Category: Uncategorized

We are very lucky.

I don’t know how I deserved to be able to be here.

It’s like winter in summer.

Did you feel that? (as the ship rumbled over ice) How many people get to see this?

I just can’t turn away from it.

Wonderful.

It’s like magic.

Look, polar bear tracks!

Is this really real?

These are a few of the things people said on the ship’s decks, as we began to feel the ship slow down, and see a few lonely icebergs turn into larger packs of sea ice. (The ship is the red dot in the image above, and the pink area is the limit of permanent sea ice.) It was otherworldly – the translucent blue that only exists in sea ice, the sound of the ice trailing alongside the ship, the bumps as the ship cracked through chunks of ice, the biting wind, and the Sun and the Moon both bright in the sky. It took us a few days to get to the ice, and ice will come and go for a few days as we travel along the perimeter of the sea ice extent. But even though none of seem to remember what day it is, I think all of us Arctic first-timers will never forget this day.

 

Animals are amazing.  Yesterday we were at 81 degrees north latitude, and 73 degrees east longitude (look that up on a map). We have not seen land for days, and there is nothing out ahead of us but ocean, and eventually an ice-covered ocean. Yet we have seen birds flying around the ship daily. How many miles can they fly away from land? I guess they can “rest” on the water (and now the ship), but wow that is an impressive distance for relatively little wings. And some people actually saw porpoises swimming and jumping out of the water a couple days ago! Alena, a student onboard, took this photo of me trying to take a picture of the birds making use of the life boat.

This blue screen in the “bridge,” where the Captain and crew drive the ship, is blank now, because there is nothing ahead of us for upcoming 24 miles. But wait until we’re headed near ice, and it will look a lot more interesting! And the other screen is a digital “reader” which displays the size and position of nearby sea ice. In the radio room, satellite data from NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) is received, and the operator on duty will analyze the images visually for concentration of ice. Radar then confirms the ice concentration within 20 miles of the ship. Imagine back in the day using the old Soviet analog reader (which is still on the ship) to predict the ice miles in front of you!

…per day. That’s what it takes to run this ship on water. What about on ice? Make that 50 tons per day, with all engines running. The crew gave us a behind the scenes tour of the ship, and here’s a few more stats on our floating polar home. THE SHIP’S 4 ENGINES ADD UP TO 22,000 HORSEPOWER (I’M SHOUTING BECAUSE IT’S LOUD), and if you’re on open water, only 2 engines are used. But if you’re headed into ice, that’s when the 3rd and 4th engines can be fired up. The ship is capable of a max speed of 16 knots, but when it’s crushing through ice, it’s just 3 knots max. (Not to mention it can crush through 1 meter thick ice.)

Speaking of breaking ice, even though our ship can do that, it’s not technically an “icebreaker” ship. We are an “ice class” ship. What’s the difference? An icebreaker has a flat body to run on top of ice and crushing it. An ice class ship has a keel like a regular ship, but stronger –so we crush ice, the ice doesn’t crush us. Here are Marie, Alena, and Antoine on the top level (7th floor) of the ship (and the ship still towers over them), and Drew in front of the drive shaft of one of the electric motors (just behind that wall is the propeller).

Under the category of “sentences I never thought I’d say:” Here is a baby pool tethered to the helipad of an ice-class ship in the Arctic Ocean. I am sure it has some meaningful scientific purpose. I’ll try to find out.

Today during Summer School activities, two questions were posed by instructors to students. Now we want to ask all of you readers of the blog, and invite you to comment and post your predictions – and we will let you know if you’re close. Don’t forget to explain why you made that prediction. (Even the scientists, who figured out the answers, had a hard time when I asked them how they would explain it to a non-scientist!)

1. Will ice melt faster in fresh water or salt water? Take a guess, and then you can try it at home – fill two glass with tap water at the same temperature. Put some salt in one glass and mix. Drop an ice cube in both glasses at the same time (if you like you can add food coloring to the water to compare). Were you correct? What do you think happened?

2. Will ice melt faster on metal or plastic? Here you can also take a guess, and then try it out. Put an ice cube on something metal and something plastic (and make sure it’s ok that the objects get wet). Were you correct? Why do you think that happened?

Here is our view of the Earth from the back of our ship (latitude 81 degrees, air/water temperature 1 degree C.) How many things that affect the climate are in this picture? (Hint: the answer is more than you think.) Dr. Drew Slater of the National Snow and Ice Data Center talked to students about the big picture of modeling the Earth’s climate – and how it has evolved over time. If you start by making the simplistic statement: incoming heat (from the Sun) minus outgoing heat (reflected heat) gives you Earth’s temperature, you will get -18°C (about -0.5°F). But isn’t the case (Earth’s average temperature is about 15°C, or 59°F), so there must be other factors involved, right?

The last few decades, more and more variables have been included in the model to make it more and more accurate. For the computer programmers out there, the number of lines of code involved in the program has gone from 500 lines to 1.5million lines. For the rest of us, if we think about all the factors that affect the Earth’s climate (like in the picture below), we can start to see why you need 1.5million lines of code and a computer to figure it out. And he said one other thing I wanted to pass on – it used to be that one person knew everything about all the factors of his or her model. Now, each person knows one piece like the back of their hand, and they work with other people who know about other pieces. This means teamwork, and local and global collaboration. Here is the picture so far, but we still need even more lines of code to figure out the entire BIG picture.

 

Summer school might have a negative connotation, but this Summer School onboard is unique, to say the least. Lectures by the scientists onboard began yesterday – throughout the expedition, graduate students onboard – and me – will be attending lectures given by scientists onboard – and me. (I’ll be doing a presentation about how to communicate this amazing science to other people not onboard the ship – namely, all of you reading this blog.) In the photo we are hearing about a previous year’s Summer School from 2005. This is like the coolest school ever, where you learn a lot about how the Earth works from people who look at it from all different angles – sea ice, clouds, ocean – and then there’s no test. And as a bonus, the ocean is just outside the porthole, and you just may get to take a tour of the ship too. (Here we are on “the bridge,” where the captain and crew drive the ship.)

 

We just found out that our first “equipment-headed-off-the-boat” operation is happening tonight! This glider, which is now in the wet lab onboard the ship (near the ship’s only working washing machine), will be going into the ocean. We are not allowed to be on the same deck as the operations team, as all the equipment and processes can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, but the rest of the scientists and students are going to go out and watch from the helipad on the upper deck. For a couple hours we will remain in the same location, while the team onboard from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the glider operator (at the University of Washington in Seattle) confirm that test measurements are successful. If so, we’ll move on and leave the glider to do its thing. If not, they’ll bring the glider back onboard (but that won’t happen.)

What is the glider’s mission? From Seattle, the driver will give it a direction and instructions where and when to re-surface. Each time it resurfaces, it will transmit data via satellite, and the driver will give it its next course (and wait in anticipation for it to resurface again). It will use its CTD to measure Conductivity (related to salt content), Temperature, and Depth (related to pressure) of water samples, and then we’ll pick it up on our way back in a few weeks!

It’s hard to imagine just how big the ocean is. Even in Miami, where many people see the ocean on a regular basis, many of those people might not really think about the scale of what is in front of them (which is unfortunate I think). It’s hard for people to think about things beyond the horizon, like the Arctic, affecting them. So, to give you an idea of the scale of the ocean, and the size (or lack thereof) of the extent of sea ice, think about this. We have been driving north for a couple days now, and it will still be a couple more days before we see much sea ice. It is the summer, so we’re at the minimum annual extent of sea ice (and sadly, 2012 was also the minimum sea ice extent on record). But it’s still getting a lot colder a lot more quickly!