And We're Off

Hello Everyone,




I have not been very dedicated with blogging each day but here is a bit more

information on our progress. Still no pictures or video since the internet

connection here is so slow.

Today is Friday, April 15. Yesterday we set up our two sites out on the sea ice using the Twin Otter airplane. This involves flying to a certain position, circling and trying to find a landing site and then finally
landing on the ice, with little information about it other than how rough the surface looks. You can get a bit of information of how thick the ice is from this information. Old multiyear ice, and second year ice as well have some surface roughness but the features tend to be rounded since they have been through at least one summer of melt. Old multiyear and second year ice tends to be thicker as well and so is generally safer to land on. Our pilot, Troy has landed on ice a fair number of times and is very experienced at this. It is a very interesting experience as the plain is performing tight circles and buzzing the desired landing spot. The airplane then ascends and does it again at least once more so that the pilot can get a good, close up view of the surface. When they decide we can land their, the line up the "runway", then slow the aircraft to just about the stall speed and dipping it down to the ice. The landings yesterday were quite bumpy, but only because the snow surface is so hard and so rough here.



We deployed two sites, one close to Alert at 83.5N (Alert is 82.5N) and one farther north at 85.5N. This second site is my most northerly point ever,quite exciting.In any event it was an exciting day for me, as it was also the first time I have been in a plane that has landed on ice, and on an unprepared runway.

Right now, it is about 6:30 am and I almost need to go to breakfast to meet up with everyone to find out the plan for today, We are planning to go out on the ice and perform intensive surveys of our northern most site, but as usual it depends on weather. Each morning I get up, look at some images like the ones at the link below:

http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/satellite/animateweb_e.html?imagetype=satellite&imagename=hrpt_dfo_ir_s_..................jpg&nbimages=1&clf=1

The images on these links are infra-red images, and show the heat that comes from the ocean. They give a bit of an indication of cloud cover, which masks the heat from the ocean. This morning there appears to be some clouds over the ice, but our site may be cloud free. Here is hoping.

Well I should go.

Talk again at the end of a hopefully successful day.