China's Icebreaker Xue Long Completes 12 Arctic Ice Station Operations

The Chinese polar research icebreaker Xue Long has concluded its 12th and final ice station operation at 83°50′N in the central Arctic Ocean as part of China's 16th Arctic Ocean scientific expedition. Operating alongside the Xue Long 2, the vessel deployed more than 30 autonomous ice-based buoys and oceanographic profiling instruments designed to overcome the temporal limitations of summer-only shipboard observations and gather multi-season climate and ocean data.

Arctic sea ice plays an essential role in regulating global climate and atmospheric circulation. Because conventional ship-based polar research is heavily constrained to summer months, deploying unmanned autonomous monitoring stations on sea ice enables continuous, year-round data collection across the atmosphere-ice-ocean boundary. This continuous data stream is vital for refining global climate models and predicting mid-latitude extreme weather events.

The Chinese polar research vessel Xue Long has completed its 12th and final ice station operation in the central Arctic Ocean at latitude 83°50′N, according to reports published by Chinese state media from Science and Technology Daily. The operation marks the completion of the ice station phase for the vessel during China's 16th Arctic Ocean expedition. Expedition deputy leader and chief scientist He Jianfeng stated that the mission set a new record for the number of ice station operations completed during an expedition and successfully deployed more than 30 sets of uncrewed, ice-based observation buoys. The expedition departed from Dalian on July 3, deploying both the Xue Long and the newer icebreaker Xue Long 2. The Xue Long traversed the Bering Strait to enter the Arctic Circle on July 15 before initiating full-scale scientific operations in the central Arctic Basin. Prior to entering Arctic waters, the vessel deployed expendable conductivity-temperature-depth (XCTD) probes and core Argo profiling floats in international waters of the Northwest Pacific starting July 7. XCTD instruments capture real-time temperature, salinity, and depth profiles while the ship is underway. Argo floats repeatedly descend to programmed target depths and ascend to the surface, transmitting oceanographic data via satellite to global observation networks. According to mission scientists, ice-based operations serve two primary functions: fine-scale sampling of sea ice and the air-ice-sea interface, and serving as stable drifting platforms for autonomous long-term monitoring equipment. Traditional vessel-based surveys are largely restricted to polar summer months due to operational and logistical constraints. Placing unmanned instruments on drifting floes allows researchers to collect continuous, multi-season data on ice thickness, atmospheric flux, and upper-ocean properties, addressing long-standing data gaps in Arctic climate research.