Von Walden, 53, has come a long way from his school days in Creston. Recently, the Washington State University professor spent time aboard a ship frozen in the Arctic ice pack to conduct scientific research.

“It’s an interesting time to be studying the Arctic because conditions are changing so rapidly,” Walden said.

Walden boarded the expedition ship in May to study the polar atmosphere as part of the Norwegian Young Sea Ice cruise, a project of the Norwegian Polar Institute, to research the effects of climate change on the Arctic.

“I was interested in measuring how the air temperature, clouds and how the atmosphere affects the ice, which is very sensitive to the changes in the atmosphere,” Walden said. “The ice that covers the ocean is getting thinner and thinner as time goes on because of climate change “This means that the ice is getting younger and younger. Young ice is only a year old and about three feet thick. It’s thin.”

Researchers such as Walden, whose focus was the atmosphere, used a variety of instruments from launching weather balloons to installing a 30-foot tower on the ice. Other instruments on board the ship measured Arctic cloud properties such as temperature and water vapor. Instruments remotely sensed the height of a cloud, for instance, and whether the clouds contained water droplets, ice crystals or a combination.

“What the clouds are made of really impacts their effect on the surface — whether they warm or cool the surface,” Walden said.

Also on board were teams of other researchers studying the ice itself and the ocean water.

“There were teams of researchers measuring the surface thickness of ice over time and also how much snow there was on top of the ice. There were oceanographers dropping instruments into the water to measure temperature and salinity and then there was another group measuring marine life,” Walden said. “Each team works independently, but we’re providing data to each other to collaborate.”

Research is such an uninviting ecosystem can be dangerous. All that stood between Walden and the spine-tinglingly frigid water was ice a few feet thick. On one occasion, Walden did fall through the ice, plunging waist-deep in the water.

“On that day the ice was just like Swiss cheese. I just pushed myself out and kept working,” said Walden, who has prior experience conducting field experiments in the Arctic as well as the Antarctic.

They were also in the company of polar bears, which is why they had an armed guard while out on the ice although the bears Walden said were either indifferent or curious.

“We saw polar bears. A lot of them,” Walden said. “One polar bear, a bit more interested in our science, would come and touch our 30-foot tower and one day grabbed some of the bamboo poles and started chewing them,” Walden said.

Preliminary data during the wintertime show very stormy but warm and windy weather with temperatures swinging from minus 40 degrees to 0 and a normal spring, Walden said.

Once all the data are analyzed, the goal is to publish it and use it to create models of the ice to better understand Arctic Ocean sea ice formation.

“This data will be valuable to understanding how the ice forms every year and melts as we go into summer,” Walden said.

Comparing satellite pictures from the late 1970s and 1980s, the amount of Arctic sea ice and ice thickness are decreasing more rapidly each year.

“This was something predicted decades ago as a result of climate change. Those predictions have come true, and in fact, we’ve underestimated how fast this would happen,” Walden said, noting that current models remain conservative when considering human-caused climate change. “From what we’re observing, the ice is melting faster.”

Back on land, Walden currently lives in Tromso, Norway, lecturing and holding seminars around the country for students as part of Fulbright grants. He returns to America by December, but he plans to continue his yearlong collaboration with the Norwegians in researching the Arctic.

“This is certainly not the end. This is the beginning,” Walden said. “This is important science that needs to be done, and, it’s also really exciting stuff to study.”

Hilary Matheson is a reporter for The Daily Inter Lake. She may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.