From May 28th until June 1st 2018, the MOSAiC Science workshop took place at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam, Germany. Around 180 people participated the workshop including scientists that cover all research disciplines that are relevant for the coupled Arctic climate system and logistic partners that help to implement the MOSAiC expedition in general.
The workshop was planned with approximately 30 breakout sessions spread over the whole week, which allow a quite detailed discussions in small groups to make a strong progress in implementing the MOSAiC expedition. Therefore, the workshop was a major step in further planning MOSAiC scientifically and logistically. The results of the presentations and breakout sessions where presented in plenary sessions and indicate a strong progress during the last month in all MOSAiC teams. The discussions within the MOSAiC teams and about the logistics become very detailed and cover the local implementation of the scientific work for the first time. That includes the development of a map for containers onboard Polarstern, the planning of the installations of the instruments on the ice flow next to Polarstern (ice camp) and the deployment of the distributed network stations that cover an area of up to 50 km away from the ship. Experiences in field work in the Arctic were shared from the SHEBA, N-ICE and PASCAL community to help and support the MOSAiC expedition concerning very particular issues like having an ice hole open next to the ship during the winter. We had more than 100 poster contributions that span form science via data and sampling issues to logistics. The Posters were up for the whole workshop and enable to have discussions about specific topics and support the breakout sessions.
Most of the berth on RV POLARSTERN are already assigned and therefore the teams know very well, which scientific work is already funded and where the gaps are that hopefully will be filled until end of 2018. Before the expedition starts in September 2019, another workshop with the whole consortium will be held in beginning of 2019 at AWI in Potsdam. The workshop details will be published during summer 2018.