#CryoVEx2014: ONR/MIZ Camp 2: Stars, icing fog and a lot of measurements!

STARS! I had never seen stars while on sea ice before.  Usually my trips start in early May when the sun is up around the clock.  This is by far the earliest I'd been out on the ice and it was spectacular to see stars and aurora over the sea ice.

STARS & AURORA BOREALIS

 After an excellent warm nights sleep we would contact the MIZ/ONR camp managers in Sach's Harbor, have a nice warm breakfast consisting of some oatmeal and coffee and plan what we would do that day. Before we could start work we also had to check the fuel drums for the heaters and top them off.

Nothing like the smell of diesel first thing in the morning. Fueling the drums that feed the heaters.

Since the P3 had overflown us the day before we decided to try using our ground based LiDAR system in the 400m by 60m survey grid.  LiDAR or Light Distance And Ranging uses a laser to take measurements of distance.  The laser is turned around its base and scans up and down as well.  Then known the horizontal and vertical angle of each scan point, and the time it took to send a laser pulse and get the reflection back to the surface you can get the distance to the surface.  From this information and by tying it into our grid and drill hole data we can create a 3D map of the snow surface, with very high spatial resolution (lots of detail).

Setting up the LIDAR scan

We knew this could be a real struggle because the LiDAR system is not a fan of cold temperatures and the temperature in camp was hovering around -30C but was warming up.  The LiDAR survey uses some dedicated reflectors placed at known points and heights above the snow surface to tie the other measurements together. By moving the scanner around and leaving the dedicated reflectors in place you can scan from multiple places in the grid to fill in shadows created by hills.

Here we setup a grid about 150m by 60m and were planning to scan it about 7 times or more before moving two of the reflectors and scanning a new section. We set out all the reflectors and then brought the LiDAR out of the tent and onto the pole. Chris programmed up the LiDAR and showed it where the dedicated reflectors were and then just as it was going to start scanning, it shut down because it was too cold.

Let's try that LiDAR scan again

After warming the LiDAR up in one of the tents we tried again, even faster this time, and we got one scan in before it shut down because it was too cold.  The day continued like this and eventually we completed 5 scans of this first area.

Me measuring snow depth along the center line while Chris and Bruce run the LiDAR scans. As hard as we try to minimize our disruption of the snow surface there is no getting around some disturbance due to walking out the corner reflector, the LiDAR, the center line, and the edges of the grid.

The other thing we did that day was to deploy the Seasonal Ice Mass Balance Buoy that Bruce Elder had brought up from CRREL.  This buoy measures snow depth (or ice surface melt once the snow is gone), and ice bottom position (draft) changes allowing us to measure the change in ice thickness/mass.  It also has a temperature string with a temperature sensor every 10cm and this model even two light sensors to measure the amount of light coming in at the surface and the amount of light penetrating through the snow and ice to the water. With the experience we all have we can deploy one of these buoys quickly and orderly and did so during one of the pauses we took to warm the LiDAR back up.

Chris, Bruce and I finishing up the seasonal ice mass balance buoy installation.

We did some quick drill hole, snow depth and survey laser measurements of the grid while Chris and Bruce started taking the LiDAR out again. This took up the rest of the day.

Shot of the camp skidoo in front of my tent in the evening.

 The next day we decided to measure snow depth grids within our 400m x 60m grid.  We had
a 400m by 60m survey grid at 5m spacing and then if time allowed we would conduct a detailed 1m spaced grid around each corner reflector. The 5m spaced grid went by very quickly, it is only 1053 measurements (81 60m lines and 13 measurements on each line).  It was nice to be using the MagnaProbe.  This device and automatically record snow depth by measuring the position of a magnet that moves up and down on the outside of a probe that you stick into the snow.  You just stick the probe in, the magnet sits on the top of the snow and then you press a button and the snow depth and GPS data are recorded.  It is a fair bit faster than using a manual probe and writing down numbers.  However, I did find the MagnaProbe to be a bit dull for my taste, both in terms of probe sharpness and the mind numbing repetitiveness of the measurements.

