Most days here in the Arctic have been cloudy, so it’s exciting whenever we see the Sun peek from behind the clouds – and rare sunny days have caused pure glee. But we don’t just say “cloudy,” “partly cloudy,” or “sunny,” like on the news. The Arctic climate depends on the whole system, which includes the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice – and how all these things affect each other. So it’s vital that we have detailed observations of what the atmosphere is doing. Sasha Chernokulsky has been leading the cloud observations, or “cloud obs,” on the expedition, and several of the Summer School students are working with him to learn the process.
Step 1: Go out on the top deck to get a full 360° view of the sky. This is where the experience comes in – you identify cloud type (cumulus, stratus, cirrus, or all the combinations of those, like stratocumulus, cumulocirrus, etc), and how much sky is covered by that cloud type on a scale of 0 to 10; 10 being full-sky coverage. (This is the standard Russian scale; according to the World Meteorological Organization, the scale is 0 to 8.) On this day, Irina and I were with Sasha out on the deck. Sasha explained that observations around the horizon are not reliable, so here we officially observed “total coverage” of flat layers of clouds with some rounded feature details (type: stratocumulus, scale: 10).
Step 2: Record your observations back in the Flight Tower (it’s a pretty sweet office, or lab, with a view of the ocean and the ship’s heli-deck). Make notes of cloud type, cloud coverage from 0 to 10, degree of visible Sun from N (not visible) to 2 (fully visible disk), and cloud height, as measured by the ceilometer. (This sends a laser upward, which reflects back down off the clouds. We know the speed of light, and we measure the time it takes, so we can calculate the height of clouds.)
Step 3: Come back in 1 hour, and repeat!
Hi Lindsay my name is Danyl Hernandez from Law Officers Memorial High School i wanted to know even if there are no icebergs in sight does that affect what you would report
Hi Danyl, even if there are no icebergs (or sea ice) in sight, we still have radar and satellite images that can tell us the concentration of ice further than we can actually see. So we can plan ahead somewhat, in terms of finding paths to the locations where we want to run our experiments. But whenever there is any kind of ice outside, our research team is up on the top deck of the ship, observing what kind, how much, how thick, how old, and everything else you could imagine about ice!
Hi Lindsay I’m a Student in Ms.Gilbert class And I was wondering ….How is the Mediterranean Sea different from the Arctic Ocean in terms of density ?
Dear Ernaly, I spoke with a scientist onboard for you, and the Mediterranean is saltier than the Arctic, but the Arctic is colder than the Mediterranean. Salt water is denser than fresh water, but colder water is denser than warmer water, so they are probably not too different in overall density. The two water masses will not meet though, without having already been altered as they move.
Hi I am a student from L.E.O.M and I have a question. Is there a big difference between Arctic and Mediterranean water? Density? Volume? Pressure?
Hi Ian, yes, there are big differences, but also similarities. For example, density and salinity depends on the location and depth of the water you are talking about, and they can vary a lot. Nearer the surface, Mediterranean waters are warmer and saltier, and Arctic waters are colder and fresher, so the density is probably not too different there (because salty water is denser than fresh water, and colder water is denser than warm water).