Notes from the Field

Arrival at Jang Bogo station

November 16th, 2015 by Maria-Jose Viñas

By Christine Dow

Christine Dow and Ryan Walker, setting foot in Antarctica.

Christine Dow and Ryan Walker, setting foot in Antarctica.

We made it to Antarctica in one piece! After a delightful 3 am start, we boarded the Safair plane that was to take us to the Antarctic along with Korean, Italian and French scientists. What followed was a somewhat chilly, noisy, cramped 7-hour flight. However, the views out our tiny window as we approached and then flew over Antarctica made it all worthwhile. We landed on a sea ice runway in front of the Italian Zucchelli station, with an impressively long run in, and then stepped out into bright sunshine and a “refreshing” breeze. The Antarctic! What a spectacular place. We were surrounded by mountains and ice and sea ice as far as you can see. Ryan traveled the 7 kilometers to Jang Bogo in a “Piston Bully” tractor, but I was lucky enough to get driven over in a specially adapted Kia SUV with heated seats. What luxury! On the way over, we drove past some basking Weddell seals and seal pups enjoying the sunshine.

Jang Bogo from the outside looks like a space ship and the inside does not dispel this imagery. It was only built in the last couple of years and has all the mod cons. There’s a greenhouse, hospital area, small gym with climbing wall, espresso machine, wi-fi throughout, and even humidifiers in each room. An intercom announces meals with cheery music (including breakfast at 6:50 am, which is a slightly disconcerting way to wake up if you’re not expecting it). The best thing by far is the view from the window. I can see an impressive iceberg, some more seals and the terminus of Campbell glacier. Flags from the countries representing the people staying at the base are flying outside including Korea, Japan, New Zealand, the US and the UK.

We were only able to bring one GPS and one tiltmeter with us because of weight restrictions on the plane. The rest of our equipment will arrive next week. In the mean time, we are going to have to examine the planned field sites so we are expecting a helicopter flight soon. More on it later!

Prepping our gear in New Zealand

November 12th, 2015 by Maria-Jose Viñas

By Ryan Walker

Christine stands near to our instruments and equipment, ready to be shipped to Antarctica.

Christine stands near to our instruments and equipment, ready to be shipped to Antarctica.

We arrived safely in Christchurch, New Zealand. On Wednesday morning we went over to the International Antarctic Centre to check up on our instruments and equipment. We have five GPS receivers for measuring horizontal ice motion, and two tilt meters for measuring the angle of the ice shelf as it flexes with ocean tides. (We borrowed these instruments from Sridhar Anandakrishnan of Penn State, and will collaborate with him to analyze the data.) Each GPS or tilt meter fits in a plastic case about the size of a carry on suitcase. However, for powering the instruments, we also need solar panels and car batteries (which weigh over 30 pounds each). There are also tools (such as an ice drill — thanks to Bob Hawley of Dartmouth) and over 125 feet of metal pipes that we will use to mount the solar panels and satellite antennas for the GPS. All together, it’s close to 600 pounds of equipment — some shipped from Goddard, and some ordered in New Zealand — so it was a huge relief to see everything in good shape and in the right place.

We found that the batteries had a slightly different type of terminal than we had expected. In order to make a firm connection between the batteries and instruments, which is critical because the stations will be deployed for roughly three months, we had to find specific size bolts and nuts and other wiring components. We spent the rest of the morning visiting a hardware store (twice), an automotive store, and a computer store before successfully finding the parts we needed. Not terribly exciting, but necessary, and handling this sort of issue is a big reason why we arrived in Christchurch a few days before our flight. We did manage to have some fun in the afternoon by visiting the Canterbury Museum, which has historical, cultural, and scientific exhibits and is adjacent to a large and beautiful botanical garden.

Tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be back at the International Antarctic Centre to meet up with the Italian Antarctic program for about an hour’s worth of basic preflight safety training. (Because their stations are nearby, the Korean and Italian programs share flights.) We’ll find out tomorrow exactly what time our flight leaves, but we already know it will be quite early in the morning. It’s a roughly 6 hour flight down to the ice runway at Italy’s Stazione Mario Zucchelli, and we’ll need to wear full Antarctic clothing the whole time. (Fortunately, it’s been fairly cool in Christchurch — highs in the 50’s F — so this shouldn’t be all that uncomfortable.) We haven’t heard yet how we will travel to Jang Bogo Station — it could be by ground vehicles or by helicopter — but we expect this to provide us with our first good photo opportunities before we settle down to work.

