Lindsay in the Arctic

Final Route

We have completed 5726 miles in and around the Arctic Ocean! I gave you our navigational coordinates (along with temperatures) for anyone who wanted to track our route, and now here is our final, completed route, beginning and ending at our port in Kirkenes, Norway.

Here’s how the data is listed below:
Date
Latitude, Longitude
Air Temperature, Water Temperature

8/20
69°43’N, 30°03’E
15°C, 13°C

8/21
75°03’N, 46°22’E
8°C, 8°C

8/22
76°11’N, 50°32’E
7°C, 7°C

8/23
80°59’N, 72°55’E
3°C, 3°C

8/24
81°40’N, 88°52’E
1°C, 1°C

8/25
79°32’N, 105°32’E
1°C, 1°C

8/26
77°12’N, 124°50’E
0°C, 0°C

8/27
78°09’N, 125°48’E
0°C, 0°C

8/28
79°57’N, 125°59’E
0°C, 2°C

8/29
80°47’N, 125°42’E
0°C, -1°C

8/30
80°48’N, 132°37’E
0°C, -1°C

8/31
79°37’N, 143°19’E
-1°C, -1°C

9/1
80°37’N, 137°39’E
-2°C, -1°C

9/2
79°59’N, 152°01’E
-6°C, -1°C

9/3
80°13’N, 155°48’E
-2°C, -1°C

9/4
79°35’N, 148°05’E
1°C, 1°C

9/5
78°33’N, 133°45’E
0°C, 0°C

9/6
77°38’N, 125°51’E
1°C, 1°C

9/7
79°45’N, 125°46’E
3°C, 2°C

9/8
78°26’N, 125°53’E
0°C, 0°C

9/9
80°00’N, 115°25’E
0°C, -1°C

9/10
79°56’N, 107°42’E
-1°C, 0°C

9/11
82°03’N, 112°17’E
-4°, -1°

9/12
81°09’N, 105°37’ E
0°, -1°

9/13
81°15’N, 98°08’E
-2°, 0°

9/14
82°06’N, 97°01’E
-1°, -1°

9/15
84°24’N, 93°27’E
-2°, -1°

9/16
83°29’N, 90°01’E
-2°, -1°

9/17
82°29’N, 89°48’E
-1°, -1°

9/18
81°34’N, 81°05’E
-2°, -2°

9/19
80°46’N, 67°26’E
0°, 1°

9/20
77°20’N, 52°19’E
4°, 5°

9/21
72°47’N, 41°08’E
9°, 9°

9/22
69°45’N, 30°04’E
9°, 11°

Presenting Our Results, PART 3: Student Projects

mini-IMG_2344_2 — 2013 NABOS Summer School students and instructors

With the expedition coming to an end, we also got to see the results of all the stunning and complex work of the NABOS Summer School students, who have been working throughout the expedition on projects presented by Summer School instructors (described in the “Project Time!” post from 9/18). NABOS Summer School Director Vladimir Alexeev, of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, shared some overall successes of the Summer School – successfully incorporating students into science observations onboard… hosting 55 lectures from students as well as scientists onboard (remember the collaborative nature of science?)… the building of new friendships and professional relationships… and the students producing some publish-worthy project results. As you are looking at these detailed figures, remember the BIG picture. Students are trying to understand the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012… Hurricane Katrina… global permafrost… sea ice forecasting… the planetary boundary layer between the atmosphere and ocean… Arctic silica… Enjoy the beautiful results of what they created, along with captions that they included for you. None of these pictures tell the whole story, but you can see how there are so many parts of the picture!

Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Project: Modeling the Great Arctic Cyclone of 2012
(Tobias, Antoine, jake, Eric, Marie, Ioana)

Project: The goal was to use the WRF meteorological model (which is on the regional scale) along with an ocean/sea ice model (on the global scale) to simulate the great Arctic cyclone of 2012 – and the subsequent record minimum of sea ice that year.

pic_Tobias (2) — We simulated the “Great Polar Cyclone” of 2012 in a meso-scale meteorological model and used the information on the winds and temperatures to force a coupled ocean-sea ice model. The figure shows the wind speeds during 2012-08-06 (00:00 UTC) that we used for forcing the sea ice model. The maximum resolved wind speeds were around 15 m/s. You can easily recognize the cyclone by the location of the highest wind speeds. The cyclone was located on the west side of the Arctic (the top of the picture), where you also can recognize the Bering Strait.

