Category: Uncategorized

We have stopped at dozens of stations over the course of the expedition, each time deploying instruments to sample and monitor the ocean. But our main purpose at this station (80°N latitude and 155°E longitude) is to deploy FOUR buoys. On the ice. All of them involve drilling a small hole in the ice and stabilizing a surface component, and some have scientific instruments going way down into the water underneath. But they all have different purposes, and tell us different things about the Arctic climate (think of each of them as a piece of the Arctic puzzle). Plus it was a fantastically impressive sight, seeing tiny scientists and technicians in the middle of endless white.

The O-buoy has a component above the surface that takes measurements like temperature, humidity, and wind speed and direction. It also has a tube that goes down through the ice with instruments that circulate air through them to measure atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, bromine oxide, and ozone, all of which have effects on the climate system. Then it has the yellow “flotation collar” which keeps it afloat, should the ice melt. Want to track it yourself? Go to www.o-buoy.org  and look for O-buoy #9!

The ice-tethered profiler (ITP) goes much deeper. Using instruments that continually go up and down a cable that reaches 750meters deep, it can measure temperature, salinity (salt content), and pressure for different water depths. Scientists can use this data to better understand not only conditions in the Arctic, but also, for example, how some water currents that may have originated elsewhere in the world may affect the Arctic. And this also has a yellow flotation piece in case of ice melt, so you can still find it! Want to track it? Go to: http://www.whoi.edu/itp and look for #59!

Ice-Mass Balance Buoy, Photo from Drew Slater

The Ice Mass Balance Buoy measures ice thickness, and the “balance” of the amount of ice that grows versus the amount of ice that melts every season. Under the ice is a tube 3meters long, and at the bottom is an upward-looking sonar device, which measures the thickness of the ice. Throughout the tube there are also sensors that measure the temperature throughout the ice, all the way up to the top (so air temperature is also measured). At the very top is a weather station, and also an acoustic snow depth sensor to measure how much snow accumulates on the ice. Track it here for yourself! http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil

The Met Buoy (“met” is short for meteorological), measures weather parameters, as you may have guessed, like temperature and air pressure. From the surface it looks like a small white ball (so it’s hard to see in photos on the ice), but it also connects to a cable that goes down 60meters, with temperature sensors all along it. These can be deployed on the open ocean, or the ice. It transmits live weather data, so while it tracks the weather, it can be tracked too! (The University of Washington monitors all met buoys in the Arctic.)

Today, for the first time, we did ice observations on the ice itself! We were organized in teams of 4-5 people, and were transported from the ship to the ice with a crane, in a net (like sardines). It was an extremely funny and pleasant process, especially with the scientists in the net making different predictions about the resistance of the net to our weight, wind and other weather parameters. Once down on the ice, our instructor explained to us the process of drilling small holes through the ice, and then under her guidance each of us had the opportunity to dig a hole, take measurements, ask questions, and get samples of ice, which some of us even tasted. We had to watch for polar bears at all times and other people watched from the ship. Although we are always looking forward to seeing them, fortunately today we felt relieved at seeing none.

 For me this was the first time to be on the ice in the Arctic Ocean, and it was one of the best experiences of the summer school, and maybe my life. I never imagined that the many years of learning about mathematical representations of the ocean and atmosphere, and of breaking my head over coding those things, would take me one day to study and step on this cold and unforgiving place! As a human being, with the sense of adventure and unbound curiosity that we have, when I stepped on the piece of ice on the Arctic Ocean, I felt lucky and privileged to be there. Meanwhile, as a climate scientist, I couldn’t help but to think about what I know and study – that the climate is changing, that this change forces a retreat of the summer ice pack, which puts in peril this amazing region’s climate and wildlife, and that this place that I see now might never be the same again.

 I looked around me one last time and said good-bye to this vast immensity of ice before going back to the net that took us to the ship. As we were going up in the net, happy and packed together like sardines, I felt that the half hour we spent there made all of us realize how precarious the balance is between all the processes in this place. From now on, I’ll see my work being accompanied by a deep desire to understand and preserve this place as it is, so that others can see it and feel what we felt!