Flying tomorrow? Opa!

March 31st, 2014 by Maria-Jose Viñas

By Clément Miège

Kulusuk, 26 March 2014 — “Opa” is a Greenlandic word for “maybe”, as we learned it this morning while talking to Danish guests at the hotel Kulusuk who have been stuck for a few days due to bad weather.

To give you a little bit of background, the southeastern part of Greenland witnesses the highest precipitation rates of the island, in conjunction with strong winds (either from the ocean or the ice sheet). Often, the weather is unpredictable, especially at this time of year. Therefore, conducting fieldwork in southeast Greenland is a gamble.

Last year, when we experience really great weather in Kulusuk the week before our field work, we did not fully realize how lucky we were to be able to go to the field as scheduled. This year, it has been a different story: we have already gone through two storm systems, and yesterday night a third storm hit us, with a lot of wind and snow. We feel like we are paying the price of last year’s fantastic weather.

That being said, this weather is good to prepare the cargo for our flights to the ice sheet. We spent a good part of Sunday getting the low-frequency radar system ready. We worked on the radar sleds, as well as on the tube that will keep the radar antenna straight when we drag the system on the snow surface.

Ludo and Clem, working on gluing the coupling made to connect the radar antenna tubes. (Credit: Rick Foster.)

Ludo and Clem, working on gluing the coupling made to connect the radar antenna tubes. (Credit: Rick Foster.)

: Ludo, fixing special bindings on the skis to attach the radar box to them (Credit: Rick Foster.)

Ludo, attaching special bindings on skis to attach the radar box to them (Credit: Rick Foster.)

On Monday, we went to the village of Kulusuk to buy some supplies (we are currently staying in a hotel that is about a 30-minute walk from the village). On our way to the village, we saw four teams of dog sleds ready to leave for Apusiaajik glacier. The dog sleds are carrying skiers and a week-worth of their base camp materials, so the skiers can enjoy the fresh snow!

A dog sled getting ready to leave. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

A dog sled getting ready to leave. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

We walked around the village to get some nice views of the ocean and the sea ice. As we were walking, Ludo made a local friend! A Greenlandic kid who was a really fun guide and gave us a tour for an hour. At some point, we realized that he was always avoiding the direction of the school!

A young Greenlandic musher, showing Ludo which way to go! (Credit: Clément Miège.)

A young Greenlandic musher, showing Ludo which way to go! (Credit: Clément Miège.)

Rick in front of the broken and refrozen sea ice. Imagine how different it is from the open ocean in the summer, with boats cruising around.  (Credit: Clément Miège.)

Rick in front of the broken and refrozen sea ice. Imagine how different it is from the open ocean in the summer, with boats cruising around. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

After that, we went to the store and got some food and a propane tank for our stove on the ice sheet. We found everything we needed and headed back to the hotel. We finished the day at the airport further organizing the science equipment.

Rick works on an extension of the ARGOS antenna mast that we already have installed in the field. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

Rick works on an extension of the ARGOS antenna mast that we already have installed in the field. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

Tuesday, Ludo and I went back to the airport warehouse and finished organizing the cargo for the helicopter flights. We’ve prepared two distinct: one consists of our camp gear, sleep kits, food, personal gear, and some science equipment. The other (which can arrive later), is composed by the rest of the science gear.

Wednesday has been different, and we thought it would be “fun” to walk you through the steps that we have gone through today in terms of decision-making:

In the morning, Thursday’s flight is still ‘opa’. We are optimist and getting ready to leave, packing personal bags and organizing the last bits of equipment.

Weather forecast, from the Danish Meteorological Institute, for today Wednesday (March 26) and Thursday (March 27). The good weather window is for Thursday.

Weather forecast, from the Danish Meteorological Institute, for today Wednesday (March 26) and Thursday (March 27). The good weather window is for Thursday.

