The Little Buoy that could.

Well my holidays are over.  Nicole left this morning bright and early and I have been working ever since I got back home at about 9:30. Luckily, my code is running and right now my dinner is in the oven cooking, so I thought I would take the time to write a quick blog post about that favourite little buoy of mine, Buoy 300234010730040.

I've written a couple blog posts about this buoy now, mostly because it has been running for so long and because it was starting to head towards me while I am here in Norway.  In the last blog post I wrote on the buoy (http://justinbeckers.blogspot.no/2013/08/buoy-300234010730040-still-going-north.html) it was heading up the coast of Norway, and I was hoping it would make it all the way up past Tromsø.

Well the buoy did keep heading north but as you can see it has moved back out into the Atlantic Ocean and away from the coast.

Well...not exactly what I had hoped for, but then I did not really expect what I hoped for to actually happen.  But now the buoy will be in an area it has not travelled before. Hopefully it provides some additional insight or useful information to someone sometime.  Otherwise it has just been cool to see this little buoy's adventures.  It's too bad it has no way to measure wave heights or something, that would be great....hmm..something to think about when tinkering with my Arduino I guess.

Okay well my dinner is done, want to eat and then write some more blog posts, stay tuned.

#FieldPhotoFriday Electromagnetic Induction Measurements of Ice Thickness

Electromagnetic Induction Measurements of Ice Thickness, McMurdo Sound Antarctica, November 201.  I think I stood on the back of that sled for a few hundred kilometers. Was nice except for the fact that most of the snow was rock hard and the ride was a bit jarring at times.

CoreSat Kick-Off

Well I was at another project kick-off meeting yesterday (and this coming morning too).  CoreSat is a project funded here in Norway but with partners from Germany and Canada. Within Norway there are several institutions participating including NPI, the University of Tromsø and the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center.

CoreSat is aiming to improve measurements of sea-ice drift and ice thickness in Fram Strait to ultimately improve knowledge of the volume export of sea ice through Fram Strait.  This strait is one of the most important pathways for ice from the Arctic Ocean to be transported south. There has been some work on this over the past decade or two, but there is still limited information and some conflicting information out there, especially regarding changes in the drift speed of sea ice, some studies have shown an increase in time, others a decrease in time, and others show no significant trend.

Another factor limiting our understanding is that few of the studies have placed uncertainties on their estimates, making it hard to compare and assess.  In this project new products will be derived, existing ones compared and uncertainties assigned in order to determine the best product.  That final best product will then be analyzed.

The meeting was interesting, had some presentations on the current state of people's work related to the project.  Then a short discussion on some initial tasks to be completed (which will be continued today). We ended last night with a dinner at the top of the cable car.

T - 24 hours until I see my wife!

Well it's been a bit over 3 months, but now it is less than 24 hours until I see Nicole. As you might imagine I am a little excited.  Will be nice to see her and visit with her. We have some exciting plans, a trip to Oslo and Bergen (by train, bus and fjord cruise), a World Cup qualifying match, and an important match for the local Tromsø IL team.  Otherwise we also have a week with no fixed plans yet, maybe we will do some hiking or exploring, or who knows, I will let you know.

Well off to the second day of the CoreSat kick-off meeting.  Have to leave work a little early today, need to do some laundry, pick up a few items for Nicole's arrival, and I want to make sure the apartment is clean.

A hike and some fishing: is there a better way to spend a sunny afternoon?

This past Sunday I went hiking and fishing with Gunnar and Gabriele, and Jennifer King, a new post-doc starting at NPI.  Jennifer and I actually met back in 2010 on the NPI cruise I joined.

Gunnar and Gabriele are participating in the Tipp A Topp program, a local program to get people out to hike and be active.  If you complete X out of 20 hikes (X=7,10,15,20) you get a prize.  At the top of each hike is a guest book and a number that you fill out in a book you purchase.

They picked a relatively easy hike this time, but it was also near to some fishing spots so we decided to do both.  The hike was very nice, not too difficult (only 250m elevation gain or so) and quite short (2km).  We added a bit to it on the way back by going around the lake at the top.

After all the hiking, we went for some fishing nearby.  It really did not look promising, but it was another beautiful spot and a gorgeous day so it did not matter that we did not see any fishing jumping. My feet/shoes were quite wet from the hike (was just wearing some sandal style shoes) so I stopped fishing to dry them out.  Gunnar and Gabrielle  kept fishing and all of a sudden Gabrielle had a fish, and a good sized one.  That was exciting.  We fished for a few more hours and kept one more larger fish, both were saithe.  We caught many smaller saithe, they seemed to just be hanging out offshore near some weeds, and there were some smaller minnows around so perhaps they were hunting.  It was pretty exciting.

Well here are more pictures of the hike since I did not take any pictures while fishing or watching fishing.

Fishing from Shore: Not as easy as from a boat!

I am behind on writing blog posts, luckily it's been awhile since I have backed up my data and since the scripts read from the folder I work in, I can't work in that folder without causing some problems, so I will take a short break (luckily I wrote a Mac Automator script that does synchronous backups instead of just copying the entire directory each time).

So two weekends ago, Gunnar and I decided that we wanted to do some fishing.  I was only half serious at first, but the more we talked about it, the more it sounded like fun.  So on the Saturday Gunnar and I bought fishing rods and some lures at the Co-Op, a grocery/everything store somewhat like Walmart.  The stuff was even on sale (40%off!).

So on Sunday, Gunnar, Gabby and I went to Hella, a well known local fishing spot. Here the fjord is quite narrow as there is a small island in the middle of it.  Because it narrows, there are strong currents and this apprently makes the fishing good.

When we arrived you could not see many fish but after an hour or so suddenly the water looked like it was boiling because of all the mackerel flopping around.  That said they often did not bite our lures, maybe we were using the wrong ones or the wrong size.  Gunnar and I lost a couple lures to the weeds but did pull in some fish.  However, we really did not know how big they should be before we kept them so we probably put back at least one or two that we could have kept.  In the end we only had the one fish to take home, but it was tasty.

Lucky for Gunnar and I, Gunnar's wife Gabrielle is not squeamish and was willing to clean the fish for us.  We both can do it but I at least find it tough.

#IcePhoto Wednesday ColdFactsBuoy

Deploying the ColdFacts buoy on sea ice in May 2013. Ken Borek Twin Otter landed our team on the ice. A beautiful warm, partly sunny day.

In May 2013, we deployed a ColdFacts buoy for Marc Cornelissen, a Dutch arctic explorer.  You can see his blog post here http://www.marccornelissen.com/blog/details/20/weather-station-deployed.  The buoy is incredibly light, simple, and easy to deploy, I look forward to seeing and maybe analzying some data from it.