The probe's magnet is contained in a relatively large plastic basket which is used to keep the magnet on the top of a soft snow surface.  On sea ice, the snow is usually topped with a hard windblown layer called "wind slab" (I know, very creative). The diameter of the plastic basket was a bit to large for my preferences, as it could be hard to measure snow depth on the edge of a snow drift, it just took a bit more thought about where exactly to place the probe and basket so that the probe and magnet would be over the correct place.

But back to the story, it was an overcast day with low clouds and not great visibility so we were not expecting any airplanes to come.  Once we began measuring we also found out that the low fog was right at the point of icing, especially with all the work of probing.  Furthermore there was a strong cold breeze, so anytime I had to walk into the wind I was conscious of not getting frost bite, and facing out of the wind I was getting very warm.

An icy selfie. Hard to hold the DSLR far enough away.

 By the end of the day we were all growing snow and ice from our jackets as the sweat and break and moisture from our skin made its way through the layers to the outside of our jackets.

An icy Christian. 

 The ice build up became a bit of a problem as the ice was starting to coat the MagnaProbe causing the basket to stick on the probe instead of sliding down between measurements. It got to the point that I needed to wipe the ice off the probe nearly every measurement.

Me looking rather icy, not needing the Canada Goose jacket right now as I'm doing the 5m grid and working hard. Note the poor visibility.

 The icing fog coats everything cool with what we term rime. Sensors and weather stations can be confounded by riming and in extreme cases the build up of rime snaps cables, and topples weather stations.

The top of the seasonal ice mass balance buoy with rime (from the icing fog)

We completed the measurements and of course we were excited to see the results so that night and over the next day we started working up the data.  Lucky we have a rugged field laptop that warms its hard-drives up before turning on and has a big battery and energy efficient processor. So first up is the 400m by 60m grid that we measured with 5m point spacing.I've converted each measurement to a pixel and coloured the pixels according to snow depth from 0 to 120cm. This is sort of like looking down at the surface. I've also scaled the plot so that its dimensions are approximately in scale. It looks pretty interesting, you can see some large drifts around (0,0; the bottom left) and a drift extending from (400,30; middle right edge) towards (260,30).

The 400m x 60m snow depth grid measurements.

We had decided to do a 40m by 40m grid with 1m spacing centred around each of the corner reflectors.
Here are the two grids. The first one goes from X=20m to 60m on the 400m grid above. The second one goes from about X=336.8m to 376.8m on the 400m grid above (so near the left and right ends, respectively. Note that I've changed the colour scale so that now snow depth goes from 0 to 75cm instead of 0 to 120cm in the 400m grid graph. This is just to bring out the smaller details of the grids below. What you can see is that the second corner reflector was sitting in a region of generally deeper snow than the first corner reflector.

Okay, so that is probably a long enough post. Up next: other airborne passes over our site, saying goodbye to Camp 2, moving to Sachs Harbour and onwards to Resolute Bay and Greenland.

CryoVEx 2014: ONR/MIZ Camp 2

First thing each morning and at 1930 each evening we would call back to Sachs Harbour to let people know we were alive, to report weather and visual conditions, and to learn various plans for the day as it pertained to the different groups. 

With our successful day yesterday we were ready to move on to Camp 2 and were really hoping that the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) team was ready to move to Camp 3; our morning checkin confirmed this to us.

One of the only issues we had the day before was that our ground based electromagnetic induction sensor, the EM31 was not working.  This sensor measures the distance between itself and conductive layers underneath it, so we use it to measure the total snow plus ice thickness.  The sea ice is salty but relatively non-conductive, sea water though is very conductive and so it returns a signal to the sensor. It is a nice way to fill in the spaces between our manual drill hole measurements.

