] How many metres was that?

Three hundred metres when this is out.

[Pauline] Nothing is known about the fish here.

So anything we find will be completely new.

The next one, the bait has gone.

[man] Yes, someone has stolen the bait.

Yes!

[exclaiming]

[man] This is a cod.

-This is an Atlantic cod? -It's an Atlantic cod.

This is not a polar cod. It's an Atlantic cod.

That's impossible!

[Fong] Finding an Atlantic cod

in the winter months of the central Arctic

is a brand-new discovery.

Amazing.

[Fong] It's completely unexpected.

Where shall we put them?

Shall we put them...

[man] Put them in the black...

[Fong] It's not where it should be.

It's a warning sign that things are changing,

even in the deep ocean.

Just like our air temperatures are increasing,

actually, the ocean is the place

where most of the heat is retained.

[narrator] Our oceans have so far absorbed

more than 90% of the excess heat

trapped by greenhouse gases,

sparing us from soaring air temperatures.

But they, and the creatures within them,

are reaching breaking point.

[Fong] We are systematically changing

the range that organisms can inhabit.

Suddenly, you're seeing organisms in the ocean

migrating north in the Northern Hemisphere

and south in the Southern Hemisphere.

Places of the ocean that are very warm already,

like around the equator,

organisms that inhabit that area

might be now experiencing temperatures

that exceed what they can tolerate,

so they can no longer live in those areas.

You will have these large expanses

that now become ocean deserts.

And when you lose that,

you affect whole human communities

that have relied upon these ecosystems

being healthy and thriving.

Some of the things that we're observing are red flags.

And those have all of these effects

that we're still just starting to understand.

[wind gusting]

[narrator] Almost two months into their year-long mission,

the transpolar drift has carried the Polarstern

to within 300 miles of the North Pole.

And the scientists are settling in to the cold

and constant darkness.

[Hans, over radio] Good afternoon, Arctic.

This is Radio MOSAiC.

We start with the weather. We have minus 18 degrees.

So it's a warm day to do science outside.

We have seen footprints from a polar bear,

and I think they are not older than two days,

so take care when you go out.

We will start the afternoon with a song.

"Cum On Feel the Noize." Enjoy.

[Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize" playing over speakers]

♪ So you think I got An evil mind ♪

♪ Well, I'll tell you, honey ♪

♪ That I don't know why ♪

♪ Anymore ♪

♪ Oh, no ♪

♪ So come on Feel the noise ♪

♪ Girls, rock your boys ♪

♪ We get wild, wild, wild ♪

♪ Wild, wild, wild ♪

-♪ Come on ♪ -♪ Feel the noise ♪

♪ Feel it, feel it ♪

♪ Girls, rock your boys ♪

♪ We get wild, wild, wild ♪

♪ I don't know ♪

♪ Anymore ♪

[all laughing]

[Trude, over radio] Bridge, bridge, Trude.

[Hans] Trude, go ahead.

[Trude] I'm in position stern.

[Hans] Thank you. Enjoy your watch.

[Trude] Do we have a ladder here?

Good.

[indistinct radio chatter]

Oh, my God.

[Trude] The ice is moving a lot.

Bridge, bridge.

For your information,

the ice here has really started to move.

We noticed by the sound, and are monitoring it now.

We managed to save the ladder, which is now on our side.

-[ice creaking] -[Esther] It's so loud.

It sounds like an engine as it starts.

Then I have to think,

is that an engine, or is this ice?

It is like an earthquake under your feet,

but there is nowhere to run.

You really feel how fragile you are.

It's a frightening experience.

Let's hope we find a way over.

[creaking stops]

[Trude] Oh, it's stopped.

Bridge, bridge, Trude.

[indistinct radio chatter]

The ice has stopped again.

It was like an on switch,

and now the off switch has been put on.

So ice has stopped moving,

and it's completely silent here in the Arctic again.

[indistinct chatter over radio]

Now, we have to find a new way going home.

[Shupe] This is stress on the ice.

This is the winds and the currents in the ocean

causing pressure in the ice,

and eventually the ice just lets go.

There's internal pressure, and it breaks.

