The German icebreaker Polarstern, a massive floating laboratory and a workhorse of polar research, is headed toward Arctic waters that play a key role in the way climate change affects the world's oceans, in particular sensitive far north regions.

The research vessel weighed anchor on June 14, and left the northern German city of Bremerhaven with 44 scientists on board.

The international team of researchers is sailing for the Fram Strait, a strip of ocean that lies between Greenland and Norway's Spitsbergen Island. The strait is the only deep-sea connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean, and serves as a conduit for ocean waters that move between the southerly ocean and its northern neighbor.