Ward Hunt Ice Shelf! Nares Strait!

Hello All, well I am cheating a bit as it is now May 15, 2011 and I am about to head home but I thought it would be good to write a blog posts for the past few days.

May 10, 2011

After our successful switch of the helicopter for a plane with the Switchyard team we decided we wanted to do some airborne electromagnetic induction (HEM or HEM Bird) surveys using the helicopter.  Once we determined the weather was good, I quickly used a Synthetic Aperture Radar image to pick our survey flight path and get some positions for the pilot to navigate to.

Synthetic Aperture Radar image from Envisat ASAR showing Nares Strait and our proposed flight path.

 After getting Christian's okay on the points we moved our sensor over to the helicopter, only to find out it wouldn't turn on. 

Our HEM Bird, her name is Rosie (after the Alberta Rose) sitting near the helicopter waiting for take off.

After fiddling for 3 + hours we finally solved the problem, of course, it was already lunch time so we reconvened for lunch.  Just before take off, we setup a GPS base station, which really interested one of the local residents of Alert, a wolf. Despite yelling at it to go away and chasing it a bit, the wolf was very persistent, coming within 5 feet of us.  I'm not sure if it was the GPS unit, or the pair of mitts a team member had put down on the ground as we worked, but the wolf was very interested in us.

The wolf who was interested in our differential GPS unit.  Considering I only have a small point in shoot with only a little bit of optical zoom, you can imagine how close he was.

Nonetheless we finished setting up the GPS station to record while the flight took place and just hoped the wolf would decide not to disturb it.  In the end, the GPS unit was completely undisturbed.

The airborne thickness survey was about 180 nautical miles and was about two hours long. I loaned Alec my camera since his stopped working at the beginning of this campaign.  The flight path took them over land towards Nares Strait and the team were lucky enough to see some muskox.

Muskox on Ellesmere Island not too far from Alert

After about two hours the helicopter returned and then Alec and I went with the helicopter to deploy a buoy at approximately 83.5N, 55W.  This buoy measures air pressure and air temperature as well as its location so that we can get information such as ice drift, air temperature and pressure.  As you can imagine, there are not very many weather stations in the Arctic Ocean, so the data from the few stations, plus all the buoys helps to improve weather forecasts and monitoring of the global environment.  The flight was quick (135 knots (135 nautical miles per hour), but we had to cover about 80nm each way.  I had front seat with the pilot and was able to learn a bit from him about how to fly a helicopter.

Our helicopter is ready for take off after we have deployed the canister buoy.

Since we study sea ice, we naturally take alot of photos of it, so here are some.

Frost flowers on very thin ice in the open water between floes

Some new ice formed in the open water between ice floes

Open water, called a lead, in the ice

After returning back to Alert and grabbing some supper, Alec, Christian, Ian and I, went back down to process our salinity/texture cores.  We finished around 10:30pm, just in time for a social beverage at the bar.

May 11, 2011

Well May 11 was another beautiful day, just like all the others this trip.  I feel that I have glossed over the weather a bit on the posts for this trip simply because it has been so good.  Normally we are affected by days of fog, poor visibility, and sometimes high winds.  This trip has been remarkable in that we have had 1 morning with fog, which dissipated by lunch and we could still go out that afternoon.  To get so many beautiful weather days (sunny, -5 to -15C) in a row at Alert is a rare thing. 

Christian, Ian and I loaded the helicopter first thing in the morning for another HEM flight, this time to the west to the Ward Hunt Ice shelf.  Ward Hunt is a marine ice shelf (frozen sea water) that is several thousand years.  However over the past decade Ward Hunt and the other marine ice shelves on Ellesmere Island have been breaking up and disappearing.  The pieces that break off float in the waters and would pose a significant shipping hazard, as they are quite thick. Ever since our flight over the floating tongue of the Petermann Glacier on Greenland with the Canadian Coast Guard ship Henry Larsen (with Humfrey Melling and the Canadian Arctic Throughflow Study) in August of 2009, our group has realized that we can make measurements through much thicker ice than we originally thought.  While the error in the measurements increases, the results remain valuable. Below are some photos

Pieces of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf

Glacier ice or part of the Ward Hunt ice shelf

Christian has tried for several years now to get to Ward Hunt Island to make a survey of the shelf and this year we were finally successful.  With the laser scanner, laser profiler, differential GPS, inertial navigation system, and the EM thickness coils onboard our new HEM bird we should have an interesting data set. The laser scanner is a rotating laser scanner that basically scans the surface below it from left to right, and it spins at about 50 complete turns per second, giving us a nice scan of the change in the height of the surface and features below.

However, we did encounter some problems, we had a failure of our DGPS and potentially the INS data during parts of the flight. However, with the handheld GPS we had in the helicopter we should able to reconstruct the position/timing of the flight and data files.

 

We made several passes over the ice shelf and over sea ice along the way to Ward Hunt.  We landed on Ward hunt to refuel and had a quick look around the camp that exists there.  The area is in Quttinirpaaq National Park so there are several building on the island.  We then flew out over the shelf and out over the sea ice to the north of the island before turning around and going down Disraeli Fjord and then over land back towards Alert due to time/fuel considerations.

Glacier at the head of disraeli fjord

Crevasses in the glacier at the head of Disraeli fjord.

Near Alert we made several more passes over the CryoVEx fast ice site transect from my trip in April in order to acquire laser scanner and HEM thickness data.  We flew several passes at different heights to change the total size and spatial resolution of the laser scanner swath. After about four hours we returned to Alert, had a quick lunch break (boxed lunches) and then Christian and I departed Alert again in the helicopter to deploy our time lapse camera package on Cape Joseph Henry near Alert.  The camera is supposed to take 1 photo each hour for the next year.  I am really hoping it works as it was something I did the testing on, and well I only have myself to blame if it doesn’t, it has already caused me some nightmares as there will be no way to know if it worked until we go back in a year….yikes!!!

See if you can spot the camera

Can you see it now?

We returned back to the base just after supper and then proceeded to start packing up all our gear for our departure on May 12.

May 12, 2011

Okay, well this was our last day in Alert, so we should be busy finishing packing, right? Well sort of, we had deployed an Ice Mass Balance buoy on the fast ice near Alert for the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory of the US ARMY (C.R.R.E.L.) but the buoy was having some major issues.  The under water sonar that makes it possible to determine the change in ice thickness by measuring the distance from the sensor to the bottom of the ice stopped working shortly after being deployed.  We made a few more visits to the buoy to try to fix it, but without luck.  So Christian and Alec went out by skidoo on Thursday morning and repaired the buoy, hopefully for good, as it was our last chance to do make repairs.  Then in the afternoon at about 3pm our Twin Otter arrived from Resolute Bay to pick us up and bring us back to Resolute.  After so many trips and campaigns I am now able to sleep on some planes, and I find the Twin Otter very conducive to sleep, so I used the chance to nap.

That night we caught up with Ben back at PCSP and relaxed a bit.

May 13 and 14th, 2011

Ben, who has been extremely busy helping Christine Michel of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Winnipeg, had collected a lot of data while we were away.  We used the increased manpower and the fact that Ben leaves on Sunday May 15, 2011 for a circumnavigation of Cornwallis Island (where Resolute Bay is) by skidoo to motivate ourselves to process some cores that Ben had collected in the vicinity of Resolute (Wellington Channel, Barrow Strait and McDougal Sound).  Ben had collected 7 more texture/salinity cores to section and measure, which we just finished this (May 14, 2011) morning.

We also unpacked our airplane and spent the majority of the morning swapping, organizing and backing up data files. May 14^th brought along more of the same, we finished the texture cores, packed up gear and then waited for the plane.

I am looking forward to being home again.  I will try to post some more blogs in the coming weeks.  I think I will like post any updates I get from Ben while he is on his circumnavigation (he plans to text me with the satellite phone) both here and on his Facebook wall. But I know I am usually pretty bad for not posting when I am not on trips.

Well that is all, I hope you enjoyed hearing about the CASIMBO 2011 field campaign.  I will post more later when we have some preliminary results or something cool comes up

Cheers

New Photos: It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a Ken Borek Twin Otter!

Hello all,

Just a short posting as it is once again a very late night.