[Thomas] This was really, I think, the last chance.

-[laughs] -[Trude] Thank you, Thomas.

[wind gusting]

[Shupe] Storms can wreak all kinds of havoc

on our installations out there.

And we know that this is going to potentially pose

big challenges.

[narrator] It's a massive crisis.

Huge cracks, known as leads, open up,

that threaten to wreck the entire base.

[Shupe] Anxiously watching.

I'm wondering, is Met City still there?

Can I still see my installations?

[Hans] There is one crack behind Met City.

We've lost the power.

-The power is gone. -Yeah.

[Shupe] It's knocked out our power supply.

It's taken down our measurements at Met City.

We have to get back out there.

We have to get the power hooked up again,

so that we can continue making our measurements.

[Rex] The goal of the operation

is to rescue the cables so that we don't lose them.

Probably the best strategy is to cut the connectors

and then pull the cables with the scooter.

Maybe it's OK if just two people cross the leads.

Yeah, yeah, I think two is perfect.

-[woman] We prepare the kayak? -[Rex] Yeah.

All right.

[wind gusting]

[indistinct radio chatter]

[Verena] Hey, we're now leaving to get things done.

[Rex, over radio] Copy.

[Shupe] It's a huge challenge to work out in a storm.

You still have to make decisions.

You still have to do your work.

But it's so chaotic all around you.

The black one is remote sensing, the thin black one is the data.

Once you loosen the cable,

we connect it to the snowmobile here

and try to pull it.

We can start to prepare to go over.

-All good? -Yeah.

Team Kayak?

[narrator] The team needs to discover

whether the vital power cable is still connected.

[Shupe] It's about as cold as you can get in the water.

Saltwater has a colder freezing temperature,

so it's gonna be, you know, minus 1.7.

That's pretty cold.

[woman, over radio] All right.

The connectors have been ripped off...

so the other half is probably in the water.

We can't reach it, we can't see it.

You can just start pulling.

[man, over radio] Copy that, we will start pulling.

[narrator] Having been ripped apart,

the heavy cable is hanging deep into the ocean.

[Hans] Slowly, slowly, slowly!

Slowly, slowly!

Hey, stop! Stop! Stop!

There is something else hanging here.

[muttering]

Yeah, OK!

[speaking foreign language]

[speaking foreign language]

Yeah, we are very close.

Ah, this is the end. This is the end.

[laughs]

Well done, guys.

Excellent.

[Shupe] This is the first time that we've really seen

what the Arctic's going to throw at us.

But how many more storms and how much more ice breakup

will we have through our camp?

[indistinct chatter]

[narrator] Since their departure,

the team has been living in isolation.

But after three months, that's about to change.

Russian icebreaker, the Kapitan Dranitsyn,

has fought its way through the ice with fresh supplies.

And with them, new scientists joining the mission.

[wind gusting]

[Vishnu] I don't know if I am the first Indian

to walk on frozen ocean waters,

but at least for this expedition,

I am the only Indian.

My name is Vishnu Nandan.

Vishnu means "preserver of the planet,"

and that's my goal.

I'm here to protect the planet.

To protect everyone.

Let's pull it across.

We don't want to block the way with this.

[Julienne] OK, yeah, I mean,

we can at least bring the cables this direction.

[Julienne] I've been going up to the Arctic region

for almost 30 years now.

But it's always been during daylight.

Doing it over winter, yeah,

that's a really unique experience that many people,

even if you're a scientist working in the Arctic,

you don't get to experience that.

And, honestly, you feel like you're walking on the moon.

That's amazing.

[indistinct radio chatter]

Hey, fox.

That is very cool.

My first polar fox.

That's exciting.

Yay.

OK, I'll check if my instrument's working now.

[narrator] Julienne and Vishnu are taking over the science

at Remote Sensing City,

while also bringing new experiments

to answer one of the most fundamental questions of all:

Just how much ice is there in the Arctic?

It's a mystery they're trying to solve from space.

[Julienne] Satellites are really key

for allowing us to monitor harsh regions like the Arctic,

and this is because we can see the region every single day,

regardless of what the weather conditions are doing,

even when humans are not there to collect data.

