Greenland Aquifer Expedition: Tracking Temperatures in the Aquifer

By Clément Miège

Hi there! Today I have another story to share with you! It’s about the tracking of the temperature evolution of the firn aquifer temperature by using two thermistor strings that we set up in the two holes made by Jay (see Jay’s post on drilling for details).

By tracking temperatures over a year, we will observe the firn heating mechanisms in the summer with the melt from the surface of the ice followed by water infiltration in the firn. In the winter, we will get a sense of the refreezing processes from the cold surface air, which cools the upper part of the firn and we will observe the persistence of the firn aquifer over the years.

To achieve this, we installed two thermistor strings with two different lengths: 30 and 60 meters. The shorter string has 60 sensors on it, sampling every half-meter. The longer one will only get a temperature reading every 2.5 meters but it will record deeper temperatures. Both strings are set to collect data every hour for an entire year, assuming the batteries last that long (hopefully!) The temperature chain is called a thermistor string because each sensor is a thermistor, a type of resistor sensitive to temperature changes. After measuring a resistance change, calibration curves allow us to retrieve temperature changes.

The thermistor-string story started in Utah, when we received the equipment late from the manufacturers, giving us only 5 days to work on it before leaving for Greenland. We realized that integrating the whole system together with the satellite uplink would take most of our last prep days.

It was definitely too late to ship the thermistor equipment with the rest of our gear, so Rick and I traveled with it in our checked luggage! I ended up with a 50 lbs of spool coiled with about 60 meters of cable in a suitcase. Rick had a black pelican case as his checked bag, with the second thermistor string, datalogger, ARGOS antenna and other pieces of hardware. We learned how to travel light, bringing minimal clothing, and wearing the cold-weather clothes in the airplane so we were able to meet the airline luggage restrictions – it definitely made for fun travels!

At the Kulusuk Hotel, in southeast Greenland, we finished integrating the thermistor string, mostly by picking the right data-transmission rate to the satellite in regards to our battery consumption estimates. Having the ARGOS satellite uplink will let us receive temperature data via email every day from the field site and tell us almost in real time what the temperatures are in the two holes.

In the field, shortly after drilling each hole (to avoid water refreezing due to cold air down the hole), we lowered the thermistor string down and backfilled the hole with surface snow. Then, we used the Felics drill to make a 4-meter hole to anchor the long pole that holds the ARGOS antenna.

Lowering the second thermistor string down the 30-meter hole.

On that day, the 20-knot katabic winds were blowing a lot of snow, so we used a mountain tent as a snow-proof environment to work with the electronics before dropping off the case in its hole. To give you a taste of the wind speed: Rick was charging one of the thermistor-string battery and the wind was so strong that it blew the small 1kw generator off…. crazy! When the winds finally died down, we buried the case in a 2-meter deep snow pit, because we wanted to prevent the case from being exposed to surface densification and melt during the summer.

Digging a deep snow pit for the thermistor case.

Last check on the electronics, to make sure all the wires are tightened before closing the box — next opening in one year!

That is it! The box is down the hole.

After backfilling the snow pit, the only evidence at the surface of the temperature strings is the top of the pole with the ARGOS antenna and a red flag!

We are hoping to recover the case with the datalogger next year, but we are not sure if the ARGOS antenna will still be sticking out, because this sector of the ice sheet is getting a lot of snow accumulation in the winter. We will use a metal detector to find the metal pipes left near the case.

Because this is likely my last post for this expedition’s blog, I would like to thank the all team for this great adventure and everybody that was supporting this exciting research. Until next time!

Tags: Arctic, drilling, glaciology, Greenland, ice core, NASA, sea level rise
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Greenland Aquifer Expedition: Back in the Office

By Lora Koenig

Watching dogsleds go by in Kulusuk.