During our morning check in we asked for our backup EM31 to be flown to us. We had one sitting in its shipping box, and the empty shipping box from the one we took on the ice, guess which case we got?  The BAS Twin Otter showed up from Sachs Harbor first to drop off buoys for the BAS team while the Ken Borek Twin Otter went to Camp 2 to drop off the rest of our equipment and to pick up the BAS team.  The EM31 case on the BAS Twin Otter was the empty shipping case.  We made a few phone calls and quickly had the right box thrown onto the Ken Borek Twin Otter to be brought to Camp 3 for a quick survey.

Arrival of BAS team from Camp 2. 

Above you can see us eagerly greeting the Ken Borek Twin Otter, hoping that the EM31 was on it, and it was.  The plan we developed was to slowly offload the BAS team and then slowly load up our stuff so that Christian and Bruce would have time to quickly use the EM31 on our survey lines.  The first problem was that our EM31 was at the bottom of the gear pile from BAS, and the second problem was that everyone was WAY TOO HELPFUL and was putting gear on the plane very quickly (not something I would normally worry about).  In the end it did not matter anyways, we asked the pilot for some extra time to survey the line but as luck would have it, this EM31 did not work either!! The first unit had been for maintenance and calibration just before the survey and the second unit was a rental! What was going on?! We had no choice but to pack up and move on to Camp 2. It was another cold windy day, you could see frost nip developing on people very quickly so we were all trying to play close attention to each other's faces.

After a short flight to Camp 2 we immediately set to work.  This was to be our main camp complete with a dedicated survey grid and overflights by NASAs Operation IceBridge, our AEM system below a Ken Borek Basler (retrofitted DC-3), and the DTU Twin Otter carrying ASIRAS, an airborne version of CryoSat-2. As aircraft overflights could start immediately we set about building the radar corner reflectors we had made and shipped up.  These reflectors strongly reflect RADAR waves back to the sensor that sent them (i.e. from ASIRAS). Because it was a cold windy day we built the reflectors inside as there really is not much worse than working with small metal pieces in -20C with a strong wind.

Putting together the 1m corner reflectors inside the cooking tent. Nothing is worse than working with small metal parts in a strong wind at -20C.

We braved the elements outside to build the stands as they were rather large to fit into the cooking tent.
I was glad I had marked the wood and predrilled the holes because it was a snap to put them together.

Putting together the corner reflector stands.  I had mocked these up once in Edmonton, pre-drilling all the holes, and labelling each piece of wood so that everything would fit together nicely and quickly.

The plan that we had agreed to with various other scientists (such as though involved with the NASA IceBridge Campaign was to install the corner reflectors approximately 360m apart, within a 400m x 60m measurement grid.  The grid would be in the middle of a 2km long measurement line where we would put out buoys and visual markers to help align the aircraft over the measurement grid.

Christian's sketch of the site layout with the grid, transect, buoys, camp and runway shown.

We setup one edge of the 400m survey grid and then worked up the center line and finally the outer edge.  We often use bamboo poles as markers as they are light and very strong. The reflectors were setup and then the transect was laid out.  We could nicely use the corner reflectors and the grid markers to line up our transect. Then using a handheld GPS we placed the ends of the transects about 800m from each edge of the transect.  AS you can see in the sketch above we actually ran out of space on the eastern edge of the transect due to a large lead, but we were still 700+ meters away from the start of the grid. One of the issues with using the handheld GPS to place the ends of the transects, and one of the general issues when using GPS for sea ice work is that the sea ice may be drifting.  At Camp 2 were were drifting some 800m/hr! So one of our transect legs was about 15m shorter than we planned. Measuring the 800m with tapes or ropes would have taken much much longer than just running them out and using the GPS for measuring the distance.

Christian standing proudly by the first corner reflector.

This was basically the rest of the first day at C2 as we only arrived around 2pm or so.
We had a simple dinner, though excellent (thanks for doing most of the cooking Christopher!, I especially loved the grilled cheese sandwiches!).