We have over 40 years of measurements

telling us how much of the Arctic Ocean

is covered by sea ice,

but what we've really lacked is knowing how thick the ice is.

[narrator] Satellites can measure

the height of the Arctic surface.

But they've never been able to tell how much of it is ice,

and how much is snow.

[Julienne] The idea behind this radar

is it has the same frequencies

as what's on two different satellites right now.

And perhaps in combination,

they could give us not only sea ice thickness,

but also how much snow is on top of that sea ice.

[narrator] By testing this satellite technology at the surface,

they aim to revolutionize

our ability to monitor sea ice from space.

[Julienne] It would allow us to actually map

not just the spatial extent of the ice,

but the actual ice volume in the Arctic every single day,

so that we can understand

how quickly that ice might disappear.

[Vishnu] Erskat is on.

Made possible by Rasmus and Vishnu.

[wind gusting]

[narrator] Knowing how fast the ice is melting

is also crucial to another team of scientists.

[woman, over radio] All stations, all stations.

This is bridge.

The helicopter is now flying.

[man, over radio] Messaging. Copy that.

I will inform the others.

[narrator] The biogeochemistry team

is heading 10 miles away to another ice floe.

Once dropped off, they're on their own.

[Patric] It's really cold conditions today.

And also because we flew in with a helicopter,

it took a much more logistical effort.

Like to carry stuff, to set up the tent.

So it was more difficult.

We always have to be prepared for the unexpected.

That's why we brought the stove, to warm us up in case.

[narrator] They're here to investigate

whether melting sea ice could be further accelerating

global warming by releasing methane,

a potent greenhouse gas.

Oh, a layer.

Have you seen it? This is a sediment layer.

Finally.

Oh, my God.

The black dots are the sediment.

[speaking German] That means that it hasn't frozen

here in the open ocean, but on the coast...

which is also where the methane comes from.

Methane is created from the breakdown of organic material.

This methane can enter the water in the sediment.

It can freeze into the ice from the water, and then is carried by the ice.

[narrator] Methane has 30 times

the warming power of carbon dioxide.

While much of it comes from human activities

like agriculture and landfill,

the fast-warming Arctic is now also releasing

vast amounts of the gas,

previously locked up in frozen ground and seabeds.

The world has reached another dangerous tipping point.

Understanding the role melting ice plays is crucial

if we're to fully comprehend

the frightening impact of methane

on global warming.

[wind gusting]

[crew] ♪ ...jingle all the way ♪

♪ Oh, what fun it is to ride ♪

♪ On a one-horse open sleigh Hey ♪

♪ Jingle bells, jingle bells ♪

♪ Jingle all the way ♪

♪ Oh, what fun it is to ride ♪

♪ On a one-horse open sleigh ♪

[applause]

[Christian] We are only 200 miles from the North Pole,

the northernmost Christmas party in the world.

And we have white Christmas.

We have 24 hours of holy night, if that isn't enough.

[laughter]

So cheers, everyone. Merry Christmas.

[all] Merry Christmas.

[applause]

[laughter]

[Vishnu] It's sometimes isolating.

Sometimes it makes you feel lonely...

to live in a ship stranded in the middle of the ocean.

I recently got married. We got married in July.

The only thing I miss,

apart from my parents and my wife,

is sunlight.

[Julienne] I didn't think, really,

about how tired you would feel, always being in the dark.

But I do notice it quite a bit now.

I'm outside all day,

and your headlamp's the only light you see.

It's like just being at night all the time.

And by the evening time, you want to go to bed.

And that's how I feel when I'm outside all the day.

[wind gusting]

[inaudible chatter]

[Julienne] So I don't see anything with the power cords here,

because, you see, this is connected.

All of these are connected.

So I don't know if it's the battery's gone out.

[Vishnu] We can just put it here.

[Julienne] Oh, we're bringing the radar in,

because it keeps shutting off on us,

so we're going to try to diagnose the problem inside.

I hope it'll work.

I don't know yet.

[Vishnu] We are trying very hard to maintain it

in these extreme environments.

It's been hard.

[soft humming]

[Julienne] Can you hear that sound?

