Simon Armitage is spending a few days at the Natural Environmental Research Council Arctic Station in Ny Alesund in Svalbard, by some measures the world's most northerly community. He spends time with research scientists working in the field to look at what's going on in this part of the globe which is warming faster than the rest of the planet.

Travelling by boat, Simon joins the BIOPOLE team Alanna Grant, Nathan Callaghan and Alex O'Brien as they sample glacial meltwater entering the Kongsfjord. The National Environmental Research Council's BIOPOLE long-term project examines how nutrients in polar waters drive the global carbon cycle and primary productivity.

Geologist Professor Jane Francis - CEO of the British Antarctic Survey - and Simon's conversation ranges from sleeping in 24 hours of daylight to the joy of finding fossils of leaves in rocks at the top of mountains in Ny Alesund from a time millions of years ago when the Arctic was tropical, and to the changes in the landscape that Jane has seen since her first visit over 30 years ago.

As well as experiencing the Arctic for himself - whist keeping a watch out for polar bears - Simon is trying to capture the majesty and vulnerability of this region in new poems written in response to what he finds.

with:

BIOPOLE field scientists Alanna Grant, Dr Nathan Christian Callaghan and Alex O'Brien
Professor Christopher Evans
Jane Francis - CEO the British Antarctic Survey
Iain Rudkin, station leader, the Natural Environment Research Council Arctic station

Producer Susan Roberts Show less