Student blog captures 2013 Polar Sea Ice Field Course

May 13, 2013

University Relations

A screenshot of the Polar Sea Ice Field Course blog. All images courtesy of the 2013 course participants.
A screenshot of the Polar Sea Ice Field Course blog. All images courtesy of the 2013 course participants.


Graduate students who participated in the 2013 Polar Sea Ice Field Course in Barrow, Alaska earlier this month chronicled their experiences online with a blog. The course introduces graduate students to the main field techniques used in sea-ice studies of an interdisciplinary nature (geophysical, biological, geochemical). The 10-day course included instruction on the sea ice, field experiments, lab analysis and more.

The blog and its content was created with help from Molly Rettig, the Geophysical Institute's temporary science writer, who covered the course from Barrow.

Read the blog to experience what it's like to work in the arctic and learn about some of the techniques involved in sea ice research.

As part of the Polar Sea Ice Field Course, students completed nine different teaching modules that involved a wide range of field work, sample processing in the lab, presentations and lectures. Hajo Eicken of the UAF Geophysical Institute is one of the course instructors and coordinators.