"After a rigorous search in the rapidly melting Siberian Arctic, researchers on the world’s biggest North Pole expedition have finally found an ice floe on which to set up camp," writes The Washington Post.

"Soon the scientists will cut the engine on the research vessel Polarstern and lodge their ship in ice. Trapped, the ship will spend the next 12 months floating with the floe across the central Arctic as its passengers collect crucial information about the effects of climate change in the fastest-warming part of the world.

"The multination, $134 million Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) is the first major modern research project to drift across the North Pole. A rotating cast of some 300 scientists is slated to live and work aboard the Polarstern this year; by documenting an entire year of change in the north, they hope to improve models of how Arctic melting will affect weather in the rest of the world. ...

... “'The data will be the legacy of this expedition,' said Don Perovich, a Dartmouth geophysicist and one of the co-leaders for MOSAiC’s sea ice experiments."