mini-extent_antoine — Changes in sea ice extent and in sea ice volume due to different storm strengths. The “ctrl winds” horizontal lines correspond to the reference storm strength, the “winds / 2” curves correspond to a weaker storm (winds speeds divided by two) and the “winds * 2” curves correspond to a stronger storm (winds speeds multiplied by two). The time interval during which winds are adjusted in the model is indicated by the vertical lines. The three rows correspond to different states of the sea ice before the storm.

mini-Eric_figure — The Minimum Sea Level Pressure between Aug 2 (midnight, UTC) and Aug 15 (6pm, UTC) for 3 WRF cases with differing sea ice boundary conditions. Red lines indicate the respective entry and exit points of the cyclone into and out of the physical region in which the model is simulated.

mini-Marie figure — Here is a simulation of the ‘great’ Arctic cyclone of 2012 with WRF, driven with atmospheric data derived from observation (known as ERA-Interim reanalysis) and a spatial resolution of 47.5°. Color contours indicate the mean sea-level pressure on August 6, 2012 at 6pm UTC. The black dots mark the track of the cyclone, starting on August 4, 12pm, until August 14, 12pm. The cyclone track is obtained by the detection of the minimum of the mean-sea level pressure within the region.

Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) – Modeling Hurricane Katrina
(Svetlana K.)

Project: Using the WRF model, the goal was to simulate extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina and a strong wind event near Novorossiisk, Russia, called bora. Another goal was to learn which parameters of the simulation to use (like spatial and time resolution and region size) in order to represent Hurricane Katrina most accurately; and for bora, to analyze the hydrometeorological conditions before and during the event.

mini-Karimova figure — This figure shows the results of our 4 models, each run at a different spatial resolution. The image shows that our model run at a resolution of 20kilometers most accurately follows the path of the actual hurricane (the colored dots connected by the white path), although all of the modeled hurricanes showed late landfall times. For reference, the actual atmospheric pressure was 902mb.

Developing a Permafrost Model
(Florence, Mathieu, Marika, Meri)

Project: This group developed a computer model to determine the potential presence or absence of permafrost in locations throughout the northern hemisphere. (Permafrost is anything – ice, soil, rock – that stays below at below-freezing temperatures for at least two years.) By inputting factors like soil temperature, air temperature, snow depth and density, and a given year and month, they could determine how their model compares to existing permafrost models.

mini-Mathieu figure — The model produced images of the type of permafrost is present in the northern hemisphere. We adjusted model parameters to determine what changes would occur in permafrost extent, given different conditions. This is the surface frost index (F+) 10-year average from 2000 to 2009 for the Northern Hemisphere. Using the colored scale in the image, it can be seen that continuous permafrost occurs where F+ ≥ 0.67, extensive discontinuous permafrost occurs where 0.67 > F+ > 0.6, and sporadic permafrost is present where F+ > 0.5.

Evaluating Sea Ice Forecast Model
(Alena)

Project: The goal of this project was to assess the results of a computer model which applies probability and trends in sea ice conditions, as opposed to current weather data, in forecasting those conditions. To do this, model results were compared with direct observations.

mini-Alena Final Pres — Sea ice extent observed and modeled from March-October 2010. There is significant negative error (i.e. the observed values are bigger than the modeled values) in July-August, caused by rapid changes in sea ice concentration but small changes in sea ice extent.

Investigating the Planetary Boundary Layer
(Ekaterina, Elena K., Irina L., Maria P., Anna G., Svetlana L.)

Project: This group made visual observations of clouds, and evaluating the performance of the MTP instrument (Meteorological Temperature Profiler) in different cloud conditions versus data from the radiosondes (weather balloons) launched from the ship. They learned about turbulent heat and air flow at the “boundary layer” between the atmosphere and the ocean, and how sea ice affects that layer.

mini-khavina project — This is a comparison of the MTP-5 (meteorological temperature profile) data versus radiosonde (weather balloon) data, in order to evaluate the capabilities of the MTP-5 in clear versus cloudy conditions. On the right, in clear weather, the data show a 90% correlation coefficient between the two methods. In cloudy/humid weather, the MTP-5 data does not correlate well with the radiosonde data (the cloud level begins at about 150meters). The next step is to create a data processing algorithm to account for using the MTP-5 in cloudy conditions.

BL-2 — This shows that we have an atmospheric surface layer to a height of 300m, and an atmospheric boundary layer between 300m and 1700m in height (where you can see the curve do a “switchback”). The behavior of the temperature curve is good indicator of when the boundary layer begins. The boundary layer is very important for climate modeling, because it helps define the layers of stability in the atmosphere.

Hydrochemistry: Measuring Silica in the Arctic
(Anna N.)

