Reflections from the WWRP-PCAPS Endorsed Research School on the Arctic Ocean Climate System
The Swedish Polar Research Secretariat (SPRS) undertook a six-week Research School with 21 graduate and doctoral students onboard the Swedish research icebreaker Oden, from 10 August to 18 September 2025. This was the first of three WWRP-PCAPS Endorsed research schools, sponsored in part by PCAPS. On the expedition Canada-Sweden Arctic Ocean 2025, the Oden traversed from the Fram Strait, across the North Pole and approximately followed the E/W 180° meridian south to almost 80°N on the other side before returning to Longyearbyen on Svalbard.
Group photo of the Research School participants and their Work Package leaders and mentors on the helideck of Oden after returning to Longyearbyen. Photo credit: Michael Tjernström
The formal name of the expedition, Canada-Sweden Arctic Ocean 2025, doesn’t say much except for being in the Arctic Ocean during 2025 and that both Sweden and Canada are involved. So, what is this project and why is it important? This was the first of a three-year collaboration between the SPRS and the Geological Survey of Canada – Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), chartering the Swedish research icebreaker Oden to assist the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent in a two-ship operation. The primary target of the expeditions is to map and survey the Arctic sea floor to support Canada’s Extended Continental Shelf submission under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Additional mapping was also done for the Polar Connect initiative, aimed at establishing a submarine cable system to provide digital connectivity between Europe, Asia, and North America via the shortest possible route through the central Arctic Ocean.
Background
In practice, a two-ship operation meant that the IB Oden would have gone up to the Arctic half empty. But observations – of all different kinds – are sparse from the still relatively inaccessible central Arctic that this could not be allowed to happen! But designing a proper research expedition on IB Oden, to take advantage of the free berths, was also difficult. The navigation – where to go, where and when to stop – would be dictated by the sea-floor exploration, and all other activities would have to take a backseat. Therefore, after careful consideration, it was decided to instead make the expedition it into a Research School for Early Career Researchers.
So how did this work? First, the Research School was built as a proper research expedition with different topical Work Packages (WPs); this is a format the SPRS is used to. But instead of designing the WPs on an overarching research theme, it was broadly based on the National Research Infrastructure on Oden. Second, experienced researchers, with prior experience from Oden and relevant and funded ongoing research, were invited to conduct some extra research, provided that they accepted some conditions. They had to be willing to work under opportunistic conditions, e.g. the route and timing would be determined based on the Canadian needs and they had to agree to that their WP would be entirely conducted by research students. Third, they would also have to mentor and educate the students within their WP and, fourth, to provide to a lecture program onboard for all the students, also those from the other WPs. In this way, eight scientific WPs where created. Three of these were directly motivated by the collaboration between PRS and Canada and the rest were added by the research school.
The Research School takes off
The program was announced broadly and a peer-review group was appointed to select 21 students over a spectrum of different backgrounds out of a pool of close to 250 applicants. This cadre of young students, representing the next generations of Arctic scientists, were offered a chance to experience real Arctic icebreaker-based field work, expand their knowledge and experience within their own field under the supervision of an experienced scientist, and also were exposed to lectures by other experts in a broad spectrum of disciplines important to the climate system in the central Arctic.
The low early September sun is shining through a thin layer of fog; a very common situation in the summer and autumn Arctic Ocean. In the front, ice floes that have survived the summer and new ice forming around them. Photo credit: Michael Tjernström
The research school was built on four main parts: i) practical field work and; ii) instructions and analysis using results from the expedition, both within the WPs; iii) formal lectures, and; iv) workshops with group work on selected themes.
Students spent most of the time in their respective WP, doing practical routine field-work but were also encouraged to work with and analyze the data and/or samples that they were a part of gathering. This work obviously became different for different WPs. For example, the meteorology program took continuous observations using both in-situ and remote-sensing instruments, but also ran a four-per-day radiosounding program (sponsored by PCAPS, results were circulated on the GTS in near real-time).
Work aboard the Oden
In the physical oceanography WP, students did CTD profiles from the ship but also flew out with the ships helicopter to do microstructure soundings of the upper water column from the ice. Ship-based CTDs were limited, as they require the ship to stop, while helicopter activity was limited by weather. The marine biogeochemistry WP took water samples from the CTD’s Rosette and analyzed water, ice and snow samples from helicopter stations, but also continuously sampled water off the ships research water intake at 8-meter depth; both water and atmosphere was also analyzed for stable isotopes.
The sea ice WP was more or less completely dependent on the helicopter for their work, making sea ice and snow surveys during helicopter research stations. A major operation that also required the ship to stop and hence happened a limited number of times was collection of sediment cores from the sea floor. Hence, all the WPs measurements and collected samples opportunistically as they could, depending on ships location and navigation – and of course weather – while the students meanwhile worked with data and/or samples.
The Director of the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Katarina Gårdfeldt, also professor in Inorganic Environmental Chemistry and this year’s expedition leader, lecturing on global and Arctic environmental change in the portside mess of IB Oden. Photo credit: Michael Tjernström
Amidst this constant balancing of priorities, the lectures had to be scheduled. For example, the weather was often marginal for flying so if a window opened up when it was possible to fly, helicopter stations were almost always prioritized. In practice, after a few weeks, most of the lectures were held every other day, after the afternoon coffee break and before dinner; a few were also held after dinner in the evening. There were about 30 lectures in total, such that each WP leader provided three lectures; one overview lecture about his scientific topic, one about what within that topic made the Arctic special and one specifically about the work in that WP onboard.
The workshops were conducted as a group task and were organized so that the students had two full work days to read, meet and discuss the presented topic . The groups presented their thoughts, conclusions and outstanding issues and questions at a session after dinner on the second day. The workshops evolved around a scientific paper on Gender and safety in Arctic field work, the definitions on Marine research in the UNCLOS Convention and the recently published PAME synthesis report on the Central Arctic Ocean Large Marine Ecosystem; the latter was a suggestion from PCAPS.
A holistic experience
Importantly, everyone was literally and figuratively on the same boat during the expedition. Being away from home six weeks with limited internet and no access to many of things that we take for granted, in addition to sharing a cabin with 1-3 other participants and sometimes working in shifts can be challenging. But the social life onboard helped make things easier: dress-up Saturday dinners, welcome and farewell parties, birthday cakes, spontaneously organized salsa dance classes, ping-pong tournament, gym, sauna and cinema evenings. Many of the students had limited or no prior field work experience and this was their first time in the Arctic. The students did an extraordinary job! Most of them had not met prior to the expedition. Now, they are bound together by an experience of a lifetime.
Two of the natural inhabitants in the Arctic bypassed as the research school was on the way home. Photo credit: Michael Tjernström
Michael Tjernström is a Professor Emeritus in Meteorology at Stockholm University and a Senior Advisor to the SPRS. He was the Research School Coordinator for the expedition this year.