Enjoying a warm beverage during a well earned break.

The next day it was time to start measuring. We started by measuring the edges of the transects that extended from our survey grid.  The main idea was that we would delay measuring in the survey grid until the NASA P3 flew overhead (and hopefully the other planes as well) or as late as possible.
We started with just 5m spacing along the transects measuring the snow surface elevation with the construction laser, the snow depth. We also did drill hole measurements of ice thickness and bulk snow density measurements every 50m.

Around 1300 local time we stopped for a quick lunch break and heard the noise of a plane...it was the NASA Operation IceBridge P3. We watched a few passes and took a few photos but then went back in for lunch so that we could continue our measurements in the afternoon.

The NASA P3!

It seems that our garbage bags work well for directing the plane, as do the buoys which the NASA team could look at until take off (and even receive positions of on their Iridium phones). It also helped that the ice was drifting in the same direction as our survey transect was set up.

A DMS image of the survey line markers and corner reflector taken from the NASA P3. Credit: Dennis Gearhardt/DMS and Michael Studinger/NASA.

In all the P3 flew 10 passes over our survey line before continuing on with the rest of the days flight mission. It was great to see the P3.

Maps of the overpasses of the P3 flight. Credit: M. Studinger/NASA.

 We finished the afternoon with the second transect leg and called it a day at around 7pm.
Well that is all for todays post.  The next post will continue with Camp 2 as there's still so much to talk about!

To the Ice: ONR/MIZ Camp 3

Finally, after a little difficulty we managed to get to Sachs Harbor.  We spent just one night there, in the house of the owners of the guest house as the guest house was full. Jackie and Roger were really nice to let 4 of us stay there, our last real beds for a week, also the last chance for a shower (which I failed to take).

The camp were were going to on the ice is part of a research project called the Marginal Ice Zone Project and involves researchers from the US, UK, France, Canada. and includes the US Office of Naval Research.  The camp managers/logistics operators were from the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab in Seattle., a couple of guys, Adam and Jim , I know from CFS Alert where the joined the Operation Switchyard Project. Adam is an engineer working with underwater gliders, and his dad is actually a rocket engineer and has had rockets go to all of the planets in our solar system (HOW COOL IS THAT).  Adam is also very involved in outreach (lucky kids in Seattle, he has such cool stories and projects).  He was also one of the people onboard a Twin Otter that crashed through the ice in 2010 North of Alert, the first year I was in Alert, but I digress


We were up early the next day, ready to head to the ice.

The sun rising while we are loading the plane. Chris Hiemstra is waiting patiently.

Because of the time of year and Sachs Harbor's latitude, we had hours of this wonderful pinkish light during sunrise sunset, and loads of "blue hour" and "golden hour" light, very pretty.

Loading the Ken Borek Twin Otter to take us to the ice.

The Twin Otters we use in the Arctic are probably my favourite smallish plane. They can carry a lot of equipment for their small size due to large wings and overpowered engines.  They are also able to take off and land on incredibly short runways, such as sea ice floes.

We had a 1.75hr flight west from Sachs Harbor to Camp 3 where we would spend a couple days maximum doing some measurements before heading to our main site and Camp 2.

Views of Sea ice

Sea ice

As we approached Camp 3 the visibility steadily decreased but lucky for ice another Twin Otter from the British Antarctic Survey had already landed, and the runway was marked out with garbage bags.

First Sight of Camp 3

We landed and right away dumped our bags off and started doing measurements.  We were hoping to only spend one or maybe two nights at Camp 3, depending on the progress of the team that was at Camp 2.

Chris started out taking snow depth measurements with the MagnaProbe, an automated snow depth tool that logs your readings automatically and has a GPS antenna integrated.  I won't get into the details of how it works but all you do is turn on the logger and gps, stab the probe into the snow and press a button and wait for some confirmation beeps.