The goal was to assist in the HydroChem lab onboard, and to measure silica content from water samples from all of the CTD stations (we have had about 100 stations so far). They will now analyze the results to learn about differences in water at different depths and different locations throughout the Arctic. This study will tell them about marine life conditions, which help suggest ideal fishing practices.

Anna N_Final Pres — The picture shows all CTD stations made during the cruise. Comparing transects (the circled areas), we found striking differences in silica content between the seas (influenced by Atlantic waters) to the west of the Lomonosov Ridge (the shallow ridge in the top right part of the image) and the East Siberian Sea, which is influenced by waters from the North Pacific.

To be continued with my own results from the expedition…!

Question of the Day

There are more of our expedition results coming your way, but in the meantime, here is something on my long list of things I will miss afterward…. They say that imagination is right up there in importance with knowledge when it comes to being a scientist – even Einstein himself thought so. Some of the places that we all put our imaginations to work every day during the expedition were in the labs, on projects, with experiments, and… at the dinner table. It became a mealtime tradition for someone to ask Florence, a Summer School student onboard, for another one of her seemingly infinite supply of “questions of the day” (which always started discussions – and most of the time impassioned debates). Here are some of them for you to consider:

What would your first choice of superpower be?
If you were a movie director, what genre and plot would your first movie have?
If you could automatically gain any skill overnight, what be the first thing you would create using that skill?
If you could go “any-when” in time, when/where would you go?
If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?
If you could invent one thing, regardless of the limits of current science, what would you invent?
If you could use only one tool or instrument in your scientific research, what would it be?
If you were a mad scientist, what kind of super-secret lair would you have?

And just before the expedition ended:
What is the first thing you want to do when you get back to land?

(For this there were only two answers among the group – eat a salad, and go for a walk – but refer to the caption below…)

mini-IMG_2572 — The real “first thing” everyone did when they got to land – try to get online!

Presenting Our Results, PART 2: Team Science

I think the word team should be used more often to describe science, and this expedition just proved me right on that idea. We have multiple teams onboard: Chemistry, Meteorology, Ice, Hydrology, Technology, and the Summer School. Each of those teams has a team leader, and all of those teams work together. Each team reported on what they have accomplished, and here is our report card for you too!

mini-IMG_0633 — John Kemp of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, on the Tech team, reported that all 5 ITPs (ice-tethered profilers) deployed during the expedition are already successfully sending data to be analyzed.

mini-IMG_1252 — Irina Repina of the Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Russia, team leader of the Meteo team, talked about the successful observational study of the boundary layer between the atmosphere and the ocean/sea ice by comparing two different instruments onboard, the MTP-5 (Meteorological Temperature Profiler) and radiosonde weather balloon instruments.

mini-IMG_1373 — Andrey Masanov of the Arctic Antrarctic Research Institute (AARI) in Russia, and Ice team leader, spoke about the ice observations on the expedition. Ice conditions during the cruise were characterized by the existence of a well-pronounced marginal ice zone (MIZ), which separated zones of consolidated pack ice with 100% concentration and open water areas. This caused specific issues during operation: high seas in the open water and thick heavy ice in the ice zones.

mini-IMG_1141 — Sergey Kirillov, also from AARI and Hydro team leader, said they had successfully taken 15tons of water samples during the expedition, that the team has been, and will continue to analyze to explore and better understand vertical mixing and heat transport from the Atlantic to the Arctic.

mini-Ice core group — Alice Orlich of the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and instructor of the NABOS Summer School, talked about the ASSIST Sea Ice Observational Program, and successfully leading students in making observations of an ice thickness transect (of course this was a highlight for students, since it involved being on the ice).

Cape Arktichesky — Rob Rember, also from IARC and Chem team leader, gave some impressive statistics of the successes of the chemistry team onboard. Over the 116 CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) casts, they were able to take literally thousands of measurements of water samples taken by the CTD – salinity, nutrients, dissolved oxygen, nitrates, methane, dissolved organic matter, chlorophyll, and more. He also shared these colorful and intricate preliminary results, so I can sum it up for you (see below for more details about how this image works – click the image for a larger view).

Imagine getting a cross-section view of the ocean, from surface to sea floor – that it what you see here. You can see the water coming from the St. Anna Trough (from the left), and in the temperature graph, two distinct water masses – the red is the warmer water from the Fram Strait (which connects the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans), and the blue is water from the Barents Sea coming out of the St. Anna Trough. Now look at the Oxygen graph, and notice how the oxygen levels vary for those two water masses – the blue here is the Barents Sea water, which is splitting the Fram Strait water (in pink) into two bands. Now, transmission refers to the percentage of light that reaches a target as it passes through water. Here you can see the water in green has low transmission – it is near the shore and all those particles mixed in the water block more of that laser beam. The take-away message here? Patterns are clear. Next steps? Where is the heat going in the picture – up? Down? To the side? More analysis to come at home!

