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This is my first time on a scientific cruise and my first trip to the Arctic. I’m still adjusting to the geographical weirdness of being not only at such a high latitude (around 79 North at last reckoning) but of such an easterly longitude (115 East). That’s a similar longitude to Hong Kong! It’s quite convenient to cover such long leaps in longitude in a relatively short distance. The Arctic also provides an opportunity to observe sea ice and icebergs, of which I have seen neither previous to this trip. I found the icebergs to be an incredible shade of blue, and the sea ice to make quite a racket when it is being torn apart by our ship.

 Field work starts tomorrow, and the group received training this evening for making cloud observations. This is of quite an interest for me as someone who works with Arctic clouds and the effects that aerosols have on them (aerosols are small particles that can affect radiation and the properties of clouds).  However, I have only ever seen Arctic clouds as part of a computer model. We’ll be recording cloud type, cloud fraction, and cloud height. We’ll be using a ceilometer (the white instrument, pictured), which measures cloud height by sending a laser pulse from the ship to the cloud and measuring the time it takes to bounce back. I’m expecting a lot of low level stratus! Oh, and on a final note, we saw polar bears today!

  – Eric Stofferahn

 

For our readers who are wondering what our mascot “Willy” the box turtle from Miami is doing on the cruise, here he is watching the sea ice go by outside the porthole of my cabin. Some people have already spotted “Chilly” the polar bear, but sadly neither me nor Willy has seen him yet…

It always makes me happy to see world-class, professional scientists do an experiment that I could imagine trying to recreate, in a small way, with students or Museum visitors. The two scientists I mentioned before, Howon and Janghan, who are studying the depth that sunlight reaches into the ocean, allowed me to join them as they conducted one of their experiments. When the ship stopped at a “station,” they dropped this white, weighted disk (called a secchi disk) attached to a rope into the water. Feeding more rope so the disk went deeper, they noted when it was no longer visible and used markings on the rope to see that it was 22 meters deep. They’ll do this at every station in the morning, to have a direct comparison for measurement at the same time of day (they’ll note the degree of sun or cloudiness as well). Then they will use water samples taken at 100% light (meaning at the surface), 50% (11 meters deep), 30%, 12%, 5%, and 1% (when the disk nearly disappeared at 22 meters), and study phytoplankton levels and growth. Phytoplankton are primary producers (meaning they make their own energy and produce oxygen via photosynthesis), and then they are consumed by the next level on the food chain. So this seemingly simple experiment with a rope and a disk has incredibly meaningful and complex implications for the Arctic. Back in Miami, you or anyone who lives near a lake, pond, or ocean, can run a similar experiment, that I hope would inspire you to learn more about the science and implications for your backyard.

I now have another official responsibility onboard, which is cool – I will be communicating our daily position (latitude and longitude) to the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska. I was planning to periodically tell you on the blog too, but the days get a little confusing here. At the time I’m writing this, we are at about 79°N and 105°E, and the air/water temperature are both around 0°C. But when am I writing this really? Here’s why it’s confusing. Firstly, it’s daylight ALL the time. Secondly, there are no landmarks. Then there is the issue of time zones. The Captain has decided to keep the ship on Norwegian time, but in real time the ship could pass through multiple time zones pretty quickly (since time zones converge at the pole). Every day, I am writing about happenings that day and the day before. I only have access to send email once a day, and what I write and send then gets forwarded to you on the blog the following day. To add to this, as the ship moves around to the other side of Earth, it’s going to be daylight and we’ll be awake at night, because on our ship time, it will be daytime, even though it’s the middle of the night local time. Confused yet? Einstein would have a hard time keeping time and space straight around here. Grab a globe and try to figure it out.

 

Students onboard for the Summer School have the extraordinary opportunity to work “in the field” with scientists – for many, it’s the first time. The instructors of the Summer School (myself included) met to finalize the projects that would be offered to students. They include big projects (like hard core data with weather research and forecasting (WRF) or sea ice modeling, and “outdoor” projects, like working with scientists on watches at all hours for observations of clouds and ice, and helping to deploy instruments as allowed. And there are the science communication projects I have contributed – students will use science communication strategies to write and contribute multiple entries to this blog, and develop a concept for a hands-on activity that would help the public understand their research.

Here’s a small project for YOU, that students onboard will also be attempting in a more detailed way: Predict how low the sea ice will be this summer (in square kilometers or square miles, whichever you prefer, but the data below is square kilometers). Here’s some information for you to formulate your educated prediction. Let us know in the comments what you think!

