Norway: Climate scientists prepare to set sail on year-long Arctic expedition

*NO CUTAWAYS AT SOURCE*
W/S Panellists at start of press conference, Tromso
SOT, Markus Rex, Head of expedition: "The largest Arctic research expedition of our time, actually [it] is the largest Arctic research expedition that has ever been carried out, is about to start. It's really a dream coming true, and I must say it still feels a bit unreal that we are going to leave tonight. In just a few hours we'll leave land behind and we'll be at sea, finally, after so many years of hard and intense work to make it all happen. It feels good. At this point it will be a major milestone when we leave land tonight and soon after we've left from here, we'll say goodbye to the sun, the long months of the Polar night are going to start. We will work in complete darkness on the drifting ice close to the North Pole, we will encounter pretty fierce storms which every once in a while occur on that latitude, the temperatures will be below 40 degrees Celsius, sometimes below 45 degrees Celsius, and we'll be isolated."
SOT, Markus Rex, Head of expedition: "We as Polar researchers for us it is important to protect such fascinating environment, to protect it, to make sure that the following generation will still see the sea ice that we are going to research up there, that is one of our main goals of what we are doing."
SOT, Markus Rex, Head of expedition: "The Arctic is the epicentre of global warming, it is the part of our planet which warms most rapidly, where warming rates are at least twice the global average. It is also the part of our planet where we do not understand the climate system very well." *MULTIPLE SHOTS AT SOURCE*
SOT, Markus Rex, Head of expedition: "My goal is to provide more robust scientific basis for the political decisions, the decisions in our societies say we have to take in all of our countries, and that means more robust climate protection, we need better representation of the Arctic-specific key climate policies that are at work at the Arctic, these feedback loops, these interactions between the different compartments of the Arctic climate system atmosphere, open sea ice, polar ecosystem, and biochemistry, that together result in that very strong warming."
W/S Panellists at end of press conference
SCRIPT
A group of scientists held a press conference in the Norwegian city of Tromso, Friday, just hours before they were due to set sail on a year-long expedition to the Arctic to study the region's climate.
The head of the expedition addressed the media where he discussed the importance and nature of the study, which is aimed at deepening the experts' understanding of global climate change.
"The largest Arctic research expedition of our time, actually [it] is the largest Arctic that has ever been carried out, is about to start," said the head of the expedition, Markus Rex.
"My goal is to provide a more robust scientific basis for the political decisions, the decisions in our societies say we have to take in all of our countries, and that means more robust climate protection, we need better representation of the Arctic's specific key climate policies," he added.
Rex went on to explain that the Arctic is the "epicentre" of global warming. "It is the part of our planet which warms most rapidly, where warming rates are at least twice the global average," he stated.
The expedition, which aims to study the factors and conditions that affect the Arctic during the changing seasons, will be carried out throughout the course of 12 months aboard the Polarstern vessel as it floats through the region while stuck in the ice. The ship will have on board 600 experts from 19 different nations across the year, with planes set to fly the researchers and additional supplies to and from the vessel.
The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate project is led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
Mandatory credit: AWI