That's not a good sound, I don't think.

Oh, and I can see a bit of smoke now.

Where is it coming from?

[Julienne] It's heart-breaking for me.

You know, collecting the data is really key,

and will hopefully help the public and policy makers

understand how quickly the Arctic is transforming,

and that we need to do something before it's too late.

It started because of my paper in 2007

that really showed that today's sea ice loss

is happening a lot faster than our climate models can forecast.

Al Gore came for a science briefing.

That was my first time, I guess, talking to somebody in policy.

I started getting invited to give keynote addresses

at different conferences,

and also to different heads of state.

I was invited to go to Monaco for UNESCO.

I've given talks at embassies.

I've testified in front of Congress.

But you just don't see change really happening.

It's very slow.

Our quality of life in the Western world is still too good,

I think, for these governments to act, really act,

unless economics drives a change.

It's driven by industry,

and they have a huge political pull.

And so obviously, they want to keep making money.

And so it's not in their best interests

to do anything about climate change,

because they still want to make money for fossil fuels,

for example.

Until we stop caring so much about making money

and we actually start caring about the health of the planet,

and our people,

and all the species that depend on us as well--

until that becomes more important

than lining your pockets with money,

it's just a mindset that I think is so wrong.

[crowd cheering]

We have the knowledge. We know what's happening.

And there's a lot of human lives at stake.

And the Western world

just isn't acting very quickly about this.

It's really sad for me. It's frustrating.

Yeah.

[narrator] Polarstern has been locked in the ice

for almost five months,

and is now just 150 miles from the North Pole.

It's due to receive supplies, vital equipment,

and the third team of scientists.

But the Russian icebreaker trying to reach them

is still hundreds of miles away.

[wind gusting]

[Amy MacFarlane] It's my first time in the Arctic.

As soon as the icebreaker started to move through the ice,

I got the sense of how remote the area we're going to is.

I mean, we're traveling for weeks

to get to this miraculous haven in the north.

[John] I have a 10-year-old daughter that's at home,

and partly she's really sad that I'm away for three months,

you know, and she's scared that a polar bear is gonna attack me.

But she also has talked about how excited she is

that I'm a polar explorer,

that I go to these places that most people don't experience.

[narrator] No icebreaker has ever tried

to venture so far north in the middle of winter before.

[Gina Jozef] There's two different types of shake.

You can always tell the difference.

When the ship is breaking through the ice

and it's kind of wobbling unevenly,

jerking back and forth a little bit,

that's the shaking we like,

because it means we're making progress.

Then there's the shaking that the engine causes.

You can feel it in the guts of the ship.

And we always know when we feel it that we're stuck.

[Alexandr, in Russian] If there is not enough power to break

through such heavy ice...

we stop the icebreaker and reverse.

Then we speed up and use our weight to break through.

We stop and reverse again.

We'll continue to make progress of course.

Let's hope so.

[John] There's a lot of uncertainty.

We had expected to be on the Dranitsyn

for about two weeks.

We've already been on it for three weeks.

And it's an indeterminate amount of time

until we either reach the Polarstern,

or we turn around and we head back.

Will we get the chance to do the science

that we've travelled so far to do?

Right now, it's unclear what's going to happen.

[wind gusting]

[narrator] To make matters worse,

the Polarstern is drifting

ever further away from the Dranitsyn.

If the Dranitsyn has to turn back,

the team here could be stranded for months.

Without resupply,

they'll be dangerously low on fuel for heat and power,

as well as lacking vital scientific equipment.

[Vishnu] We are kind of stuck here.

It's affected the morale of the scientists onboard.

It's been hard.

Leg three is the only opportunity we have right now

to get all of the radiation sensors

for when the sun comes back.

So those instruments need to get here.

[indistinct chatter]

[man, over radio] There to the east?

Is that the Dranitsyn?

[narrator] After a month battling through the ice,

and with the first signs of sun returning...

the Dranitsyn finally makes it.

OK, team, we go and we follow them.

[John] To step out onto the sea ice

and walk the kilometre or so that it was to the Polarstern,

just fantastic.