 – Ioana Colfescu

 

We were just yesterday at 80°N latitude and 155°E longitude, with ocean temperature at  -1°C (30°F) and air temperature at -2°C (and this is summer). That’s not accounting for wind either, which makes it feel lots colder. People might use describe the Arctic with words like ocean, cold, ice, polar bears, north, “above the Arctic Circle,” or “at the top.” But it is generally defined as a place with average annual temperatures below 0°C (32°F). To give an example in both the east and west hemisphere, that means that Hudson Bay, Canada and Oymyakon, Siberia are both “arctic.” That also means “arctic” refers to places most likely to have something called permafrost. Drew Slater, a scientist onboard from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and instructor for the Summer School, gave a presentation about permafrost, so let me pass on a few really “cool” things. First of all, permafrost does not have to contain ice (although it usually does). It can be anything (soil, rock, ice) that stays at a temperature below 0°C for at least 2 years straight. In Alaska, permafrost goes to about 600meters deep in some places, and in regions of Siberia, can reach 1.5km (almost a mile) deep. From permafrost “cores,” scientists have observed that temperatures 20meters deep have increased by 1°C or more, depending on the location, in the last 40 years. That one little degree is really a big deal. It means that the Earth is storing more heat, and we can already see the results of permafrost areas warming in some areas – buildings and roads with structural damage, changes in the vegetation, and “disappearing” lakes.

But there is also something called the “High Arctic,” and that is more specifically where our ship is right now. As you may imagine, this has a somewhat different (and colder) definition. The High Arctic is anywhere with July temperatures below 10°C (translation: really cold, even in summer). So, Miami friends, think about the wake you see in when a boat is going through the water. This was the wake here recently (see the picture above). It looks like water, but it’s actually wafer thin ice being pulverized by the ship, while water underneath is spilling over it, creating a kind of “finger-wake.” (We may have just coined a term?) You can also see a light greenish billowing effect near the ship’s edge. Any guesses as to what that is?

Last night I was up writing, after midnight ship time (mid-day local time). All of a sudden I felt like a flashlight was coming through my window. I looked out the porthole, and it was solid ice. Not only that, the Sun was shining, and I realized we hadn’t seen a clear sunny day since we left Norway. I put on layers of clothes and boots, and went outside, and it was like the heavens opened up and poured light blue sky onto sheets and piles of shimmering white ice. Several other people must have seen the same flashlight in their window because all of a sudden people appeared out on the deck, smiling and staring at the Earth. I think everyone was probably re-invigorated as to the reason why we are all on this ship. Here’s the view.

Let me paint you another picture for this one. It was almost 2am “ship time” (mid-day local time), and everyone is out on the deck because the Sun is out (which has been rare). Everyone’s fingers are about to freeze off, but no one wants to leave the view of jagged piles and smooth panes of solid white ice under a clear blue sky. It’s like a combination of a National Geographic centerfold, the ice planet of Hoth from Star Wars, and some fairy tale land. And of course, everyone is hoping to spot polar bears, the “holy grail” of Arctic animal sightings. As the ship slowly cracks its way through ice, we see footprints headed in the same direction as the ship. We try to keep the tracks in sight, and then someone says “I think I see two dots…” Everyone’s binoculars and cameras point in that direction, and then the dots start to move. As we get closer, there are two polar bears. (Insert here sounds of happiness and excitement from everyone.) The bears are still a ways off, but we can tell they’re curious about the big red noisy thing passing by them. They stare and investigate for a minute, and then meander off to blend into the white.

 Later, mid-afternoon ship time (evening local time), we were all quietly working in the common room, and an announcement came over the intercom system in Russian. One of the Russians in the room says “Polar bear! Stern!” MASS HYSTERIA. Everyone grabbed their cameras (we all seem to carry cameras and laptops on us at all times) and ran. Literally. Coat or not. We got to the stern of the boat, along with some of the crew and scientists who appeared from the labs, and again we found the movement of white bear on white snow, walking around and staring back at us (in a foggy, cloudy sky this time). I think most will continue to sprint outside whenever that announcement is made.