Bruce was drilling holes in the ice and taking measurements and Christian and I were taking measurements of the snow surface elevation using a survey laser. We shared this job because it goes much faster with two people.

Christian holding the laser detector.

While surveying we noticed a crack was starting to form in the ice that we were crossing. After watching the crack for about 5-10 minutes, we decided to keep measuring on the other side of the crack but to return periodically to check on the crack. Luckily the crack was not developing very quickly and even when we left the next day was still less than 1m across.

A crack in the ice developing along our survey line. The markings on the tape are spaced 1m apart.

We finished one line of measurements and then stopped for a snack before completing a second line of measurements across a different ice floe.  The first measurements were done going out from the end of the runway and the ice was regular first year ice, very flat and rather boring.  The second line crossed MYI and also included a couple of ridges. 

When we came back from our second survey line there was a problem, the heaters in all of the tents had gone out and another guy who was spending the night with us was unable to get them going again.  I finally realized that there was a gap between the fuel and the stove in the fuel line, and that the fuel barrels had not been vented and had created a large vacuum as they worked.  I went out back and vented the barrels and after a bit more work we got the first stove lit.  In the next tent, where I was sleeping, the camp setup people had left some paper under the stove, and when we were warming the bottom of the stove up before lighting it, we caught that paper on fire, again I quickly snatched up the paper in my gloved hand and threw it outside.   

That evening we moved our gear into our tents where we would spend one night.

Bruce and Christian's tent

 Mine and Chris's tent.

These Arctic Oven tents from Alaska Tent and Tarp were GREAT! They were strong, spacious and we had them luxuriously appointed with cots, cot pads, sleeping bags, overhead nets and a diesel drip stove.  With the stove, the tents were downright hot.

Usually when I head to the Arctic in May, 24 hour daylight is pervasive and all you notice is a bit of dimmer light at night, now though, the sun was fully setting so I had my first spectacular sunrise and sunset over Arctic sea ice. 

Well that concludes the Camp 3 blog post.  We move on to Camp 2 in the next post.  Here we spent a few days so perhaps there will be a couple posts on that sight.  Heck, maybe even some data plots.

CryoVEx: Catching up

It has now been a couple of weeks since I wrote a very quick and short blog post in Sachs Harbor. I indicated I would write and post some blogs but really I did not have time.  Now I am sitting on the bus from Calgary to Edmonton, just a few more hours until I am home for the first time in 26 whole days and I am sure looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.  I have decided to use this time to write a post or two trying to fill you in on what I have been up to for the past 26 days, and it is harder than I expected.  The days have blurred together already so you will just have to excuse some repetition.

On Monday March 12, I met part of the team (Chris Hiemstra, Christian Haas, and Bruce Elder) at the Edmonton International Airport. We journeyed to Inuvik with First Air, one of the few airlines to still offer a hot breakfast to economy class passengers.

The team arriving in Inuvik. Photo used with permission from C. Haas.

We spent a couple days in Inuvik waiting to be picked up but there was a misunderstanding and no one sent a plane from Sachs Harbor to pick us up.  

Sunset from hotel room in Inuvik.

We ended up chartering our own plane to take is to Sachs Harbor where we spent one night before heading out onto the ice. 

Our King Air Beech Craft airplane chartered from Aklak Air that took us from Inuvik to Sachs Harbor

The team inside the King Air plane excited to finally be heading to Sachs Harbor (though not thrilled about the cost of hiring a plane for this purpose).

I have posted previously about our time in Inuvik and our trip to Sachs Harbor, here, here, here, and here.

Okay, that is enough for one post.  Since I am only 35 minutes into my trip home, I will write a few more blogs though I may schedule them to post automatically and regular intervals.

#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.

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!

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).

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.

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.

AVHRR image courtesy of the Canadian Ice Service showing the beaufort sea study area. Image is from 0518MDT on March 14, 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.

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.

Fram Strait

Tomorrow I leave Norway, sort of, and not for home but for Svalbard.

