by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Oct 31/97) - What do you get when you stuff Arctic scientists from around the world onto a ship and park it in the middle of an ice pack?

You learn things.

How does global warming affect sea ice, and how can scientists create better models to predict future movements of the ice pack? These are the questions researchers hope to answer aboard the Sheba project.

Sheba -- short for Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean -- is a five-year project to develop, test, and implement models that will improve understanding of the Arctic climate. The goal is to predict future changes by developing better models.

U.S., Russian, Norwegian, and Canadian scientists have joined intellectual forces in the project.

The scientists left Tuktoyaktuk Harbour aboard the CCGS Des Groseilliers, last month. The ship later met up with another coast guard vessel, which helped break ice and lead the ship to its "home ice floe," at 75.17' N and 142.42' W.

The Quebec-based Des Groseilliers icebreaker is 100 metres long, with a 12,000-kW engine, enough to punch through ice a metre thick at six knots.

Sheba will bring together a field experiment, satellite remote sensing, and modelling while parked for 13-months frozen into the ice.

The crew off-loaded science gear from the ship Oct. 7. Two more tents were put up in the "Met City/Ocean City megalopolis," as researchers jokingly refer to their new digs.

An airfield has since been established on the ice pack, and the crews aboard are in daily contact with southern researchers through such things as satellite phones, even e-mail.