Imagine taking a tube of ocean water from the rosette instrument in the photo, and wanting to find out the dissolved oxygen content in the water (which can tell you about living organisms, or biomass, in the water, or tell you more about where that water initially came from). How do you get it out of the tube, and into a controlled container in the lab, without contaminating it with the oxygen that you’re breathing? And how do you manage that when a team of other scientists also need to do their own experiments with the same samples? The answer is a combination of skill and teamwork, along with an eagle eye for details. Scientists monitor the rosette as it rises through the water, and when it resurfaces with bottles full of water samples taken at different depths, an assembly line begins.

One person is a logkeeper documenting the samples, 2 are runners who bring the samples into the lab, and 3 more prepare the samples according to how each team leader has specified. Then there are 2 more who prepare water samples for oxygen analysis. To get the water from the bottles with minimal contamination with oxygen from the air, they attach a tube to the bottle, and put the other end of the tube all the way down into a flask (see the flask and tube in the picture below). They let the water flow into the flask – and even overflow a bit, so that the water that remains in the flask is as uncontaminated as possible. (The flow also needs to be gentle, to minimize bubbles.) A stopper goes in the flask, and it’s ready for experiments! One of these scientists said to me that she was recently cleaning tubes and containers in the lab (usually not her favorite part of the job), and then she looked out the open door. There was the Arctic, which made it the best time she ever had cleaning glassware.

The more I learn about this ship, the more I am in awe of it and anyone who knows how to operate it, and deal with ice conditions. Every morning there is a briefing meeting with the Captain, the expedition’s Chief Scientists, the Director of the NABOS Summer School, and a couple lead scientists. I have been invited to join the meeting, which starts out with sharing the weather forecast – here, weather doesn’t just mean air temperature and wind, it also means ocean temperature and sea ice conditions. Based on anticipated ice conditions in our path for the day, they decide the best route to take to navigate through that ice, and estimate how long it will take us to get to our planned “stations” to deploy instruments, take samples, and make observations (thicker ice = slower ship). Yesterday they discussed an operation for the day that would take some extra tactical planning. Throughout this cruise, we have been deploying moorings. (For any new readers, a mooring is a series of scientific monitoring instruments dropped into the ocean on a cable, that reaches between an anchor on the sea floor and (nearly) the surface). But they were talking now about retrieving a mooring that was put in place a few years ago. The goal was to get a signal from the mooring, then retrieve it by “trailing,” meaning the ship would drop a cable near the mooring’s position, and “trail” it through the water until it was “hooked.” But the ice that many people are here to study is changing the plans. We are not able to get through the ice to that mooring, so the route is being updated to get to the next series of stations. Stay tuned!

What do you see when you look at the sky? Our project team looks at the sky for this purpose: to identify cloud types. It doesn’t seem difficult, as there are only three main types of clouds: cumulus, stratus, and cirrus. But in real life, we have large quantities of mixed types, for example: Cirrocumulus or Cirrostratus. And also we need to state the amount of clear sky, sun visibility, and cloud altitude. It’s really interesting! The only upsetting thing is that we need to observe clouds often, even at night (although technically astronomical noon falls at nighttime, according to ship time). We measure the cloud’s altitude with the onboard meteorological station’s devices, but other measuring we do without any devices. The main cloud specialist said that it helps to compare our measurements with older data.

The main goal of our research is to compare various atmospheric layers’ temperature data from the MTP-5 (a device which measures the temperature of different atmospheric layers every 5 minutes) with data from radiosondes (scientific balloons). Observations about cloudiness can help to account for differences between the two types of data. MTP-5 can make mistakes under rain, and when clouds are low. And we have low stratus for more than a week now already!

Russian Translation:

Задумываетесь ли вы о том, что именно видите, когда смотрите на небо? Наша команда смотрит на небо с вполне определенной целью – мы должны определять различные параметры облаков. На первый взгляд, это совсем не страшно – их не так уж много: перистые, слоистые и кучевые. Но существует огромное количество смешанных типов, таких как Перисто-кучевые, перисто-слоистые и так далее. И это ещё не учитывая, что надо указывать количество открытого неба, высоту облаков и видимость солнца. Но это действительно интересное занятие. Единственный существенный минус – измерения надо проводить очень часто, даже ночью (хотя технически, сейчас в корабельную ночь полдень). Высоту мы считываем с приборов корабельной метеостанции, но все остальное надо делать вручную. Главный специалист по облакам говорит, чтобы сохранялась сравнимость со старыми измерениями, которые были сделаны ещё до спутников. Он же старается научить нас определять высоту облаков без приборов.