We went out on the ice again today, but this time with a Twin Otter airplane (like I used in April and what we flew from Resolute to Alert in on this trip).  We traded our helicopter for the Twin Otter for the day as we wanted to deploy an ice mass balance buoy which involves too much stuff for the helicopter.

We also did our full suite of ice cores and drilling and ground EM measurements. 

 Then this evening we processed two texture cores and measured salinity in two of the previously cut cores.

Tomorrow we plan on doing a bird flight and deploying our time lapse camera.

Well off to bed now

Goodnight and talk to you all tomorrow

Here we go again!! New Photos!

Hello All,



I hope you are all doing well. I am quite exhausted. Just finished entering daa and it is now 12:50am. We were on the ice today at noon, back for supper then back out on the ice from 6:30 until 11:45. We did another multiyear site today, complete with drilling, coring and EM measurements and were finished in time for dinner. Unfortunately one of the skidoos broke down so Christian rode home on the sledge we pull behind each skidoo.

We then went back out after supper to tow the skidoo back to Alert, and also to try to fix the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) IMB that we deployed on May 5.

Now I am fighting to stay away to write this blog so that I can go to bed for just under 6 hours so that we can do more tomorrow.


HOWEVER, the great news is that our helicopter has finally arrived. Bad weather in Resolute and Eureka had prevented the helicopter from arriving here on time, such is the way of the Arctic.

Well I was going to put another movie up for you all, but right now I am so tired I think the movie will have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry but I need my beauty sleep (I guess you can say I am always tired)…haha. Maybe tomorrow I'll have time to post a short video from today.



Cheers



Justin

NEW PHOTOS AND VIDEO!! Rare Arctic Gorilla Spotted!

Hello again everyone,


Well another day, another site, after some delay. Saturday’s and Sunday’s in Alert means no breakfast but brunch at 10:30. Instead we went down to our staging building and processed one of our texture cores.

Christian Haas sawing up ice cores with the band saw

Cutting the thick (thin) section (5mm thick) from the center of the ice core piece

Ice core piece under cross polarized light.  Note the switch from frazil to columnar ice (up is on the left).

First we section the cores into certain lengths, then we saw them in half vertically (along the length of the core) and then we slice a thin section out of the core. One person takes notes, 1 saws, 1 takes photos of the thin sections and one takes the rest of each piece of core and places them into individual containers so that we can melt them and measure the salinity (saltiness) of the ice. The process goes very quickly with 4 people and is somewhat enjoyable (for me), as you get to see the cores under polarized light and look at the ice crystals.

Today we went to a first year ice floe that we identified using satellite radar imagery from the ESA Envisat ASAR sensor. Radar images can provide a lot of useful information about sea ice, including distinguishing between first year ice and multiyear ice.
The trip to the new site took some tricky skidoo work, which meant for slow going at times, but it was quite fun. I really enjoy the technical bits. We went over ridges, huge snow banks (like 8-10 feet tall and 100-200 feet long). Unfortunately I was a bit too busy to take many pictures today.
At the site we managed to get four ice cores, two for Ido, one for us and one for Christine Michel. We also performed another drill/EM transect, setting up a transect that crossed from the first year ice over a ridge to an adjacent multiyear floe. The work on the first year ice went very quickly because it was only 1.4m thick. The multiyear floe was much thicker with several of our drill holes being over 6m long. Today Christian did some of the drilling while training Ian and Ido on it, while Alec and I began the EM survey (as they had all finished coring very quickly).
I was hoping to get my camera down the core hole today since the thinner multiyear ice should let more light through but everyone else was in a rush to get back for dinner and the core hole had already started to close up a bit so I didn’t want to risk it. Tomorrow I plan to get some more video and maybe another time-lapse.
After Alec spotted a whale yesterday, he now notices many ice animals, including this piece of ice that looks like a gorilla.

If you use your imagination, you maybe be able to spot the Arctic Gorilla like Alec did.

Well I suppose I better wrap this up soon. Tomorrow is Sunday so another brunch day but we plan to do a full station at a nice multiyear floe we found on the way back to the base this evening, so probably a bit of a late day as we won’t be able to start until after brunch which is around 1200, by the time everyone is ready to go and the sleds are packed up.