To be continued with student projects, and my projects too…!

Presenting Our Results, PART 1: Success by the Numbers

On our last full day of the expedition, we all “gathered round the campfire” (in our case, in the cafeteria/dining hall onboard) so everyone could share results of what they had accomplished during the expedition – and what their plans were for continuing to analyze data and carry on collaborating even after everyone is back home. Our Chief Scientist on the expedition, Vladimir Ivanov, started our round of final presentations with some statistics on this National Science Foundation-funded NABOS (Nansen and Amundsen Basins Observational System) expedition:

5726 – Miles covered
116 – CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) casts
7890 – Chemical samples taken
49 – XBT/XCTD (expendable CTDs) launched
1 – Glider launched
5 – ITP (ice-tethered profiler) buoys deployed
1 – O-buoy deployed
1 – IMB (ice-mass balance) buoy deployed
20 – Meteo (meteorology) buoys deployed
29 – Days of continuous registration of sea-air interaction patterns
47 – Radiosondes launched
10 – Boundary layer measurements on the ice
55 – Lectures given

Impressed yet? He continued with the overall summary of the expedition. Here are just a few things checked off the list of successes:

…Work Plan for the NABOS 2013 expedition aboard the Akademik Fedorov? Check.
…Obtain scientific results and prove the efficiency of the NABOS observational strategy (which combines autonomous anchored moorings and adjoining CTD transects)? Check.
…Create a multi-disciplinary and international research team by joining scientists from multiple countries and research institutes? Check.
…Include a NABOS Summer School component on the expedition, for early-career scientists and PhD students to take part in climate research firsthand? Check.

To be continued…!

mini-IMG_2592 — Vladimir Alexeev (Director, NABOS Summer School), me, and Vladimir Ivanov (NABOS Chief Scientist)

mini-IMG_2583 — Some of the science team, who made it all happen

mini-IMG_1782 — The Summer School group, who also helped make it all happen

Family Photos!

At the end of the expedition, it is only fitting that we have a “family photo,” also known as “the group photo of the entire team who made the expedition a success.” We all gathered at the biggest open space on the ship, on the huge heli-deck, and here we are! (Plus a few more as we were all on the deck, and then as were all finally back on land!)

Check back, some of our expedition results and “report card” still to come! (Hint: Keyword = success)

mini-mini-DSC104 — The big “family photo”

mini-IMG_2343 — Representing the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

mini-IMG_2352 — Some Summer School students giving Director Vladimir Alexeev a lift.

LAND!

Today we saw land for the first time in 5 weeks, and will be stepping on solid ground! As soon as land appeared in the distance, people flocked to the helideck and the top deck of the ship to watch the land get closer, the details and colors in the rocks and plants become more vivid, and even watch the “little” Norwegian boat motor out to us to drop off a pilot to help steer our huge ship back into port. I was remembering how I saw people react when we first saw ice, as I watched people’s reactions and smiles to seeing land. Here are some of the reactions I saw and heard:

Land!
I don’t want the expedition to be over.
Look at the colors – it changed seasons while we were gone!
This was an incredible time.
It’s so beautiful!
Even the Sun is welcoming us back.
And… silence (for those who just stared at the view of the expedition ending and home getting closer)
And… giddy smiles and laughter! 🙂

BUT DON’T GO AWAY JUST YET!
I HAVE SOME PLANE RIDES IN FRONT OF ME NOW, BUT CHECK BACK ON THE BLOG, BECAUSE I’LL HAVE OUR BIG GROUP PORTRAIT TO SHOW YOU, AND SOME RESULTS OF ALL THE INCREDIBLE SCIENCE AND PROJECTS FROM THE EXPEDITION TOO!
(Not to mention if “dockrock” – the reverse of “seasick” – is actually a real thing…)

STAY TUNED!

Blog without Internet Access? Here’s How I Did It!