 Основное направление исследований – сравнение данных о температуре различных слоев атмосферы, полученных с помощью МТП-5 (прибор, который измеряет температуру различных слоев атмосферы каждые пять минут), с данными с метеозондов. А информация об облачности поможет объяснить неточности в показаниях прибора – при низкой облачности и дожде он может давать сбои. А у нас вторую неделю висят низкие слоистые облака.

 – Irina Larkina

Irina Repina, a scientist onboard, has spent over a year on this ship over several expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic! (And a personal side note: when I participated in a research expedition to Antarctica 3 years ago, Irina and I were roommates!) Summer School students are working with her to study atmospheric conditions over the Arctic, and her lab could not be much cooler. When I say “lab,” I mean the onboard Meteorological Lab, the Flight Tower (where helicopters would be guided in, as needed), not to mention the entire Arctic itself. Their focus is the atmospheric boundary layer – the lower layer of the atmosphere mostly influenced by “surface effects” like temperature, wind, and humidity. But that’s just the first step. They want to learn how this layer affects conditions of the sea ice underneath it, like the extent of the ice, its thickness, and its movement. So, how do you measure atmosphere and ice from a ship? Luckily, everyone brought the most important tool with them – their senses and their knowledge. Looking out from the Flight Tower, they observe sea ice conditions – how concentrated is it? Is it a solid cover of ice, big ice floes, or little chunks? Is it surrounding us, and if not, which direction is it?

Other tools are in the Meteorology Lab and the Flight Tower (they are close to each other, but you do need to go outside to go from one to the other). You can see your exact latitude and longitude, a radar screen with the live location, direction, and concentration of the surrounding sea ice, and monitors with continually updated data like temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and concentration of gases like carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.

And – I love this – I’ve mentioned how science is like a puzzle. Each field, scientist, and instrument provides a piece. Different methods may give you similar data – using more than one method might give you that little extra bit of information. For example, Irina’s team use the ship’s multiple onboard weather stations (see the photo below), which include an anemometer (the red devices, to measure wind speed and direction), a sonic anemometer (the little pole with the 4 little arms sticking off of it, to measure wind speed/direction in 3D), barometer (for atmospheric pressure), thermometer (the device that looks like a pine cone), and more. But they are also working with another scientist onboard, Kensuke Komatsu, and comparing their observations with data from his radiosondes experiments – huge scientific balloons that he releases off the ship to measure atmospheric conditions as they rise. So on one hand, the weather station can take continual measurements… but you can’t continually release balloons. On the other hand, the balloon can rise through the atmosphere as it takes measurements… but the weather station can’t. This is one of the great things I keep seeing over and over again on this expedition – with science, you need the technology, but you also really need what you bring with you: knowledge, experience, people to work with – and all of your senses.

 

 

The Summer School students’ visits to the hydro-chemistry lab have started. Yesterday I went to watch a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) cast. As the instruments were lowered down through the upper 1000 meters of the water column, profiles formed on the computer screen. First, cold and low salinity water on the surface. Soon, salinity started to increase, and then temperature, as the CTD was descending through the Atlantic water layer. Atlantic water is warm and saline, and flows here from the Atlantic Ocean through the Fram Strait and Barents Sea. I’ve been studying properties of waters in the Fram Strait, which is located between Greenland and Spitsbergen, and is a deep entrance to/exit from the Arctic Ocean. In the western Fram Strait, cold polar waters are transported southward by the East Greenland Current, and in the eastern parts, the West Spitsbergen Current carries Atlantic water northward. Some of the Atlantic water re-circulates, and turns back southward in the strait. And some of the Atlantic water makes a much longer loop inside the Arctic Ocean, and may eventually return south through the strait. Seeing Atlantic water here is like meeting an old friend. It is still recognizable, but it has undergone some changes, and is colder and less saline than when entering.

 Unlike the Atlantic water, I have gotten a bit warmer as we have progressed further east along the Siberian shelf slopes. It seems I’ve caught a mild cold that someone picked up from Kirkenes and that has since been going around our closed ship.

 -Marika Marnela