Polar explorer 'witnessing effects of climate change'

A POLAR expedition headed up by a Ettington-based explorer Mark Wood is becoming more treacherous as it gets ever closer to the North Pole.

Just five days since setting off, the Race Against Time’s North Pole 16 expedition team, led by Mark, has reported “horrendous” and “pretty scary” terrain on its 120-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean.

Not only has the three-man team encountered huge ice shelves that are moving, creaking, cracking, and detaching under its feet, huge expanses of melted ice too large to swim across, ice obstacles as “big as cars” but also “massive” polar bear prints.

The team remains hopeful that the £350,000 expedition, sponsored by Lichfield father-of-two Mark Tweddle, will reach the North Pole in around 10 days time, before its deadline of 5th May to be safely extracted.

Aimed at revealing the true impact of climate change, it’s already clear that the images, and video footage, the team returns with next month are set to be pretty damning.

Mr Tweddle, whose fruit import and export company Jupiter Marketing, of Shropshire, is the main expedition sponsor, is in regular contact with the team to keep updated on its progress.

He said: “The conditions of the ice have changed quite considerably from the first couple of days and it has now become far more treacherous for the team.

“It has gone so far as to describe the terrain it horrendous, relentless and pretty scary.

“Not only has it encountered whole ice shelves moving and detaching as they ski over them, and expanses of water so big between the ice that they’ve been forced to detour of course, as well as massive polar prints near their tent, although luckily they were going in the wrong direction of where they were travelling.”

The 38-year-old added: “Mark Wood has described the last few days’ conditions as being pretty treacherous, and teammate Paul Vicary added that it had encountered some pretty scary stuff.

“But despite all of this the team is still pushing on and hopeful of reaching the North Pole in its limited window of opportunity to achieve its crucially important aim.”

The green light for the expedition, which had been due to start in January, to get underway last week followed a series of delays caused as a result of climate change.

Today, Wednesday, Dr Stephan Harrison, the Government’s climate change advisor, said: “We know that Arctic sea ice has recently experienced its lowest maximum winter extent in satellite record, further proof that the region is undergoing drastic and rapid change.

“This comes as meteorologists have shown that globally March 2016 was the warmest March for 100 years according to NASA, and the second warmest monthly anomaly on record.

“This is partly because of the effects of El Nino which moves a lot of heat from our oceans into the atmosphere, but it’s also a clear signal of the reality of climate change driven very largely by human greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is also clear that this is having an enormous impact on the Arctic and the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice is testament to global warming.

“Mark and his colleagues are all seeing the effects of this.”

Mark and his two serving soldier teammates were dropped off 120 nautical miles, or two degrees, from the North Pole, last Wednesday, 13th April.

To keep updated on North Pole 16 expedition follow: https://twitter.com/Jupiter_Mark1, or https://www.facebook.com/jupitermarketingltd/