Cheers

NEW PHOTOS AND VIDEO! Fail Whale!!

Hey All,
Well today we went back to the same site as yesterday. We went to take two ice cores. We had only planned to do one but one of the cores we took yesterday broke through its plastic bag and we needed to take the core again as it was meant for texture analysis and it is important to know what side is up so that you can correlate the texture with depth down the core.

Along the way to the site today Alec spotted a whale, well sort of, if you use your imagination and have been staring at ice as long as we have.





Alec's whale








We also did more EM measurements along the drill transect from yesterday, and finally we had to do some repairs to the IMB we put out yesterday. We need to go visit it again as we weren’t able to fully fix it but oh well we tried.



Photo



We also did a little detour trip from our IMB towards the open water, however we couldn’t get anywhere close to it (due to all the broken up rubble ice we were still a kilometer or so away).

Alec on a ridge of ice and snow

Snow crystals that have grown vertically up from the snow below

Today our IMB arrived on a Twin Otter that was bringing up more of the Project Switchyard study group (from various institutions in the US). We put it out near the base tonight just to let it run over night so that we can make sure we don’t encounter the same issues as this one we have just deployed.

Back at the base we took the time to process one of our texture cores, one from a first year ice site.  Below are two pictures of the bottom 40cm or so of the core. We use a band saw to cut a 5mm thick piece of ice from the center of the core (vertically all the way down the core) and then put it between to cross polarized filters.  This lets you see the crystals of the ice. You can see a switch from frazil ice (which is ice that forms during freeze up) and then columnar ice, which forms by freezing to the existing ice floe).  We were surprised to see so much frazil ice.



Frazil ice under cross-polarized light




Columnar ice crystals under cross-polarized light



And finally while we worked today I had my little GoPro camera set up to do time-lapse so I hope you enjoy our frantic work pace.

Well that is all for tonight.  Tomorrow we will get up at the usual time and go down to process another texture core before returning to the base for brunch (saturdays and sundays). Then in the afternoon we go back to the CRREL IMB site to try to fix the buoy or we got to another first year ice site.

Cheers

Justin

NEW PHOTOS!! Ice, Ice Baby: CASIMBO team collects first measurements in Alert for 2011 campaign.

Hey All, not sure where blogger will put this.  I wrote and submitted this blog on May 3 but for some reason it did not post.


Well I know I’m cheating and posting two blog posts for two different days back to back but given that I just got internet access again today and that it is really slow you’ll have to forgive me. Remember dial-up internet (if not, google it and find out how excruciatingly slow it is (ie 3-20 kB/second). But some internet is better than none, and it lets me communicate with you all. In reality it is actually quite nice being in a place where you cannot be inconstant reach or need to check your phone or email, it seems more peaceful.
Well today we went out on the ice and collected our first measurements on the ice here in Alert. We had already taken a some cores in Resolute but this is different ice. Today we visited the fast ice that Christian and I visited with the #CRYOVEX / #CRYOSAT ground validation team (Seymour Laxon, Katherine Giles, Rosemary Willatt from University College London; and Malcolm Davidson from the European Space Agency) in April.

The ice looks completely different than it did just two weeks ago, and as a result it took some time to navigate to the site. Couple that with a broken Ice Corer motor (little four stroke engine to turn the ice corer that just won’t start for some reason), and some delays getting the EMP-400 ground electromagnetic (EM) induction device operating resulted in us only getting to the ice at 2:30 (with about 1 hr of finding a path to the site).
However at the site we were able to take 3 ice cores, 2 for Ido Hatam and Brian Lanoil and 1 for our own group (good work Ido, Ian and Christian!). Ian was pretty cold today as it was very windy at times, so I loaned him my Canada Goose jacket while I wore my Cloudveil jacket.



Our ice core barrel and a core floating in water.  You can also see a core hole that has already been completed. Photo Credit: Christian Haas




Ido and Ian bagging and tagging the cores.  Ian is sporting my fancy new jacket. Photo Credit: Christian Haas


Alec and I set out to do a ground EM comparison with drill thickness data along a transect over a well defined ridge feature. However, after 4 holes (including one on the ridge that was roughly 5.5m thick) our electric drill broke and we had to stop.



Alec drilling some ice, that's just an 18V cordless drill and some 2inch wide auger flights with a strong steel cutting tip at the bottom (in the ice). Alec is in the middle of cleaning out the hole by moving the drill in and out of the hole to bring all the ice shavings to the surface.




Looking down our thickest hole today  (roughly 5.5m thick ice)




Alec and I doing some ground EM measurements. Here we are using the EMP-400, new to our group. Photo Credit: Christian Haas. 



We had to finish our work today by 6pm so that we could make it back for a base briefing for Alec, Ian and Ido. We had some supper and then did some clean up work. The corer and drill auger flights and anything else that was in the salt water needs to be rinsed clean and dried each night to keep it in good condition.

After that was finished we entered in data. Our helicopter did not arrive today so we will do another skidoo based site tomorrow near where we were today.

Well that is all, I need some sleep.

Justin

New Photos and TWO VIDEOs!!: IMB Deployed

Hey All,

Well we just got back from a successful day out on the ice. We went to the same GPS location as in 2010 when we deployed the Ice Mass Balance Buoy, to install a new IMB again this year, this time for the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a plot of the data to show you some results.

Christian checking that the IMB is reporting accurate values.

IMBs are very valuable tools for monitoring the ice as it melts in the summer and freezes up in the winter (assuming the floe lasts the summer).

We had another spectacular sunny day, though some clouds rolled in at the end of our day.  The weather was maybe -5 to -10 Celsius but it felt so nice and warm.  My face is a bit sunburnt again (nothing serious though).



Sun shining over the north Coast of Ellesmere Island



In addition to deploying the IMB, we performed the usual measurements of taking ice cores, measuring ice thickness with a drill, measuring snow depth, taking ground EM measurements with two different units.

I also had a chance to test out my camera again below the ice.  I also created a very shorted time-lapse movie from some pictures I took while we set up the IMB.  Below are the two movies.  Sorry for the poor quality but I've reduced my footage to some awefully small sizes in order to be able to show them to you while I am still in the field.

Tomorrow I plan to do a longer time-lapse sequence as Alec and I doing the drilling and EM31 transect. We will revisit our site from today to take 1 more core, and then we are off to find a first year ice floe for more cores/EM and drilling.

Well that is all I’ll write about today. More tomorrow.

 
Cheers

New Photos: There’s ice in those hills!

Well hello all, another day out on the ice today. Turns out I was a bit sunburnt/windburnt yesterday so I put on some sunscreen today and it was much better. Now I have a tan, well my hands and face do. Today we returned to the same site as yesterday and we finished coring and finished our drilling transect. Alec and I drilled a 8.9m deep hole (all of the flights we had with us on the ice) and still didn’t get all the way through the ridge.

Alec and I in the reflection of Alec's goggles (bet if you try to type goggle, you'll type google first)



Alec drilling through the ice so we can measure its thickness.  We do this to compare with our EM measurements


Of course, doing these activities always forces me to break one of the golden rules of the Arctic, don’t sweat….but luckily it was a beautiful sunny calm day. Christian, Ido and Ian then continued on to a first year ice site while Alec and I did some more ground EM measurements at the first site.



Sea ice near Alert with the mountains of Northern Ellesmere in the background




Sea ice near Alert




A very large sea ice ridge (7m+ high)

 On the way back to the base we visited another potential first year ice site and took some pictures of the spectacular landscape.
We were even back for a hot supper in the cantina today, which was a nice treat. After supper we went down to put the EM bird together but had a lot of trouble, resulting in it taking much longer than it out to have. We also had to trouble shoot our time-lapse camera (just to make sure we have it ready for deployment whenever our helicopter is able to make it), and we had to trouble shoot the ice mass balance buoy we will deploy for the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. We hope to do this tomorrow, but we will see.
Well I am off to bed as soon as this loads. It is midnight already and we will have breakfast at 7 to start by 8am.
Still hoping for a great chance to get some good underwater video. We did some yesterday, but it was quite cloudy and so did not get much light under the ice. However in the video there are some bright blue spots under the ice, which I think might result from ice penetrating through large hummocks or ridges which have little or no snow on them letting the light shine through.
Well that is it
Cheers