Far North Science

Exploring the North Pole by Airship
Credit: Jean-Louis Etienne

A French polar explorer plans to survey the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap in a helium-filled airship that will sail back and forth over the North Pole — cruising 6,000 miles between Spitsbergen, Siberia and the Canadian Arctic before finally landing in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s north coast.

Led by physician Jean-Louis Etienne — the first person to reach the North Pole alone on foot — the Total Pole Airship expedition will launch in March, 2008, with four crew members tucked inside the 177-foot-long zeppelin and an extensive support crew on the ground.

“My next expedition will be to cross the glacial Arctic Ocean in an airship … to draw the public’s attention to the phenomena that threaten this fascinating polar world that still inspires so many childhood dreams,” Etienne said in a statement on his website.

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Source: Natalia Ruppert / AEIC

The frigid coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge trembled last week with a series of shallow earthquakes — reminding Alaskans that just about any place in the state can rock any time without warning.

UPDATE: Seismologist Natalia Ruppert has worked up a new map showing the locations of nearly 20 different quakes, strung up and down shallow faults within the Arctic coastal plain.

“The largest earthquake (M4.6, red star) occurred on April 10 at 16:34 UTC (8:34 am ADT),” she wrote. “Due to sparse seismic network coverage in the area (the nearest station is located 152 miles away), accuracy of the earthquake locations is poor, especially for the smaller events recorded by very few stations.”

One of the quakes even triggered a “don’t worry” alert from the West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, saying that no wave was expected in the coastal village Kaktovik.

The village’s 288 residents weren’t too anxious, seeing as the frozen Arctic Ocean stretches to the horizon like a great expanse of raggedy white bedrock, according to a story by Alex deMarban in the Anchorage Daily News.

“Everything is too frozen solid to shake,” Kaktovik Mayor Lon Sonsalla told deMarban. “We’re like, ‘Nothing’s shaking.’ ”

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