“If you’re a sea ice person, MOSAiC is the kind of experiment that you just live for,” said Don Perovich, a Dartmouth College researcher with the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. “It’s the kind of experiment you dream about. It’s an opportunity to spend a whole year on the ice, just watching how a floe evolves over time.” He spoke at a recent event sponsored by IARPC Collaborations, an Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) member space where scientists and others involved in Arctic research share knowledge and resources. The researchers on the expedition, said Perovich, aimed to collect data that would shed light on the causes and consequences of the evolving and diminished Arctic sea ice cover. MOSAiC’s mission was to facilitate a breakthrough in understanding the Arctic climate system and improve the world’s climate and weather forecasting models.

At this time of year, in Russia’s far north Laptev Sea, the sun hovers near the horizon during the day, generating little warmth, as the region heads towards months of polar night. By late September or early October, the sea’s shallow waters should be a vast, frozen expanse.

But not this year. For the first time since records have been kept, open water still laps this coastline in late October though snow is already falling there.

Each year, 700 women in the United States die as a result of pregnancy-related complications. In fact, the United States has the highest maternal mortality ratio of all high-income countries—16.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. For Indigenous/Alaskan Native women, that number is even higher: Indigenous/Alaska Natives are 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. While recent years have seen growing national attention to the U.S. maternal mortality crisis, research and advocacy for Indigenous peoples’ maternal health in the United States has been limited. This research gap includes the Alaskan Native peoples—Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and multiple Diné tribes.

The polar regions of Antarctica and the Arctic have long captured the world’s imagination as seas and continents covered in unending ice. But the reality of the two regions is quickly shifting, with cascading consequences for the globe.