You know, a hundred miles from the North Pole,

walking across the sea ice,

and...it's an amazing feeling.

[Amy] At one point, I didn't think we'd be here.

But it's happened.

It's incredible.

[Gina] Finally, to be out on this sea ice,

knowing that this is where I get to live and work

for the next month,

just, like, I can't even believe how lucky I am to be here.

[narrator] With the new scientists and supplies onboard,

the mission is back on track.

[wind gusting]

[narrator] The returning sun will transform the Arctic.

Understanding the effects of solar energy,

and the very different landscape it creates,

is just as vital as understanding Arctic winter.

Welcome to the office.

[Gina] It's really beautiful.

[wind gusting]

For me, snow tells a story.

[whirring]

We're trying to understand in this scale how it's changing,

and eventually link it

to the whole of the Arctic snowpack.

We start one snowflake at a time.

So at the surface today, we have minus 20 degrees.

So it's quite a warm day.

But then, just 17 centimetres below,

we have minus nine degrees.

So it has a really big influence on just how much energy

is being transferred from the atmosphere to the sea ice.

[sniffles and sighs]

[narrator] The snow here is acting as a major insulator.

To understand how,

they need to look more closely at its structure.

So here, you can see the surface of the snow.

And it's quite a hard, wind-packed layer.

But when I flip this over,

you get this amazing crystal structure.

We can image this and create 3D models of the snow.

So, at the top, these are all really compact

and tightly together,

and you can't see any of the blue.

So the blue would be an air gap.

And then as you move further down,

you can start to see more and more air.

And then you come across these large crystals.

I've never seen these crystals quite so big before,

and we're able to just measure how much these insulate

the ice underneath.

[narrator] Over winter,

this snow will have kept the ice warm,

preventing it from growing.

But in summer, it might also shield the ice

from the melting effect of the sun's rays.

With scientists predicting that a warming Arctic

will see more snow,

it's a crucial piece of the puzzle.

I think to be able to collect these snow samples

all the way through to the melt period

is going to be really valuable for us

to see how it's changing,

and how the snow is adapting to this new Arctic.

[John] All right, let's do this.

[Gina] Let's do it.

This is an exciting day. [laughs]

[John] I am nervous for this flight.

[Gina laughs]

[Gina] I'm glad you're doing it.

-[both laugh] -I'll say that.

[John] I don't know what I think of that, Gina.

[Gina laughs]

[John] For the drone flights,

the plane will spiral up from near the surface

up to a thousand metres.

And we're measuring the state of the atmosphere,

so that's the temperature, pressure, humidity and wind.

All right, plane is launched.

OK.

[John] All right, are you ready?

-[Gina] I am ready. -[John] All right. I am ready.

Can you count me down?

[Gina] Three, two, one, go!

Hell, yeah. Whoo!

[John] Way to go, team drone.

[Gina] We did it! Whoo!

First flight! Success!

[John] When we fly we can look at how

things like the temperature changes with height,

and that tells us a lot about how the atmosphere

is interacting with the sea ice,

or the ocean, or whatever happens to be underneath us

when we're flying.

It is flying really well.

I am so happy.

One of the things we're measuring with our drones

is the wind.

The wind is really a critical part

of understanding the climate system.

The wind is generating the turbulence

that helps transfer the energy and the moisture

that's coming out of the ocean,

and transfer it into the atmosphere.

That turbulence also will take that energy in the atmosphere

and then transfer it down to the surface.

If you go higher in the atmosphere, up, you know,

where commercial aircraft fly,

then you're in an area where the jet stream is.

[narrator] The jet stream is a band of high-altitude wind

that whistles around our planet at over 100 miles an hour,

controlling much of the weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

It's driven by the temperature difference

between the warm equator and cold Arctic.

Many scientists now believe

the faster warming Arctic is weakening the jet stream,

causing it to become unstable

with potentially catastrophic results.

Cold air is able to escape out of the Arctic

and cover parts of Europe or North America,

and give us really cold winter weather.

Or if the jet stream pushes very far north,

then you get these intrusions

of warm air up into the Arctic.