Well, I am back in Greenbelt, Maryland, typing with warm fingers in a climate-controlled office with high-speed Internet and drinking fountain just down the hall. After fieldwork, I am always thankful for things I generally take for granted, like being able to charge my laptop by simply plugging it into an outlet. There is no longer a need fill a generator with gas and then start it just to charge batteries. Aw, the comforts of home!  (We all had safe trips back to the US and have returned to our home institutions last week.)

For the last blog post of the season, I decided to pull together a few of my favorite photos from our trip to give you a sampling of the great fun we get to have while doing this kind of research. The most fun I had during this trip was on our final day in Kulusuk: we were invited to the Kulusuk School to with the children in the upper grades (who speak some English) about our work. I regret that we do not have any pictures of this event, but we were giving our presentation and letting the students run our small ice core drill, thus neglecting picture taking. The school in Kulusuk has about 70 students and includes all grades. The building has lots of windows and is very bright inside — it is one of the prettiest schools I have been in, with lots of open space, a small kitchen, library and a gym. I especially liked the entrance to the school, which was equipped with plenty of coat hangers and boot racks for the students to shed their cold weather gear as soon as they come inside. Though we were there talking about science, the school in Kulusuk is known for their art. We were hosted by the art teacher, Anne-Mette Holm, and after our talk got to attend one of her classes where the students were making wooden sculptures. We also got to see other student projects including weaving, toy making and furniture making. Quite a portfolio!  The students’ art has traveled the world, being shown at different expeditions across the Arctic. (Check out pages 11 -15 of this document for some examples of the children’s art work under Anne-Mette’s tutelage.)

While our visit to the school was definitely the top highlight of the trip here are a few others highlights in pictures.

The northern lights (Aurora) never got old and were out almost every night.

The view out the window from our dinner table in Kulusuk at sunset.

Sunset in Kulusuk.

Seeing mountains from our campsite on the ice sheet, a nice change from the typical flat white ice sheet.

Watching Clem dig a really big hole for the thermistor control boxes.

Seeing the transition between the flat ice sheet and the fast flowing outlet glaciers.

Catching a ride in the airport luggage carts.

So those were some of the highlights of the field work and now it is time to work with the data we gathered. In the week we have been back, we have already started to analyze our data. We see that, as expected, the densities in the firn (aged snow) above the aquifer are higher than expected and that there is more water than originally predicted. We still need more data to fully understand what this water trapped in the Greenland ice sheet means for sea level rise. We need many years of data to understand how and if the aquifer is changing with time… but remember this was an exploratory mission. When we set out, we were not even sure if our drills would even work. There was a chance they would have just frozen in place and we would not have gotten any data. This was a high-risk mission due to the weather in the region and all the new things we were trying. We came back with all the data we set out to get and, quite frankly, I am surprised. We had a large team that helped with this project including the field team, logistics support, airport support, the NASA and NSF support teams and all of you for your well wishes and interest in our research. Thanks to all! Until next time, stay cool

Tags: Arctic, drilling, glaciology, Greenland, ice core, NASA, sea level rise
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Greenland Aquifer Expedition: Shallow drilling

By Ludovic Brucker

We were on Greenland’s ice sheet for only a week, but despite the short deployment, we had to accomplish two main science objectives. The first was drilling two deep cores into the firn (aged snow) and ice (30- and 65-m deep, respectively), to insert temperature probes that will record temperature evolution at various depths. Secondly, we wanted to drill shallower cores (7 to 15 m) to record the snow’s density vertical profile using a neutron density probe – and this is what this post is going to be about: the shallow drilling that we did and the measurements we took in these holes to monitor the snow and ice layering and their properties.

To drill the shallower cores, we used the same solar-powered drill as in 2010 and 2011 in Antarctica during the Satellite Era Accumulation Traverse. It is composed of four parts, which I’ll describe from top to bottom. The first segment contains the motor to rotate the other parts. The second and third parts are barrels — one for the snow and ice chips, and the other to store the one-meter long drilled core. The fourth part, the cutters, is screwed into the latter barrel. Cutters are critical since they are the sharp elements that cut the snow, firn, and ice. Since snow and ice having different properties, the cutters for snow and ice are different. For instance, if we use the ice cutters at a smaller angle, we will drill at less depth during each barrel rotation. Where we drilled, part of the winter snow melts during the summer and when it refreezes, it forms a thick ice layer every year. The snow that did not melt will slowly evolve to firn, and, eventually, ice. Because of the different, we thus had to switch cutters during our drilling: otherwise, we would have not been able to drill through the past summer ice layers.

Ice cutters screwed at the bottom of the barrel, which rotates into the ice to extract an ice core.

Lora showing how to extract the first meter of the snow core.

Jay drilled cores through the water contained within the firn (the aquifer). We used our smaller drill, since we did not want to enter in contact with the aquifer. Therefore, each of our cores was shallower than the water layer’s top and each was drilled in about an hour.

Once we had drilled the hole, we observed the layering of the snow and ice cover using a video camera. Thanks to the camera’s flashlight, we were able to identify the thick 2012 summer ice layer (about 3 m below the surface) that formed after a massive surface melt event, as well as the previous summer ice layers. Our team used this sensor to monitor a water-filled hole for the first time. We were all really excited to see the inner upper part of the ice sheet!

Lora holding the video camera that she will send down in the hole to monitor the snow and ice layering.

Rick and Clem enjoying the first view of the firn’s internal stratigraphy

We also used this useful device to check the position of the temperature probes and to ensure that the entire line of temperature sensors was straight inside the hole. The first time we inserted the camera into the water in the hole, we were amazed to discover the amount of air bubbles released by the firn, which propagated toward the water/air interface. The aquifer is composed of ice, water, and air. These elements are present several meters below the surface, which means they’re under pressure. Once we drilled the cores, the pressurized air bubbles in the vicinity of the hole migrated toward the hole and then moved upwards to the water/air interface.

Our last scientific activity was to monitor density with 1-cm vertical resolution using the neutron density probe. We moved the probe along the borehole at a speed of about 5 cm per minute. This sounds like a time-consuming measurement, but measuring density manually is significantly more labor intensive since one must saw the core into segments and then measure each segment’s length, diameter, and weight.

To be more comfortable during the drilling and while recording our scientific data, we always paid particular attention to staying behind our wind break.

Lora and Ludo drilling behind a windbreak during a windy day, with a lot of blowing snow near the ground.

A windbreak is composed of a simple plastic tarp supported by bamboo sticks and held by bungee cords. While we were in Kulusuk preparing our departure to the field, Jay told us several times that bamboo sticks would be critical pieces of equipment while we worked on the ice and that they had to be in mint condition to offer the best resistance to wind. So we spent more than a day in Kulusuk fixing and reinforcing bamboo sticks, using wires and tape. And I am glad we did it!

Working in the warehouse to improve the bamboo sticks that we’ll use in the field as wind breaks.

Once we had collected all the data needed from a hole, we packed our equipment, removed the precious windbreak and the bamboo sticks, and either headed toward a new site few hundreds meters away, or went to the cook tent for diner. That’s how our busy days in the field went!

Tags: Arctic, drilling, glaciology, Greenland, ice core, NASA, polar, sea level rise
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Greenland Aquifer Expedition: Drilling Into Water

By Jay Kyne (Greenland Aquifer Team’s driller)

Jay, drilling in SE Greenland.

At first we all talked on the phone about it. And then I saw the picture: another driller had drilled into water and, as the drill hung on the surface, there was water dripping from it. Of course that drill quickly froze. So the question was: how do we drill thru the cold snow on top and then into the wet, warm snow/ice below it?

I’ve been drilling into the Greenland ice sheet for nearly 25 years, but I never imagined that there was water down there that didn’t freeze over the cold, dark winter. There have been some deep holes drilled way out in the middle of the ice sheet, all the way to the bottom (about 2 miles deep) and there at the base of the ice sheet the temperatures are near freezing, but not quite there: heat is coming up from the earth, warming the underbelly of the ice sheet. But the newfound aquifer was water that came from the top, melted snow that percolated down the ice. That was surprising to find out, but now the question was how we were going to drill through it.

They told me that their radar showed that the water was between 12 and 25m below the surface. I’ve drilled a lot of holes to that depth with a small lightweight drill that I turned from the surface with a big electric drill. It’s basically a tube with helical plastic strips attached to the outside and cutters at the bottom end. You have to come up about every meter and take the core out and dump the snow cuttings, or “chips”, as we call them. As you get deeper, you add more stem to reach the bottom.

I’ve also drilled ‘warm’ ice with a drill that melts its way down, but that was in the continental United States: in Wyoming, Washington and California. That ice was right at freezing temperature.

So we decided to use both of these drills and make the switch when we felt the time was right. And it worked! It was fun working with the Greenland Aquifer Team, too.

Clem collects some of the water dripping from the drill.

Measuring the temperature of an ice core.

Tags: Arctic, drilling, glaciology, Greenland, ice core, ice sheet, sea level rise
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Greenland Aquifer Expedition: The (Arctic) Fury Unleashed

By Lora Koenig

Mountain tents with walls. The gray tarp is the wind break for the bathroom.

April 9, 2013 – I suppose you could say I got up at 3:38 am this morning, but I don’t think I ever really went to sleep. I did get into my sleeping bag around 10 pm last night, but I didn’t sleep. Yesterday we had 20-knot katabatic winds, cold air flowing off the ice sheet near the surface – strong winds, blowing the recent snow into our faces, which feels like being sandblasted but with sharp ice particles. With wind breaks, created with bamboo stakes and tarps, Ludo and I were able to complete our third and final shallow ice core while Rick and Clem prepared all of the final electronics for the thermistor strings. As a reminder, the shallow ice cores are to look at the density structure of the firn above the aquifer, while the thermistor strings will measure the temperatures 60-m deep into the aquifer for the next year so we can learn more about how it was formed.

But I digress to science, let me get back to why I so rudely had to leave my tent in the wee hours of the morning. I last officially measured the winds at 25 knots at around 10 pm with our hand-held weather station. At 25 knots, the blowing snow is annoying but you can still see through it and walk normally. The noise of the tent blowing was loud but tolerable. By midnight, though, the tent was blowing too loudly to sleep, even with earplugs. I guess we were at 30 knots.  At 2:40 am, in Ludo, Clem and Rick’s yellow Arctic oven tent, Clem woke Ludo up to make sure the tent corner was still intact (it was), while Rick, who was being showered by the wind blowing the condensation crystals off of the roof and onto his face was also wondering if he was still inside the tent or if it has blown away in his sleep leaving him in a snow drift. He looked up and was relieved to see the tent roof.

I was by myself in a smaller mountain tent. With these tents, we build snow walls behind them to stop the snowdrifts from getting in. My tent wall, built from snow blocks, was about 4-foot tall. At around 3 am, I became aware that the back of my tent was filling in with snow and pushing in on me — I knew I would soon have to get out of the tent and shovel. This is nothing new to me, but I still can’t imagine anyone who enjoys getting out of a warm sleeping bag into a barrage of ice pellets to shovel snow in the dark. Well, it had to be done. I rummaged around to find my head lamp, pulled on my boots and parka, took a sip off my tube of sweeten condensed milk (a great treat and source of heat if you are cold when you are sleeping) and crawled out of my tent. And I mean crawled: the drift had come around the front of the tent and I had to squeeze my way between the vestibule and the snow drift.

I would like to say that I simply stood up and started shoveling but with the winds, probably just shy of 40 knots by now, made it difficult to walk. I kept falling on the drifts while bracing against the wind trying to get to the back of my tent to assess the damage. Sure enough, the drift had come up over the wall — I had not built it tall enough for this storm. I dug out the drift at the back of the tent and made my wall higher. This helped and it would get me through the night until daylight, when I would build a new second wall behind the first. I got back in my sleeping bag around 4:15 am and waited until 6:30 am to get up, take a weather observation and go to go to the cook tent. It was, after all, our scheduled take-out day, but there was no way a helicopter could come in this weather. I called in the weather report for the pilots at 6:50 a.m.: 25 knots sustained winds gusting to 30 knots, -15.2 C (4.6 F), surface definition poor, blowing snow. It doesn’t get much worse than that, so we all knew we would be here another day. I went back out with Ludo to start building a new wall for my tent. With all the blowing snow and wind, it was wet, tiring work and the long full days of fieldwork were catching up with me. I knew I needed a rest, but once the wall was built there would be nothing to do but sit in our tents and rest for a few days.

Ludo and Lora building a new wall for the mountain tent just before the winds stopped.

Blowing snow

While Ludo and I built the wall, Rick and Clem went to work on charging the batteries for the thermistor string. They went out to the drill site, where the thermistors are placed down the boreholes, to find the wall they had built yesterday for a windbreak had blown over. They started the generator to charge the batteries and it blew over in the wind.  Defeated, they correctly decided to come back to the cook tent to try again later once the storm was over.

Around 9:15 am, I realized that wow,it was only 9:15 am and already it had been a busy day. We all ended up back in the cook tent beaten by the wind and called for our check in. To my surprise, the pilots did not cancel our flights — they asked for another weather report at 11:00 am saying that the weather forecast called for diminishing winds at 10 am. We all laughed – together as a team, we have over 40 years experience working in cold icey places and we were certain we would be here for not only one more day, but probably a few more. So we made some hot drinks to warm us up, dried off and sat down in the cook tent. Suddenly, I realized it seemed rather quiet. Clem opened the tent door and, in a matter of about 15 minutes, our 25-knot plus winds dropped to 8 knots. We were all dumbfounded. I called in the new weather conditions 8 knots sustained winds, -14 C (6.8 F), surface definition clear, no blowing snow… it doesn’t get much better than that!

Then the mad dash started. We completed the final installation of the thermistor strings, packed the food boxes, dug out the cargo and tents from the drifts and pack our personal gear. The helo was scheduled to arrive at 12:30 pm and it did, taking half the gear, Jay and Rick away. Ludo, Clem and I took down the last two tents (for safety, we always leave one up until we know our transport is on its way) and waited for our flight. At 3:45 pm, we left our camp with everything but the thermistor strings.

Helicopter landing to pick up cargo.

Helo taking off with Rick and Jay. The Arctic oven still standing for safety until we knew the helo would return for second trip.

Rick loaded in helicopter to head back to Kulusuk after a successful field campaign.

Ludo, Clem and I landed softly at around 5:00 pm, still a bit shocked that we had gone from a huge storm on the ice sheet to a calm and sunny Kulusuk in the same day. We unloaded the helicopter, walked to the warehouse, unloaded the gear and opened up every box so all the blowing snow could dry out. After the work was completed, we had an hour to shower and put on clean clothes for a nice dinner of salmon at Hotel Kulusuk. We were all feeling good but tired: we realized we had all worked every waking hour we were in the field to get back on schedule from the delayed put-in  Field work is hard, but always rewarding!

In the middle of dinner, the hotel manager came out and said there were three polar bears across the fjord, a mother and two cubs. We grabbed binoculars and were able to see fuzzy, creamy dots on a big rock, on an island in the middle of the frozen fjord. Very cool! Many of the people from the town were taking snowmobiles out to look at the furry visitors.

I have been writing most of the blog posts so far, but now the rest of the team members are going to submit some posts on the specific science they are doing to give you different perspective on the trip. Enjoy them as they are posted over the next few days, with lots of images of the work form the field!

Tags: Arctic, drilling, glaciology, Greenland, ice core, sea level rise
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