2 pm: The weather is not improving much and we start wondering if we will still be able to leave tomorrow. According to the forecast, a break in the storm system is still possible for tomorrow, but we would need it to last for at least a couple of hours, so that we can have one or two helicopter rotations from Kulusuk to our camp on the ice sheet. Each helicopter rotation takes about 2 hours.

3:15 pm: We receive an email from our project manager, based in the US. The helicopter company (Air Greenland) advises us not to leave for the ice sheet tomorrow since an extreme storm is coming for the next days and our team will be incapacitated (meaning that we will not be able to leave the tent for four to six days). This email is worrying us further, and we do not need to be trapped in a tent on the ice sheet without being able to do any work. It is a difficult decision to make, since the weather will be good tomorrow. Moreover, if we leave, we would be able to start working as soon as the storm passed and not be risk further delays in getting to camp, since the helicopter might be needed for other important duties, like resupplying villages. We have to balance the pros and cons — put simply, we have to balance spending four to six days in a tent doing nothing but trying to stay warm vs. gaining about half a day of work, since that way we would not need to wait for our put-in flight. After an intense discussion involving our partners and the weather office, we finally decide that we will not fly tomorrow.

Left: Rick, calling with the satellite phone, using a homemade extended antenna (credit: Ludo). Right: Ludo and Rick waiting to hear back from Air Greenland about tomorrow’s flight. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

Left: Rick, calling with the satellite phone, using a homemade extended antenna (credit: Ludo). Right: Ludo and Rick waiting to hear back from Air Greenland about tomorrow’s flight. (Credit: Clément Miège.)

4 pm: Our flight for tomorrow is officially canceled.

7 pm: Even if it does not make any sense to have a passenger flight tomorrow due to this upcoming weather system, we think that it will be really valuable to have a cargo flight to drop our equipment. Hence, only one helicopter load will still need to be transported when the storm is over. We’re still working on this option.

We are not sure when we will be flying, but at least we are ready. Please keep your fingers crossed for some good weather. More updates soon, opa!

All the best from snowy Kulusuk!

Greenland firn aquifer expedition: Season two!

March 19th, 2014 by Maria-Jose Viñas

By Clément Miège

Hi there! I am Clément Miège, a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah and I am going to take you along with us to our second expedition to the southeast region of Greenland, to investigate the physical properties of a firn aquifer. And what is a firn aquifer, you might be wondering? It’s a reservoir of perennial water (that is, water that doesn’t freeze in the winter) that is trapped within the compacted snow layer (or firn) of the Greenland ice sheet. If you didn’t follow last year’s edition of this expedition and/or you want to learn more about the firn aquifer, here are some readings I recommend:

  • Our team’s blog posts from last year will give you some background material on the set-up of the expedition and work over the ice sheet. It describes the travel to our field site in Greenland and the techniques we used on the ice sheet to do a first measurement of the volume of water within the firn aquifer.
  • To complete this story, my team and other researchers recently published a journal article where we described how this aquifer was serendipitously discovered in the spring of 2011 when we were sampling regions of high snow accumulation. The paper also describes how we first mapped the aquifer using a combination of firn cores, ground radar and airborne radars.
  • Finally, we published another journal article following up on the blog posts from last year and determining the volume of the water trapped in the firn aquifer at a specific location. We obtained this volume by comparing the mass of a wet firn core taken inside the aquifer to a core taken in an neighboring area of dry snow. If you assume this water volume is constant throughout the entire firn aquifer (which spreads over an area larger than Western Virginia!), that would correspond to 140 gigatonnes of water stored. To say it in a different way: if the water runoff the ice sheet, it would raise sea levels worldwide by 0.016 inches (0.4 mm).
  • And if you don’t feel like reading scientific papers right now, NASA put out a story about our findings, too.

We are now getting ready for another expedition to Greenland to further monitor the firn aquifer. This year, our four main tasks will be to maintain our equipment currently in place (which performs temperature measurements), collect additional measurements (with a radar), install a weather station, and try traditional ground-water techniques to date the water and calculate its permeability. I will explain in future blog posts why these measurements are important.

I will be part of a smaller team this year, since only three out of the five members of the first-year team are joining. Rick Forster and I will represent the University of Utah, while Ludovic Brucker comes from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Greenland Aquifer team in 2013.

