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epa08075572 A handout photo made available by the Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI) shows Team BGC science handing over between Leg 1 and Leg 2 -- scientific teams conduct scietific hand over; BGC Leg 2 team member Adela Dumitrascu and Partic Simoes Pereira (L) cores at BGC coring site on MOSAiC ice floe as a part of the scientific handover -- in the Arctic Ocean, 15 December 2019 (issued 16 December 2019). As the second leg of the one-year-long journey to the Central Arctic begins, this week, participants to the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition mission are engaged in exchanging research teams and crewmembers. According to AWI, some 100 people are trading places between the German research icebreaker Polarstern and the Russian resupply icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn. The Polarstern has been drifting with the Arctic sea ice since October. The 150-million-dollar expedition aims at observing the Arctic as the epicenter of global warming and to better understand global climate change. EPA/ESTHER HORVATH/ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT HANDOUT HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES