Dr Helen Czerski is a regular contributor to The Cosmic Shambles Network, both online and during many of our live events. This summer she will be joining a joint Swedish and American research team on board the icebreaker ship Oden, up near the North Pole. With a team of 40 researchers Helen will be there to study clouds and how the ocean and ice affect them. She sets sail in just under a fortnight. You can read more about the trip on Helen’s site here.

And while on the sea and in the ice, Helen will be writing an exclusive weekly blog for The Cosmic Shambles Network.

She says, “The aim of my blog there will be to have a look behind the scenes at how a human (or 60 of them, in this case) deals with being parked up at the top of the world for eight weeks.  Last time around, even my Mum thought I’d gone mad when the biggest storm hit.  I’m pretty sure we’ll all go just as potty this time, even though we’re certainly not expecting any stormy seas”.

No doubt the science will be fascinating, but we may not know much of what the team learn until they return and analyse the data. In the meantime, Helen’s going to let us in to what life is really like locked in a sea of ice. You can follow the blog at cosmicshambles.com/articles/blogs/helenczerski.

Helen is a physicist, first and foremost, but she’s acquired a few other labels along the way: oceanographer, presenter, author and bubble enthusiast. She has presented a number of acclaimed documentaries for the BBC and her first book, Storm in a Teacup, which looked at the physics of every day things, was a bestseller. Recently she was awarded the prestigious William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics.