AHHHH, a real toilet (maybe one of the things I missed the most). Well the CryoVEx team is back in Sachs Harbour after a successful first camp in the Beaufort Sea. We had a very successful week and completed a lot of measurements. There were a few hick-ups (including not one but two Geonics EM-31s that did not work at all).
I'll be writing a few posts over the next day or so (hopefully), with the stuff from the past week.
I just thought I'd write a quick note that we are back and you can expect blog posts.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
#CryoVEx2014 team heads to Sachs Harbour today
Yesterday morning we found a plane to take us to Sachs Harbour today. In a few hours we will fly in a Beechcraft King Air 200 from Aklak Air (affiliated with the Ken Borek company) from Inuvik to Sach's Harbour.
We will spend some time in Sach's Harbour going through the equipment we have shipped (four different shipments; one from each of us) to make everything a bit more efficient and compact for in the field.
We plan to fly to MIZ ONR Camp 3 on Sunday for a short program there for one or two days and then head to our main camp, Camp 2.
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| Map of the proposed camp sites from the MIZ planning document. Actual positions will be different based on ice conditions. Right now, all camps seem to be displaced northwards by about 1 degree of latitude or 60 nautical miles. |
I'm hoping that the weather forecast holds true because it looks GREAT!
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| Sachs Harbour Weather Forecast from Environment Canada. Courtesy Environment Canada. |
Unfortunately, I only trust it for the next 24 hours at most. Right now the radar image also looks very good. You can see most of the ice in the study area, even with that cloud in the way (so it must be thin).
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| AVHRR image from 2014/03/15 1206UTC. Courtesy of the Canadian Ice Service. |
I think from here on my internet connection is essentially gone. My satellite phone will be used to send out some tweets using @SIBeckers (me) and the #CryoVEx2014 hashtag.
Be safe everyone.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Quick update
Well the day has had some surprises. We found a plane to take us to Sachs Harbour tomorrow morning.
There were some other setbacks with the York University DC-3, ones that have now been sorted out (for the most part). We had planned to have a downwards looking camera but that has fallen through due to aircraft mounting issues. Also our EM bird towing cable was accidentally cut making it a bit shorter than before. The camera is too bad but not much to do about it. The towing cable is repaired, just a little bit shorter than before.
Not much else to report besides that. I am looking forward to getting on the ice and getting to work!
I will make sure to draft some blog posts and upload them while in Resolute Bay.
Remember to watch my Twitter feed for more updates (@SIBeckers or search the #CryoVEx2014 hashtag). The tweets also show up here on my blog on the right hand sidebar.
There were some other setbacks with the York University DC-3, ones that have now been sorted out (for the most part). We had planned to have a downwards looking camera but that has fallen through due to aircraft mounting issues. Also our EM bird towing cable was accidentally cut making it a bit shorter than before. The camera is too bad but not much to do about it. The towing cable is repaired, just a little bit shorter than before.
Not much else to report besides that. I am looking forward to getting on the ice and getting to work!
I will make sure to draft some blog posts and upload them while in Resolute Bay.
Remember to watch my Twitter feed for more updates (@SIBeckers or search the #CryoVEx2014 hashtag). The tweets also show up here on my blog on the right hand sidebar.
First hiccup in the campaign.
Two of the more important things I learned during my first fieldwork trip that were reinforced each subsequent trip is that a good plan is only good until day one in the field and then everything changes. Number two is that if it can go wrong, it's a fair expectation that it will go wrong. Oh and maybe third, it's usually the little things.
Yesterday was a waiting day. I worked a bit, picked up the last minute equipment we needed, and relaxed a bit. We met up with pilots from Great Slave Helicopters who will be doing helicopter work for other scientists in the MIZ and who are to fly to the ice camp tomorrow or maybe Saturday. They fly a big Bell 412, a helicopter that can carry 9-13 people if need and is instrumentation flight capable, that is they don't need to be able to see the ground at all times.
Last night we contacted the logistics party who are already in Sachs Harbour and who have the colossal task of setting up the MIZ ice camps. The original plan was for them to come and pick us up with a Twin Otter but either that information was not passed along well enough between the planners and the field personnel, or it slipped the minds of the field personnel.
In any event, it is no big deal, everyone has millions of things on their plates before and during a campaign and there is not much to be done about that. Occasionally something could slip, unfortunately this time it was not "bring a screwdriver" or an "bring an extra battery" but "send a plane to pick those scientists up".
It's really no big deal yet. They could still send a plane but it would delay other things further. The advanced camp and as a result another science team are a few days behind because of weather and that is something no one has control over. If they sent the plane for us, that would just push the entire campaign, including other science parties, further back. Since each sea ice camp has limited space and several teams want to go to the same one, we would need to wait. But they had an idea, and a backup idea:
Last night we contacted the pilot from Great Slave Helicopters to see if maybe they can give us a ride.
We waited for a while to see what was sorted out but nothing was before I finally went to sleep around midnight.
If GSL can fly us to Sachs Harbour we can then sort through our gear and maybe tomorrow go to one of the other camps established for the MIZ camp (camp 3) for a couple days while the other science party works at Camp 2, then when they are done at Camp 2 they will come to Camp 3 and we will go to Camp 2.
IF GSL cannot fly us, we will look into renting our own plane just to take us up there, besides sitting around until Monday, that is about the only other option.
The weather forecast for Sachs Harbour looks great, highs around -20C. With the sun, that will be just fine as long as the wind isn't too terrible, and if it is, well then you just make sure not to work facing into the wind. This morning at 7:30 the radar image looks pretty good over the study area.
Yesterday was a waiting day. I worked a bit, picked up the last minute equipment we needed, and relaxed a bit. We met up with pilots from Great Slave Helicopters who will be doing helicopter work for other scientists in the MIZ and who are to fly to the ice camp tomorrow or maybe Saturday. They fly a big Bell 412, a helicopter that can carry 9-13 people if need and is instrumentation flight capable, that is they don't need to be able to see the ground at all times.
Last night we contacted the logistics party who are already in Sachs Harbour and who have the colossal task of setting up the MIZ ice camps. The original plan was for them to come and pick us up with a Twin Otter but either that information was not passed along well enough between the planners and the field personnel, or it slipped the minds of the field personnel.
In any event, it is no big deal, everyone has millions of things on their plates before and during a campaign and there is not much to be done about that. Occasionally something could slip, unfortunately this time it was not "bring a screwdriver" or an "bring an extra battery" but "send a plane to pick those scientists up".
It's really no big deal yet. They could still send a plane but it would delay other things further. The advanced camp and as a result another science team are a few days behind because of weather and that is something no one has control over. If they sent the plane for us, that would just push the entire campaign, including other science parties, further back. Since each sea ice camp has limited space and several teams want to go to the same one, we would need to wait. But they had an idea, and a backup idea:
Last night we contacted the pilot from Great Slave Helicopters to see if maybe they can give us a ride.
We waited for a while to see what was sorted out but nothing was before I finally went to sleep around midnight.
If GSL can fly us to Sachs Harbour we can then sort through our gear and maybe tomorrow go to one of the other camps established for the MIZ camp (camp 3) for a couple days while the other science party works at Camp 2, then when they are done at Camp 2 they will come to Camp 3 and we will go to Camp 2.
IF GSL cannot fly us, we will look into renting our own plane just to take us up there, besides sitting around until Monday, that is about the only other option.
The weather forecast for Sachs Harbour looks great, highs around -20C. With the sun, that will be just fine as long as the wind isn't too terrible, and if it is, well then you just make sure not to work facing into the wind. This morning at 7:30 the radar image looks pretty good over the study area.
 |
| AVHRR image courtesy of the Canadian Ice Service showing the beaufort sea study area. Image is from 0518MDT on March 14, 2014. |
Thursday, March 13, 2014
#CryoVEx2014 Day 2
After a good night's sleep at the Capital Suites in Inuvik, I am ready for day 2. It is 7:30am and I've been getting some stuff done. We have a satellite phone for communications, we can use it to make phone calls, send SMS (text messages) and with it I can even tweet (@SIBeckers is my username on Twitter). We can also send emails with the satellite phone but last night none of them were getting through.
A little more searching online makes me think that I can only send emails to non institutional addresses (not to @ualberta.ca for instance) but can send to gmail.com
I've also had a look at the weather forecast for the next few days and checked some freely available satellite images of the Beaufort Sea. The weather is looking okay here in Inuvik but it is windy up in Sachs Harbour -17C but feels closer to -35C with the windchill. The satellite images suggest there are some clouds in the area.
The satellite images come from the Canadian Ice Service who download and post images from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). The images are freely available. The satellite takes images with sensors that operate at several frequencies, one of which is radar. The nice thing about radar is that you don't need sunlight and it can see through some clouds (depending on which radar frequency you use). In the image below, water is dark, but so are some clouds. Other clouds are white (left side of image). The red box is very roughly where I will be.
I'll be keeping an eye on the satellite pictures, but more for interest than any real need. The camps are deployed and that's all there is to it. The only interest is really looking at the ice and weather conditions in the region.
In an hour or so I will meet up with the others to pick up some breakfast and then it is off to the hardware store for some last minute items, bio friendly spray paint to mark the snow and ice, cable ties, odds and ends. Then some work on our snow survey marking tools and maybe a bit of work at the computer this afternoon. And hopefully I can schedule a couple more blog posts, but that is harder as I haven't done anything yet. Probably that will happen in Resolute Bay later in just over a week.
A little more searching online makes me think that I can only send emails to non institutional addresses (not to @ualberta.ca for instance) but can send to gmail.com
I've also had a look at the weather forecast for the next few days and checked some freely available satellite images of the Beaufort Sea. The weather is looking okay here in Inuvik but it is windy up in Sachs Harbour -17C but feels closer to -35C with the windchill. The satellite images suggest there are some clouds in the area.
The satellite images come from the Canadian Ice Service who download and post images from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). The images are freely available. The satellite takes images with sensors that operate at several frequencies, one of which is radar. The nice thing about radar is that you don't need sunlight and it can see through some clouds (depending on which radar frequency you use). In the image below, water is dark, but so are some clouds. Other clouds are white (left side of image). The red box is very roughly where I will be.
 |
| Beaufort Sea AVHRR Image from 2014/03/13 at 1228 UTC. Red box is very rough indication of where I will be Image courtesy of the Canadian Ice Service. |
I'll be keeping an eye on the satellite pictures, but more for interest than any real need. The camps are deployed and that's all there is to it. The only interest is really looking at the ice and weather conditions in the region.
In an hour or so I will meet up with the others to pick up some breakfast and then it is off to the hardware store for some last minute items, bio friendly spray paint to mark the snow and ice, cable ties, odds and ends. Then some work on our snow survey marking tools and maybe a bit of work at the computer this afternoon. And hopefully I can schedule a couple more blog posts, but that is harder as I haven't done anything yet. Probably that will happen in Resolute Bay later in just over a week.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
#CryoVEx2014 Begins!
It is sunny and a pleasant -12C here in Inuvik. It is 16:50 MDT and I've been up since 05:10 MDT.
This morning I met up with Christian, Bruce, and Chris at Edmonton's International Airport. Taking off just after sunrise, we had a nice long delay in Yellowknife as our plane had some sort of malfunction, so a 30 minute stop over became a few hours delay. Off to a good start.
We are heading to Sachs Harbour on Friday and from there we head out onto the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea. We will be staying at a field camp of the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) conducting measurements for the ESA/NASA CryoSat-2 Validation Experiment 2014 (CryoVEx 2014). Our work also aids the main project happening at the ONR camp, a scientific program called the Marginal Ice Zone experiment. That experiment will be putting out many buoys on the ice, sensors below the ice and later this year will deploy autonomous underwater vehicles.
We will be doing snow and ice measurements to characterize the conditions in the region and to provide validation data for airborne and satellite surveys from NASA, ESA and York University.
NASA, ESA and York University will fly aircraft over our on-ice measurements. Those airborne measurements will then be used to compare to the satellite data. This is an effort to try to scale up from small, localized but highly accurate in-situ measurements to large scale regional observations in order to better understand the snow and ice conditions and their changes.
In 2010 ESA launched a satellite radar altimeter called CryoSat-2 to improve our knowledge of the changes in sea ice and land ice thickness. The satellite measures the distance between itself and the surface using radar waves by measuring the time it takes for the signal to get to the ground and back to the satellite, much like a police radar gun measures how fast your car is going. For sea ice, we then take the difference of the height of the sea ice surface and height readings from open water between the ice floes to get the freeboard, or the height of the ice above the water. Knowing the density of the ice, the snow and water, and knowing the depth of snow we can then calculate ice thickness.
The idea is that the radar from CryoSat-2 penetrates through any snow on the ice and reflects from the ice surface. However, this is still not 100% clear and so we are trying to figure out if this is the case or not, and if not: where, when, and why that might be. This will make any estimates of freeboard and thickness, and changes in those two variables more certain as we will then be able to quantify the error or uncertainty in the estimates.
NASA is flying an airborne sensor suite for a campaign called IceBridge. The campaign bridges two satellite missions (ICESat-1 and ICESat-2) using airborne campaigns after ICESat-1 died in 2009; ICESat-2 is not scheduled to launch for a couple years yet. ICESat-1 was a laser altimeter so instead of using a radar signal it used a laser to measure the distance to the surface, much like the police sometimes use a laser gun instead of the radar gun to check if you are speeding.
NASA is also flying radar sensors that measure the thickness of the glaciers and also a snow radar that measures snow depth, even on sea ice. The data we provide will help to calibrate and validate that snow radar, and their laser data and then allow us to use the NASA data in comparison to CryoSat-2.
Finally, York University is flying our airborne electromagnetic induction device, the so-called EM Bird. This sensor measures snow+ice thickness, or total thickness. It has been proven to be very accurate in most cases, and thus provides validation data for the other airborne and satellite data.
All of these planes will be flying over our on-ice site where we will do thousands of snow depth measurements, measure snow density, ice thickness, ice and snow surface roughness, and take 3D laser scanner measurements of the snow surface roughness. We will put out buoys and markers for the planes to use to sea our measurements and will deploy radar corner reflectors that strongly reflect radar waves back to the sensor that emitted them providing another reference point both on the on-ice and their height above the snow and ice.
I will try to blog more about this over the coming period, but I know my access to internet is limited. If I have some time tomorrow I will try to pre-write a few blogs. Otherwise, I will be posting on Twitter using the username @SIBeckers and with the hashtag #CryoVEx2014. There is also a lot of information already out there on both NASA Operation IceBridge, and ESA's CryoSat-2. This project is a nice collaboration between two big space agencies, and a handful of research institutes and universities.
This morning I met up with Christian, Bruce, and Chris at Edmonton's International Airport. Taking off just after sunrise, we had a nice long delay in Yellowknife as our plane had some sort of malfunction, so a 30 minute stop over became a few hours delay. Off to a good start.
 |
| Take off from Edmonton at sunrise. |
We are heading to Sachs Harbour on Friday and from there we head out onto the sea ice in the Beaufort Sea. We will be staying at a field camp of the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) conducting measurements for the ESA/NASA CryoSat-2 Validation Experiment 2014 (CryoVEx 2014). Our work also aids the main project happening at the ONR camp, a scientific program called the Marginal Ice Zone experiment. That experiment will be putting out many buoys on the ice, sensors below the ice and later this year will deploy autonomous underwater vehicles.
We will be doing snow and ice measurements to characterize the conditions in the region and to provide validation data for airborne and satellite surveys from NASA, ESA and York University.
NASA, ESA and York University will fly aircraft over our on-ice measurements. Those airborne measurements will then be used to compare to the satellite data. This is an effort to try to scale up from small, localized but highly accurate in-situ measurements to large scale regional observations in order to better understand the snow and ice conditions and their changes.
In 2010 ESA launched a satellite radar altimeter called CryoSat-2 to improve our knowledge of the changes in sea ice and land ice thickness. The satellite measures the distance between itself and the surface using radar waves by measuring the time it takes for the signal to get to the ground and back to the satellite, much like a police radar gun measures how fast your car is going. For sea ice, we then take the difference of the height of the sea ice surface and height readings from open water between the ice floes to get the freeboard, or the height of the ice above the water. Knowing the density of the ice, the snow and water, and knowing the depth of snow we can then calculate ice thickness.
The idea is that the radar from CryoSat-2 penetrates through any snow on the ice and reflects from the ice surface. However, this is still not 100% clear and so we are trying to figure out if this is the case or not, and if not: where, when, and why that might be. This will make any estimates of freeboard and thickness, and changes in those two variables more certain as we will then be able to quantify the error or uncertainty in the estimates.
NASA is flying an airborne sensor suite for a campaign called IceBridge. The campaign bridges two satellite missions (ICESat-1 and ICESat-2) using airborne campaigns after ICESat-1 died in 2009; ICESat-2 is not scheduled to launch for a couple years yet. ICESat-1 was a laser altimeter so instead of using a radar signal it used a laser to measure the distance to the surface, much like the police sometimes use a laser gun instead of the radar gun to check if you are speeding.
NASA is also flying radar sensors that measure the thickness of the glaciers and also a snow radar that measures snow depth, even on sea ice. The data we provide will help to calibrate and validate that snow radar, and their laser data and then allow us to use the NASA data in comparison to CryoSat-2.
Finally, York University is flying our airborne electromagnetic induction device, the so-called EM Bird. This sensor measures snow+ice thickness, or total thickness. It has been proven to be very accurate in most cases, and thus provides validation data for the other airborne and satellite data.
All of these planes will be flying over our on-ice site where we will do thousands of snow depth measurements, measure snow density, ice thickness, ice and snow surface roughness, and take 3D laser scanner measurements of the snow surface roughness. We will put out buoys and markers for the planes to use to sea our measurements and will deploy radar corner reflectors that strongly reflect radar waves back to the sensor that emitted them providing another reference point both on the on-ice and their height above the snow and ice.
I will try to blog more about this over the coming period, but I know my access to internet is limited. If I have some time tomorrow I will try to pre-write a few blogs. Otherwise, I will be posting on Twitter using the username @SIBeckers and with the hashtag #CryoVEx2014. There is also a lot of information already out there on both NASA Operation IceBridge, and ESA's CryoSat-2. This project is a nice collaboration between two big space agencies, and a handful of research institutes and universities.
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