Notes from the Field

Gathered in Greenland, Prepared for Field Work

March 30th, 2015 by Olivia Miller, University of Utah
The team getting on our C-130 flight to Greenland.  From left to right: Clem, Josh, Lynn, Kip and Olivia.

The team getting on our C-130 flight to Greenland. From left to right: Clem, Josh, Lynn, Kip and Olivia.

We made it to Greenland! On Thursday, Kip and I flew from Salt Lake City, Lora flew from Denver, Clement flew from Seattle, Lynn flew from DC, Josh flew from Madison, and we all met up in Clifton Park, NY. Only one bag was lost and later found, and one flight canceled. Although we have all been working together to prepare for this work, I hadn’t met most of the team face to face. I finally got to put faces to the voices I had come to know from weekly teleconferences over the past six months. I was also lucky enough to have some family who lives outside Albany come visit and bring me a care package of goodies.

Lora reading on a cold flight over to Greenland.

Lora reading on a cold flight over to Greenland.

Olivia and Lynn excited to go to Greenland for the first time.

Olivia and Lynn excited to go to Greenland for the first time.

One of our first views as we flew into Greenland.

One of our first views as we flew into Greenland.

Friday was a long day. The Air National Guard picked us up from our hotel at 5 a.m. for our flight aboard a C-130 to Kangerlussuaq. We piled into the belly of the plane, sitting on webbing seats and peering out tiny windows as the North American continent slowly transitioned from forested land to tundra to open ocean to sea ice and finally to the glacially carved fjords and ice covered mountains of Greenland. As we approached our destination, the flight crew even let us go up into the cockpit. They had an impressive view!

A view of the town of Kangerlussuaq.

A view of the town of Kangerlussuaq.

The Kangerlussuaq International Science Support building.  Our home for the next few days.

The Kangerlussuaq International Science Support building. Our home for the next few days.

Upon arrival, we were taken to the Kangerlussuaq International Science Support (KISS) base, where we stayed last night. After settling into our rooms we went through training on snowmobiles and how all of our communication devices work. Much of our field work will involve snowmobiles. We have personal locator beacons in case of an emergency and all kinds of radios to talk with helicopter pilots and each other, as well as several satellite phones. We also got to see all 80 boxes of science equipment that had been loaded onto pallets for us. We have so much equipment because we are conducting a variety of different kinds of studies this year (hydrology, ice coring, seismic, radar, and magnetic resonance) and each study requires a lot of different equipment.

Today, Saturday, we prepared for our last airplane flight to Kulusuk. The flight was scheduled for 10:15 so we happily got to sleep in a bit and catch up on some much needed sleep. For breakfast we headed to the cafeteria in the airport and made a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some perishable food to bring into the field with us. Our flight was delayed a bit so we went to lunch at the Pizza-Thai–Grill restaurant in town.

Unfortunately we just found out that our flight been pushed back to tomorrow, so for now, we get to catch up on some work and spend a little time exploring the town.

We’re off again!

March 24th, 2015 by Lora Koenig

Hello and welcome to the third installment of the Greenland Aquifer Team blog. We are back at it again this year to study the water hidden below the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet. For background, if you have a lot of reading time, you can check out all of the blog posts (including those from previous years) here, or for a quick synopses check out the press release on our 2014 science papers resulting from our work here.

This season should be an exciting one. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA are funding us to do a lot more work this season to better understand how much water is being stored in the Greenland Ice Sheet and what that ultimately means for all of you reading this. Note: If you are reading this while on spring break from a nice chair on the beach you should pay attention because over the next few decades the melt from Greenland will raise global sea levels. The only remaining questions are how much and how fast? Our team will play a small roll in answering these science questions by drilling, pounding, radiating, and penetrating into the aquifer in southeast Greenland.

Over the next five to six weeks, this blog will cover not only our science but also our adventures conducting science in one of the harshest regions on Earth. This year will be BIGGER. More measurements, more people, more time in the field, and more blogs. (More blogs assuming the satellite phone data link works. After all, this is field work so we never know.) Everyone on our team will contribute to the blogs so I will introduce them here quickly and you will hear more about each of them and their work in the weeks to come. Enjoy the blogs! We take off for Greenland on March 27, so look for our next installment about our trip from New York to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, soon.

Greenland Aquifer Team 2015

GreenlandAquifer_2015_0323_1

Top row left to right: Josh Goetz, Lead driller from the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Clément Miège, Post-doctoral student, radar lead, and Greenland Aquifer team veteran from the University of Utah; Kip Solomon, Professor and ground water hydrology lead from the University of Utah; and Lynn Montgomery, Undergraduate student and seismic team member from the University of Maryland.

Bottom row left to right: Anatoly Legtchenko, Director of research and electromagnetic resonance lead from the Laboratoire d’étude des Transferts en Hydrologie et Environnement (Laboratory of Hydrology and Environment); Lora Koenig, Research scientist, ice core lead and Greenland Aquifer team veteran from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado; Olivia Miller, Graduate student and ground water hydrology team from the University of Utah; and Nick Schmerr, Assistant professor and seismic lead from the University of Maryland.