To appreciate again the scale of not only the ship, but also the equipment on the ship, one of the ship’s two onboard cranes was needed to help hoist one piece of equipment into another. It’s bright outside, as it is all day and night. Here’s a crane lifting a metal tube (that will serve as the base of the soon-to-be-deployed O-buoy) into the middle of this yellow ring (that will be the flotation for keep the tube). The antenna of the O-buoy, which has an anemometer (wind speed and direction), a thermometer, and GPS, has yet to be placed on top of the tube, but when we get to the ice, we’re drilling a hole and it’s all going in!

 

In a post the day before yesterday, I wrote that we were soon getting ready to put a glider in the water. Here’s how it went. It may well have been an outdoor rock concert.  We got word when we should go outside, and got all dressed in layers (required, at a latitude of 81°N, air/water temperatures of 0°C, and wind seemingly about a billion miles per hour). We all stood on the helideck, leaning over the railing and watching scientists and technicians on the deck below operate the “knuckleboom” crane (a slang boat term, but you’ll get it from the picture below). It slowly reached toward the glider, lifted it up and over the side, and dropped it in the water. It all happened in slow motion, but none of us even thought of getting out of the wind without seeing the whole show. This glider will “listen” to instructions from a driver at the University of Washington, periodically surfacing to get more directions and transmit data. The driver will have it meet us on our way back this way in a few weeks. Everyone should stop and be amazed about all of that for a minute.

 

Scientists are busy preparing the onboard lab to analyze data and samples brought on board as we start deploying buoys, launching radiosondes (for atmospheric measurements), measuring ice, and taking water samples. We have 4-labs-in-1: hydrology, ecology, hydrochemistry, and ice. Here you can see a CTD “rosette” instrument being cast into the water (photo from Marie), which will measure Conductivity, Temperature and Depth at various points. We’ll do this multiple times over the course of the expedition, and they will go to depths of 3000 meters (!!!!). When they resurface, scientists will pour water samples from the grey tubes into numbered bottles, each bottle corresponding to the depth where it was taken.  Here is where more teamwork comes in. Each lab, and each scientist, is studying different things using those same samples. Some are measuring the organic chemical content of the samples, so they are looking for carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous. Others are looking for dissolved oxygen (an indicator of life forms) in the water, and still others are looking for chlorophyll, because they are studying the growth of phytoplankton, a primary food source in the ocean. And there’s still water to take back to labs at home!

The Miami Science Museum is one of several science centers nationwide participating in the Portal to the Public initiative, led by the Pacific Science Center and funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal is to work with scientists in your local area on science communication strategies. Scientists get to hone their science communication skills, and the public gets to connect with real, current science, and “put a face on science.” One of my goals for this Arctic expedition is to expand our project to an international scale, so I am leading a mini-Portal to the Public workshop onboard. The projects I have given them for this expedition are to use the strategies from my presentations to write stories for this blog, and to focus on 1 concept from their research that they could develop into a hands-on activity (which is harder than it sounds, when your research areas are so interesting and complex).

In the photos are a few of the activities we did so far: figure out what’s in the box that only has one small eye hole (you’re investigating, therefore acting as a scientist)… describe in one word or phrase a meaningful experience you had in any informal learning environment (remembering your own experiences helps when you are creating experiences for others)… describe a picture so that others understand and can accurately draw it (testing effective communication skills). I am certain that these people can be really positive “faces for science.”

The Arctic Ocean. Here we are. Some people onboard had already had signs of it thanks to the birds that constantly fly around the ship. Some of them belong to species only encountered in Arctic regions.

 But now icebergs have made it clear to everyone than we have eventually reached the northernmost ocean of our planet. As soon as a few people have seen these white spots at the horizon, many of us have grabbed our cameras and climbed to the upper deck to have a better view. And during the whole morning the ship has gone through a number of icebergs, some big ones at a safe distance, some little crunches of ice much closer. 

 Although observing icebergs is amazing, nobody stays outside for a long time anymore. At the time of writing, air temperature has just dropped to 0°C and it is always windy. Water temperature is a tiny bit warmer, 0.3 °C. For us coming mostly from mid-latitudes, it seems we have switched from summer to winter in just a couple of days. Kind of a strange feeling … And it will get even colder in the next days! 

 -Antoine Barthelemy