[thunder crashes]

[narrator] It's thought the weaker jet stream

might also be causing weather patterns

to get stuck over the same area for longer,

prolonging droughts and floods.

[John] It impacts everything we do.

It impacts farmers

and where they can grow crops, where rain falls,

how often droughts occur, how often heat waves occur,

how often blizzards occur,

I mean, all of the weather that we experience.

Land?

The Arctic is far away, you know.

You think, oh, it's so far away, who cares?

But it has such a critical impact on the global environment

that we all have to care.

[♪]

[narrator] By mid-March, the Polarstern has drifted

with the ice more than 500 miles across the Arctic.

With little more than two weeks

between the first glimpse of the sun

and 24-hour daylight,

every day is getting noticeably longer.

And the teams are making the most of it,

continuing to track changes to the surface on foot.

And frequently scanning every inch of the floe

from the air

to create a detailed 3D model

of the ever-changing ice.

With every single day, more vital data.

But then, a crisis that no one could have predicted.

[Angela Merkel, in German] This is serious.

Please take it seriously.

I want to explain to you where we currently stand in the epidemic.

[Boris Johnson] All over the world we're seeing the devastating impact

of this invisible killer.

With the coronavirus, it's crazy.

I can't imagine what anyone at home is going through.

All we're relying on is a few messages from friends,

a few messages from family,

just telling us about the situation.

And it's really hard to take yourself

out of this extreme location in the Arctic

and think that life isn't how you left it at home.

This is quite stressful for a lot of people onboard.

[wind gusting]

[John] My parents are in their 70s.

They live just outside of New York City,

where there are a lot of infections and a lot of deaths.

I'm worried that if my wife were to get sick,

then there's no one to take care of our 11-year-old daughter.

And the longer I stay here,

the greater the chance that something happens at home,

that I'm not there to help with.

And so that's created a lot of stress for me.

And so that's part of why I want to get back.

[narrator] The Polarstern was due to be resupplied,

and the team replaced in just two weeks' time.

But as the world locks down, that's now impossible.

Suddenly, the future of the entire expedition

hangs by a thread.

[Shupe] It's one thing if the sea ice

breaks up more than you planned on.

We didn't know there was going be a pandemic.

We didn't plan on that playing out

and affecting our ability

to get people out to the Arctic and back.

And so there's this increasing risk

that it will take down MOSAiC altogether.

[narrator] There are no icebreakers available

to bring the new crew and supplies to the Polarstern.

So, to save the expedition, they make a radical decision.

Leaving a few remote devices behind

to continue to collect data,

they leave their floe.

[Shupe] Bringing the ship out of the ice

was... was kind of the last thing that I would have wanted.

But this is necessary

in order to allow the expedition to continue on.

[narrator] Collecting supplies

and a new quarantined team

will take Polarstern out of the ice for a full month.

But it means that against the odds,

they can return to complete the mission.

[indistinct chatter]

[Fong] Our waiting time was over,

and now it's go time.

So suddenly, you can feel this energy.

And we're headed back to the central Arctic

looking for our floe,

to continue science.

[Shupe] I'm so relieved that we were able to find a way

to keep our expedition going...

and to see how the Arctic starts to respond

to the onset of melt as the summer season sets in.

It's on us to keep things going.

[narrator] Mid-June, and at last, Polarstern returns

to its ice floe,

which has now drifted to just 200 miles

from the edge of the ice pack,

where it will finally break up and melt into the Atlantic.

The melting has started.

[Shupe] We can see that the melt season

is starting to take hold.

There's the early formation of melt ponds on the surface.

And I'm trying to look around and recognize

different aspects of the floe.

Truthfully, I don't even recognize it at all.

The dark side sampling area, we passed back there.

And then another one used to be over here,

but then it has shifted over to there.

[Shupe] It's so important for us to get our equipment up and running

as fast as possible.

This transition is really essential

as we move from spring into summer,

and the whole surface starts to transform.

[narrator] The team rebuilds

on the few higher ridges of ice,

their best chance of keeping equipment safe and dry.

[Shupe] It's a race now.

I'm stressed out for sure. Yeah, it's...

You know, not everything's going right.

It's certainly hard with all these melt ponds.

