Today we will begin our adventure to Svalbard, Norway; a small group of islands half way between the northern tip of Norway and the North pole. The region is located just below 80 degrees north latitude and located east of Greenland and west of the northern Russian territories.
We are a group of climate change scientists; two research professors, seven undergraduate students from across the US and one Polartrec teacher. We will be meeting 3 more undergraduate students who study in Norway and a graduate student before we arrive at our final destination. Our group will consist of 14 people investigating the arctic region to try better understand the changing science in the region.
We will leave today from Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA on a bus to the Boston airport. From there we will depart on an overnight flight to Reykjavik, Iceland. After a short layover, we will fly to Oslo, Norway. We have a long layover in Oslo and plan to do a little sight seeing (we have an arctic explorer museum in mind). From Oslo we will fly to Longyearbyen, Svalbard to where our adventure begins!!