The Greenland Aquifer team in 2013.

Here is the photo of the team from last year, from left to right; Jay, Ludo, Rick, Lora and I. Lora and Jay won’t be coming to the field this year (we sure will miss them!) If you want to know a bit more about each team member (current and former), you can check this blog post from last year.

Even when we haven’t set a foot in the field yet, the expedition to Greenland started about two months ago with organizing the logistics. Logistics can sometimes be underestimated, but it takes a lot of effort prior to getting to the field to prepare and test the scientific equipment and other field supplies, such as camping gear, food, and power sources.

For this expedition, all of the science equipment (GPS, radars with different frequencies — 5MHz to 400MHz–, piezometers, ice-core drill) was gathered from different institutions in Utah to be packed here and shipped to Kulusuk. Most of the non-perishable food and camping gear was left for over-winter storage after last year’s expedition in a warehouse in Kulusuk, to save on shipping costs.

On March 3 this year, the Utah gear left for Greenland; we’re talking about 800 lbs. of gear that left Salt Lake City on a truck headed to the JFK airport in New York, where it was flown to Reykjavik (Iceland) and then to Kulusuk (Greenland). We got a phone call early this week from our shipping company to confirm that all our equipment made it to Greenland — great news!

Gear packed at the office (left) and ready to leave the shipping facility at the University of Utah (right). We will see this gear again in Greenland!

Gear packed at the office (left) and ready to leave the shipping facility at the University of Utah (right). We will see this gear again in Greenland!

These last days have been really busy, gathering the last items for our science research, and also personal equipment. Yesterday, I was working at Blue System Integration in Vancouver, BC with a colleague, Laurent Mingo, who is developing IceRadar, an ice-penetrating radar system for the scientific community (see this website for additional info). Laurent has been working on an experimental beta version of the current radar that will allow us to penetrate through the firn aquifer to try to image the bottom of the aquifer gradually transitioning from water-saturated firn to ice.

Even if most of the scientific equipment is already shipped, there are always some last-minute important items that we end up adding into our suitcases (like the low-frequency radar). As a brief anecdote, last year, Rick traveled with a pelican case as a checked bag – inside, there was a bunch of wires hooked up to a datalogger. We were aware that it looked kind of suspicious, so it was a bit scary to go through customs with it! Me, I traveled with a 60-meter long thermistor string weighing over 50 lbs. in my checked bag, because the fabrication and calibration took longer than expected and we weren’t able to ship it ahead of time with the rest of the equipment. This year, luckily, most of the heavy equipment was ready on time and we are carrying only a couple random items in our checked bags.

We are starting our journey this week, leaving the U.S. on Thursday evening for Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. After a day in Reykjavik, we will leave mid-Saturday on a 2-hour short flight that will take us to Kulusuk, Greenland. We are hoping for good weather; last year, Ludo and I “boomeranged” on our first try due to poor visibility at the Kulusuk runway.

In this old map from the US army (from 1941) you can see the location of the small city of Kulusuk in Southeast Greenland (red star), just below the Arctic Circle (~66.5°N). Our field camp on the ice sheet is represented by a white star. The map can be found at the Polar Geospatial Center.

In this old map from the US army (from 1941) you can see the location of the small city of Kulusuk in Southeast Greenland (red star), just below the Arctic Circle (~66.5°N). Our field camp on the ice sheet is represented by a white star. The map can be found at the Polar Geospatial Center.

Kulusuk is our first stop in Greenland. We will be staying at this small village for a few days in order to re-pack our field gear, test that everything is working well (stoves, generators, tents, science equipment, etc.) before going to the field. If we are lucky, we might see one of the polar bears that sometimes come close to town in this time of year.

Colorful houses make up the town of Kulusuk in Southeast Greenland. The shores of the fjord are covered by sea ice in the winter.

Colorful houses make up the town of Kulusuk in Southeast Greenland. The shores of the fjord are covered by sea ice in the winter.

After a couple of days, we will be heading to our fieldwork location on the ice sheet. A helicopter from Air Greenland will drop us and our cargo at our study site; it will be an about 45-minute commute.

That is it for this introduction; our next blog post will be from Greenland!

All the best,

Clément