I am flying to Longyearbyen, Svalbard before heading out on the research vessel (R/V) Lance. I will be joining the Norwegian Polar Institute Fram Strait Cruise. The cruise heads across Fram Strait to the east coast of Greenland.

Arctic MOSIAC from NASA MODIS sensor on Terra Satellite. We will be going between Greenland and Svalbard (which is mostly hidden by clouds in this picture). Click the caption to be taken to the full size image. I acknowledge the use of Rapid Response imagery from the Land Atmosphere Near-real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) system operated by the NASA/GSFC/Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) with funding provided by NASA/HQ.

I will spend a couple days in Longyearbyen beforehand to prepare equipment, help with packing/sorting, getting assigned my polar gear and some shooting training and a few other tasks.

The main objective of the cruise is the retrieval of oceanographic instrument packages called moorings (because they are anchored to the sea floor). The moorings will be serviced and redeployed to collect another year of data.  But while this happens there will be sea ice stations and airborne EM ice thickness surveys. I hope we will manage an EM flight along a CryoSat-2 track, would be of very high interest for me. The oceanographers will also perform CTD and tracer measurements.

CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth/pressure) is a standard suite of measurements that can give you a lot of information on the structure of the ocean and where parts of the water originate.  Different regions form waters with different characteristics that show up as characteristic layers in the ocean.  Conductivity is just a measure of how well the water conducts electricity and then gives you an idea of how salty the water is. I think you all know what temperature and pressure are.

The cruise is going much closer to the coast of Greenland than when I joined in 2010, so I am looking forward to that. It will be nice to get on the ice again.  I always like seeing the ice in summer/freeze up, it looks completely different than in spring. Fram Strait is also a different region and has a different ice regime.  In the Lincoln Sea, the ice often moves against the coast and you have very thick ice.  In Fram Strait, ice is drifting out of the Arctic Ocean and move south.

Here is an ice chart produced by the Norwegian Meteorological Service. The different colors show the different ice concentrations.

Sea Ice Concentration for today, August 7, 2013. Courtesy of Met.NO at http://wms.met.no/icechart/

I will try to blog, at least with text and hopefully an odd picture or two (though they will have to be very small and very low resolution).

One of my buoys beached! BUT WENT BACK OUT TO SEA!!!

Hey Everyone,

Today's post is a bit different, I will talk a tiny little bit about my research, but don't worry it should be fun or at least interesting.
I want to tell you about a buoy, a small buoy, that has had an interesting life and has recently beached on the Shetland Islands (Scotland).

Buoy 300234010730040 is a small iSphere drifting type buoy. These buoys, developed by MetOcean are designed to be deployed in open water and track the drift of the surface water. They are very much like the MetOcean SVP, or the MetOcean Polar iSVP but are more simple (maybe I should get paid some advertising money by MetOcean??). The buoys have a normal maximum life time of about 12-18 months, at least from our experience.  They are rated for longer, but often stop working, either crushed by the ice or ??

They are used in the sea ice community as an inexpensive drift buoy for tracking the motion of sea ice, we just place them on the ice instead of in water. The buoys provide measurements of their position via GPS. You can also request other sensors such as air temperature, sea surface temperature, barometric pressure, humidity and other sensors (see the website).

Now Buoy 300234010730040 is a simple model, just has temperature and position. We deployed this buoy in the Lincoln Sea of the Arctic Ocean during the ESA CryoVEx campaign in April 2011.  The Lincoln Sea is between Greenland and northern Ellesmere Island. It is the main study region of our group because the ice drifts towards the coasts in this region producing very thick sea ice that usually survives the summer to become multi-year ice.  The Lincoln Sea sits north of Nares Strait, where sea ice can flow out of the Arctic Ocean to the warmer waters to the south and then melt.

