Notes from the Field

One Step Closer …

May 2nd, 2011 by Tom Neumann

May 1, 2011

Greetings from Greenland!

Matt and I have had a relatively uneventful day and are now situated in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. After our unscheduled stop in Goose Bay last night, we boarded a flight for Greenland late this morning. After the requisite passport check, we were free to get situated and start the next round of preparations for our field work.

Matt and I have relatively little cargo with us (about ~100 pounds each), because we shipped the majority of our cargo about a month ago. All together, we have about 3000 pounds of cargo that we sent ahead of us. Most of this weight is due to the batteries that power our GPS stations, and the pipes that hold the solar panels and GPS antennas above the snow surface. We’ll post pictures of the stations, as we put them up. We’ve got to get to our field camp first!

We will be based at a camp called Swiss Camp, so named as it was originally built by … the Swiss! The camp is now run by Dr. Koni Steffen of the University of Colorado Boulder. We will have a total of four flights in the next two days, moving our cargo, as well as Koni’s. Matt and I will stay in Kanger, loading the planes, while Koni’s group will go in on the first flight, and unload the planes as they come in. We’ve got our fingers crossed for good weather the next two days.

Your trusty correspondents in this blog are Matt Hoffman and myself, Tom Neumann. Matt is a post-doc working with me at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and came to NASA from Portland State University. Matt was here in Greenland last summer setting up the first four stations in our GPS network, and has been doing all of the hard work – designing the stations, ordering all the parts, figuring out where the stations should go. I am a research scientist here at NASA and did a similar GPS survey in 2006-07 with Dr. Ginny Catania, that was the precursor  to our work this year. I’ve led or participated in 13 expeditions to cold places to date, and am looking forward to getting back on the ice sheet again.

ROGUE: Real-time Observations of Greenland’s Under-ice Environment
The goal of the ROGUE project is to examine the nature and cause of short-term ice velocity changes near Swiss Camp, Greenland, by observing interactions between the ice sheet, the atmosphere and the bed.

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One Response to “One Step Closer …”

  1. Linês Felinto de Oliveira says:

    Muito sucesso nesta missão importante. Eu sou do nordeste do Brasil mais tenho profunda admiração por essa missão. Parabens Dr.koni Steffen, Ton Neumann, Dra. Gina Catania; Estou orando para que descubram o desconhecido.Abraço a todos