Weather in the Dark: North Pole-1 and the Siberian Weather Stations of the 1930s

Imagine, if you will, spending an entire year on a floating chunk of ice in the Arctic ocean: drifting gently through arctic waters, you are unable to steer around other icebergs or escape storms and left to the mercy of howling winds, snow, and sun. During the winter, 24 hours of darkness is alleviated only by the amount of electricity you can peddle out of a bicycle-powered generator. Your bed will be inside an eider-down tent lined in fur. And every day you wake up to launch weather balloons at strict intervals. 

These were the conditions that a team of four scientists from the USSR chose to endure from 1937-38 as part of the first drifting polar weather station, named North Pole-1. The team consisted of  hydrobiologist Pyotr Shirshov, geophysicist Yevgeny Fyodorov, radioman Ernst Krenkel and their leader Ivan Papanin. Together they captured nine months worth of weather and oceanic data as they drifted over 2,000 kilometers through the Arctic on the world’s first floating weather station. 

The race for the North Pole occupied the imaginations of both individuals and nations for centuries. Starting in the 1880s, Americans, Europeans, and Russians called upon native Greenlanders and Alaskans to teach them how to survive and provide support on their expeditions into the trackless, icy stretches of the Arctic. The goals of these expeditions ranged from finding the elusive Northwest Passage, to treasure hunting, and investigating the potential of air travel. Despite the nationalistic fervor of many of these journeys, the ultimate outcome was a huge leap forward in western scientific exploration and international cooperation. Recognizing the immense amount of knowledge that could be gained, nations declared the first International Polar Year in 1882, with the goal of coordinating data capture and information sharing. 

In subsequent years the Russians jumped into the lead on Arctic infrastructure and scientific research. As David Chapman put it in 1937, "When Prof. Otto Schmidt last May set his plane-borne expedition down on 'the top of the world' he was only placing the keystone in an arch of conquest of the Arctic by Russia…”

In addition to floating stations, the Soviets settled 60 fixed weather stations along the Siberian coast. In the same year as the launch of North Pole-1, the description of weather observation technology and lifestyle in the Siberian stations is quite astonishing. The wooden houses in which the scientists lived were built in Russia and then broken down, shipped, and reassembled on site. As for food, some ingenious technology was employed to keep the scientists and their families healthy: "At some of these threescore Arctic stations vegetables are grown under artificial light in fur-lined cellars, with current generated by windmill power overhead. No one pretends that they are economically produced, but the workers must have vitamins and some salads.”

Both at the fixed stations and on the floating North-Pole-1, there were strict protocols for measuring and recording data. Contact was made with Moscow four times a day by radio, and pilot balloons were sent up at regular intervals, with the hydrogen shipped from mainland Russia. Kite-meteorograph ascents were also made, with this instrument containing recording barograph, thermograph, hygrograph and eight-cup anemometer. Other instruments involved in early Soviet weather observations included wet-dry bulb hygrometer as well as the cocks comb radiosonde. 

The team from North-Pole-1 was safely retrieved by an ice-cutter after they drifted into the Greenland sea in 1938. Immediately upon their return to Russia they were awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union.”