During the CryoVEx campaign we deployed four of these buoys. We had two main research sites called North and South at 85.5 and 83.5, respectively. At each site we put out two buoys to track the location of the sites between two visits we made and for aircraft surveys over the sites.  Above each buoy we placed a corner reflector.  A corner reflector is just a bit of metal that is shaped into a corner and then point so that the bottom of the corner is down. When radar signals from the aircraft hit the corner reflector they bounce right back to the sensor. Normally, when radar hits a surface, only some of the energy goes back to the sensor, the rest is mainly reflected away.

Buoy and Corner Reflector. Photo Courtesy of Rosemary Willatt, (C) 2011.

Okay, so we used the buoys successfully during the campaign, we took down our corner reflectors on the second visit the in-situ  team made and decided to leave the buoys to track the ice.


Okay, now the interesting bit, of the four buoys that we deployed, two are still working. One of the buoys from the north site died in October of 2011, so it definitely did not make the 18 month expected lifetime.
The second buoy from the north site is still operational, and amazingly is still in the Lincoln Sea.  It has spent more than two years there now, it is a pretty interesting data record.  In 2012, we looked for it from the air, but I think it was buried. I guess this because 1) they are bright orange and can be pretty easy to spot, and 2) the temperature profile from the buoy was very smooth in 2012, which may indicate it was buried in snow as the snow would limit fluctuations in temperature.

From the South site both buoys drifted out of the Lincoln Sea  through Nares Strait in October 2011. And then their lives get interesting.  Below is a map showing the positions from Buoy 30023401070040 (i.e. the buoy that is still going).

Both buoys drifted south into Nares Strait. Both had drifted quite aways south but then a strong wind from the south sent the ice drifting back up the strait but this time on the opposite side of the channel. Pretty cool.

After this they flowed south past Baffin Island and into Hudson Strait. The buoy that is still running drifted back out, while the other one beached on shore.

Here you can see that the buoy spent a bit of time circulating in and out of Hudson Strait/ Ungava Bay.

Since then the buoy has travelled all the way to Ireland, then most of the way back to Greenland and then now up to the Shetland Islands.

Buoy 300234010730040 travelled somewhere around 22,000km (I have not gone through all the gps points to remove outliers, but did remove a couple).  22,000km is longer than all of the coastline of the U.S.A. (according to the CIA World Fact Book (here), or a little less than 4 times the distance from Edmonton to Tromso, or (last one I promise) about 5 times the distance between Edmonton, AB and the North Pole.
Compare this to the buoy (300234010735050) that has stayed in the Lincoln Sea.  In two years, it has travelled only about 1700km! That's less than 10% of Buoy 300234010730040.

Here is the temperature record from the buoy. Some interesting things, the melt in 2011, then maybe sitting in water, maybe a melt pond, or open water, then back down to freezing temperatures and then finally warming.  Can see some points big changes in temperature in May and June 2012, but it was near Hudson Strait then.

If you look at all the buoys together, there are many cool features sitting in this data, for instance, Buoy S1 and S2 were together, separated by about 460m until September 5, 2011. Then the ice floes that each one was on started drifting apart, then smashing back together, then apart, and eventually one or both of the floes was/were turning and coming closer to the/each other.


OKAY!  BACK TO THE BUOY'S DRIFTING LIFE:

Last week, the buoy was beached on a small beach near Gunnister, Shetland Islands, Scotland.
It spent a couple days on the beach, and then with a high tide ?? and maybe some wind and good fortune, it drifted back out to sea.  Who knows maybe some one pushed it back out. In any event, it can continue on its' merry way.  Below are some Google Maps Street View pictures of as close to the spot the buoy beached as you can get.

In the picture below you can see the beach where the buoy beached. Nice place for a rest.

I had hoped it would go up the coast of Norway, but hey let's just see where time takes it.  It is currently heading back out into the Atlantic towards Greenland ( though still not far from the Shetlands). I'll try to remember to post about this buoy when it finally dies, as it inevitably will. For now, the battery voltage is high (very high actually), so who knows where it will end up and when it will die, hopefully not for awhile.