The EORC team, particularly Dr. Jakob Schwalb-Willmann and Dr. Mirjana Bevanda, had the chance to catch up with our former Msc student Luisa Wagner in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Luisa is pursuing her PhD at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute (AWI), where her research focuses on advancing full-polarimetric airborne ultrawideband FMCW radar observations for improved characterisation of snow on sea ice. In parallel, she is also in charge of the flight campaign of Polar 6 in winter 2026.
Polar 6 is a long-range research aircraft operated by AWI and plays a central role in enabling airborne observations over the Arctic and Antarctic. The current IceBird campaign brings Luisa and her team, after stops in Canada and Greenland, to Longyearbyen. The campaign is part of an ongoing AWI program conducting surveys to measure sea ice thickness and snow cover using electromagnetic, radar and LiDAR sensors to monitor long-term climate change impacts in the Arctic.
Through its continued deployment in international research campaigns, AWI‘s research aircrafts have become an essential asset for advancing our understanding of polar environments and their role in the Earth system.
The Polar 6 crew adjusted their flying route and added some extra miles to cover our sites in Reindalen and Semmeldalen where we flew shortly afterwards our campaign with a LiDAR sensor and additionally took ground truth measurements. We are excited about this data sets and are looking forward to the joint analysis.
