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.

#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.

Buoy 300234010730040 Still going north!

Hello everyone,

Remember that drifting buoy I was telling you all about? You know, the one that beached on the Shetland Islands and then went back to see? If not, go to http://justinbeckers.blogspot.no/2013/07/one-of-my-buoys-beached-but-went-back.html and to http://justinbeckers.blogspot.no/2013/08/buoy-update-its-heading-north.html

OKAY, now you remember?  Well it is still heading North! It's now sitting at 63.8N, still drifting up the coast of Norway, though it seems to be turning west today (let's hope just temporarily).

I'll keep you updated as it keeps going and going.

Otherwise, things are good. Research is progressing along, having been writing lots of code and troubleshooting code.  Soon I'll try to show some of the scanner data.

Okay, take care.

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.

On my way to Holland!

Well I am sitting I the Tromsø airport waiting or my flight to Oslo and on to Amsterdam. 

I have some meetings at ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk and then I will stay over the weekend to visit family. It is nice to get o see then again so soon.

I even get to stay at a hotel on the beach. Will be nice to sit/walk in the evening.