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Arctic Changes

June 26, 2018

Lauren Kipp, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, spent 65 days on the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy in the summer of 2015, measuring levels of radium-228 across the Arctic Ocean. She found that levels of radium—transported from shallow continental shelves by currents to the middle of the ocean—have almost doubled over the last decade. The surprising finding is evidence that rapid climate change is causing large-scale changes along the Arctic coast, which could also have significant impacts on Arctic food webs. Here, she tends to a sampling instrument that pumps seawater through the cartridges to collect chemical isotopes. (Photo courtesy of Cory Mendenhall, United States Coast Guard)