IceBridge tackles Svalbard, North Pole, and Greenland in One Day

Operation IceBridge just completed 40 research flights over ten weeks, including three based out of the remote and beautiful islands of Svalbard, Norway. Here is the story of one of its most distinctive missions, called Zig Zag East. This flight started in the rugged fjords of Svalbard, passed over hundreds of miles of sea ice en route to the North Pole, flew through the narrow Nares Strait, and finally returned the team back to Thule Air Base in Greenland. The video was narrated in flight on Apr. 7, 2017 by IceBridge Mission Scientist John Sonntag. IceBridge, an airborne mission that monitors changes at the Earth’s poles, concluded its 2017 spring Arctic campaign on May 12. This field campaign has been the most ambitious in IceBridge’s nine years of operations in the Arctic, greatly expanding the survey’s reach across the Arctic Basin.