So that's something that will continue

to get more and more challenging.

It's nice today.

[narrator] As the eco team explores the floe,

there's a sign of just how challenging

this final phase of the mission will be.

[Fong] We're maybe only out for two hours,

three hours at most.

The ice floe begins to shift.

The lead begins to open,

and not only can we not cross back over,

we're getting further and further away from the ship.

[indistinct radio chatter]

[woman, over radio] We cannot see you that clearly from the bridge.

[Fong] The ice changed within a matter of minutes.

And it's clear that there's no way for us to get back

the way we came.

So the only option at that point

is either wait it out until the lead closes,

which there's no way to predict,

or mount a helicopter recovery.

To actually experience it

really made me feel very vulnerable.

I mean, the wind conditions were very light.

So this is just normal ice dynamics,

and a clear indicator and sign

of just how different things are.

-[John] Ah! -Thank you.

[both laugh]

[Fong] We were lucky.

We just realized how careful we need to be

of the conditions that we're working in now.

[narrator] The question on everyone's mind is,

how long will their ice floe last?

[Amy] So this one, can you see it?

-[Fong] Oh, yeah, yeah. -[Amy] There's a few lines.

This is undergoing melting.

Yes, I see.

[narrator] The snow that helped protect the ice from the sun

is now having the opposite effect.

[Amy] The water in the snow,

it's just trickling down and pooling on the ice.

And as the temperatures warm up,

the ice starts to become-- We call it rotten.

The processes and changes have been really quick,

a lot quicker than I thought they were going to be.

So how long have we got?

[laughs] That's a good question.

[narrator] It's mid-summer,

and after drifting over a thousand miles

from where they joined it,

their ice floe is now just 80 miles from open ocean.

[Rex] A typical summer day here

in this part of the Arctic...

you can't see much.

The warm, humid air from the ocean

drifts above the sea ice,

and immediately you get fog.

And that is why we now had many, many days

of very foggy weather.

[narrator] And the reduced visibility

makes it difficult to spot danger.

[man, over radio] We just received information

that there's a polar bear in close vicinity.

Can you pick up five people in the helicopter right now?

[Shupe] It seems like almost a week straight

we've had bears showing up in camp.

-[man] Hey, hey! -[all shouting loudly]

[banging]

[gun pops]

[woman] Yeah, this is a bite mark.

[Fong] We're constantly stopping work.

Every day, we prepare

for the best-case scenario that we're out there.

[growling]

But there's a very, very good chance

that we won't be able to complete today's work.

[boat horn blows]

[narrator] Twenty-four-hour sunlight

is taking its toll on the ice floe,

now just 30 miles from the open ocean.

[Shupe] We're in a little more tenuous situation.

Pretty soon, the ice will be getting really thin

and potentially we'll be starting to feel some waves.

We don't know how it's going to play out,

and it could be a very dangerous situation,

where the ice floe breaks into small pieces.

It could be any day now.

We really want to keep the instruments on the ice

as long as we can.

[Fong] Every day is a day that you don't get back.

You get one day to do the best possible science...

to do another set of exciting activities as a part of MOSAiC.

[indistinct radio chatter]

Yeah, that's kind of nice.

So then we don't have to bring things into the lab.

We can just fill it here directly.

[woman] Yeah.

[Fong] I've never worked so hard in my life.

Just the schedule, the pace of our work.

There's no time to breathe.

[Shupe] People are working so hard,

around the clock,

to really maximize our opportunity

to be here with the MOSAiC floe

in its last days of existence.

[Fong] You know, sea ice, it has a lifetime of its own.

And so we watched it grow

at the beginning of legs one and two.

And now we're watching it decay.

[narrator] And in 2020,

that decay is happening especially fast.

A heat wave across the Arctic

has sparked wildfires in Siberia.

Frozen ground and sea ice are melting faster than ever.

But there's another accelerating melt

that could be most damaging of all.

Less than 200 miles from the Polarstern is Greenland,

the world's largest island.

Covered in vast sheets of ice, in places three miles deep,

it holds around 10% of all the ice on Earth.

But it, too, is melting fast.

We've often thought that ice sheets are quite stable,

and I think they're starting to show signs of instability.

[John] We have satellite observations

of melt on Greenland,

and we can see that the melt is accelerating.

And that melt contributes to sea level rise.

[narrator] Unlike sea ice,

which doesn't directly affect the level of the oceans,

melting ice from land will have dramatic consequences.

[John] It just is one of the scariest,

in my opinion,

impacts of climate change in the polar regions,

is how high is sea level going to go?

[Julienne] So, you know,

when we look at future projections,

we're looking at one metre to three metres of sea level rise

at the end of the century,

are the best estimates that we currently have.

Large parts of coastal regions will be underwater.

If you look at forecasts just for London...

London's going to be flooded.

[John] Places like Florida,

you look at projections,

and this peninsula of land just gets whittled away.

And then you have less developed places, like Bangladesh,

with this vast, low-lying coastal areas,

it impacts, you know, the millions of people

that are living there.

[Julienne] And so you're going to have these mass migrations of people.

I mean, I don't know what's going to happen.

[John] It's a massive issue,

and there isn't any evidence that it's turning around, right?

By the end of the 21st century,

sea levels are going to be a lot higher than they are now.

And we'll be dealing with those impacts.

[Rex] Good morning, everybody.

We are at a distance of nine nautical miles

from the ice edge.

And that is the distance where we need to take things down.

It's time to say goodbye to our research camp.

[applause]

Release!

[Shupe] We measured right up to the end,

and actually that feels great.

[Amy] We're working until the very limit

to be able to work on this floe.

It's quite an exciting thing to go through.

[Fong] So I wake up and I go to the bridge...

[indistinct radio chatter]

...and there's nothing.

[Shupe] Our floe is gone.

It's totally gone.

It's disintegrated into a thousand pieces.

[Fong] Overnight, we went from having a floe that we could work on,

that we're moving heavy equipment on,

to literally shambles of ice.

It was incredible.

[narrator] Soon after their ice floe melts away into the ocean,

2020 is confirmed

as the second lowest summer sea ice extent on record.

Across the Arctic,

vast areas are ice-free for the first time ever.

There are even patches of open water

at the North Pole itself.

[Julienne] We don't have that much time left.

If you're thinking in the next 20 years

the Arctic Ocean's going to lose its summer sea ice,

that's a big climate shift.

And this isn't something that has happened

in at least tens of thousands,

if not hundreds of thousands of years.

[John] As a climate scientist,

I have a sense of what changes to expect in the next century.

But how society responds to that,

I don't know.

What that means for unrest,

for displacement of millions and millions of people...

It's scary.

The problem is that climate change

is this gradual, creeping change.

I think eventually we're going to cross a threshold

where the weather and the climate

becomes so different from what we're able to deal with,

that it will become a crisis.

It'll become urgent, like Covid has been for us.

[Fong] Here's the question I would like to pose:

Why not act now?

[Julienne] We saw how quickly

the world can respond when there's a threat,

an immediate threat, like Covid.

[John] Humans are very resilient.

We're very innovative.

We can come up with ways to solve this.

But we need to start working together more than we are.

MOSAiC is a symbol of what we need to deal with

the challenges we face.

It's a global problem, and you solve global problems

by acting as a global community.

[Shupe] We're leaving the Arctic now

with a tremendous amount of new knowledge.

What each team has found has been really extraordinary.

The implications are huge.

[narrator] They've found evidence of our warming oceans...

discovered surprising properties of Arctic snow...

and witnessed how the ever-changing ice

impacts everything from greenhouse gases

to our winds and weather.

Together, it's the most complete picture

of the Arctic ever created.

[Rex] We bring back a treasure

of scientific data--

this treasure will influence climate science forever.

[Vishnu] I'm hopeful.

It's hard.

But we can make a change.

Always.

Saving the polar regions is also saving our way of life.

[Fong] The world is changing,

and there is something that we can do about it,

but it takes us making better choices

about our everyday lives.

And so, I hope that what you've seen

encourages you to believe in the power of science,

that as we continue to be curious about our world,

it will help us protect it.

What is at stake?

Everything, I would say.

[♪]