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Transfixed by the glow of Arctic ice under starlight

Maria Josefa Verdugo ships into the bitter cold of far-northern waters to measure ice-core properties as part of a year-round climate project.
By
  1. Chris Woolston

    1. Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

Maria Josefa Verdugo in polar outfit holds up an ice core

Maria Josefa Verdugo is a PhD student in marine biogeochemistry at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. Credit: Esther Horvath for Nature

Everything’s cold when you’re handling an Arctic Ocean ice core about 500 kilometres from the North Pole: your feet, your fingers, your face. The air temperature here can be as low as −35 °C. At that point, every part of me wants to go back inside the RV Polarstern — a German icebreaker and my research home — to take off my wet latex gloves and warm up.

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Nature 580, 158 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00918-4

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