Here’s the nutshell: we have not had internet or mobile phones – AT ALL – on this expedition. I think I may have made this whole blog process look easy from the other side, with all the photos and stories I’ve sent. But let me tell you the whole story. As I said the other day when we had “technical difficulties” and I couldn’t post anything but that small note, we have been in one of the most remote areas of the Earth. So, how have I been getting these posts out to you? Teamwork! Every day, I have been listening to scientists, watching experiments, asking questions, taking pictures, writing stories, and replying to all of your questions from the previous day (I also make sure to get input from the scientists for your questions). Then I reduce the size of the photos (by a lot), and put all the blog posts, pictures, Twitter/Instagram posts, and replies to your comments into just ONE document on my laptop. Each day, I take that document on a flashdrive up to my friend Oleg in the radio room, who attaches that document to ONE email – my only email of the day. I insert a sim card that I brought with me on the expedition into the Iridium Satellite Open Port, and wait, and wait, for the email to be sent with the slow connection. And for reference, sending email costs $13 per megabyte. (Next time you attach a beautiful high-resolution, 5megabyte photo or attachment to an email and hit send, look at the size of the email and remember that number – that’s why I reduce the image size by a lot before sending.) So, I send that one email a day to my colleague and friend back home. Then everything is copy/pasted into the blog, Twitter, Instagram, etc, along with all my replies to your comments. And every day, I pick up my incoming email (in paper copy form), with all of the new comments ready to be answered. And I start a new day again!

Imagine this – I have been communicating with you, and creating this blog, and I can’t even see it for myself! How crazy is that? As I said, this place is REMOTE. And nothing works on the ship, or with this blog, without teamwork. In any case, how could it possibly not be worth it to share photos like these with all of you???

Just a fraction of my email “inbox” sprawled over my cabin!

The amazing people, science, and operations onboard – here is when a group of us were lowered by crane onto the frozen ocean to take ice measurements (with expedition Chief Scientist Vladimir Ivanov on deck)

More cool science and operations onboard – here’s when I got to take a water sample from the CTD which scientists had just raised up from over 3000meters deep in the ocean

Even more incredible people, science, and operations onboard – here a mooring is being deployed a couple miles down into the ocean

Still more awesome people – the students in the NABOS Summer School got to see and learn so much firsthand

This amazing ship that we are on, and the environment around us – here the ship was able to crack through ice and we saw this beautiful blue color

Polar bears. Enough said. Photo from Drew Slater

Post from a Scientist: “Night is Day, Day is Night”

Hi again!

The expedition is coming to its end. We are in the Kara Sea as I’m writing this. The sea looks surprisingly empty. I had hoped for shoals of whales and flocks of birds. In reality I briefly glimpsed only one whale. As for the birds… well, it wasn’t so frustrating. I’m a passionate bird-watcher and I added some species to my “virtual collection,” including Glaucous and Sabine’s gulls, as well as short-tailed, long-tailed, and pomarine skuas. There were also some plovers, but I couldn’t recognize them even when one of them visited our helideck one night (and I mean real, astronomic night – it was dark this night).

Speaking about nights and days, the ship time is very confusing. Prof. Ronen Plesser in one of his lectures on astronomy said: “Should you ever see a full moon at noon, something has gone terribly wrong.” I couldn’t help remembering that sentence over and over, when I saw “sunset” at 10 a.m. and “sunrise” at 9 p.m.

One way or another, there is only one day of the trip left, as I write this. Everyone is giving presentations on what they’ve done during that month. Can’t wait!

Cheers from the Arctic,

– Anna Nesterovich

Post from a Scientist: “Installing a Sea Ice Mass Balance Buoy in the Arctic Ocean”

As part of my activities onboard the Akademik Fedorov, I installed a seasonal sea ice mass balance (SIMB) buoy. This buoy was developed at CRREL (Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab) and is used to measure sea ice melt and sea ice growth from both top and bottom. You can check the data this buoy is collecting in real time on this website: http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil if you search for 2013H.

As it was my first buoy deployment ever, I decided to check if everything is working properly. So during the first week of the cruise I connected all the instruments on the helo-deck and got a successful transmission. All was left to do was to wait until we reached the proposed location and deploy the buoy. Due to weather and sea ice complications, we did not get as far north as originally planned. Our vessel, the Akademik Fedorov, can only sustain sea ice less than 2m, and honestly she feels a little easier in less-packed ice. So as we headed north and the sea ice became thick enough for the buoy deployment, we decided to do an ice station on September 3rd, 2013 when our location was at latitude 80degrees 15.7min N, and longitude 155degrees 54min E. Simultaneously to the SIMB we deployed an O-buoy, an ITP (ice-tethered profiler) and a met-buoy. The O-buoy has a webcam mounted on it and as it was the first one to be deployed, it recorded the process of the SIMB installation. I wish I had internet access to see the footage!

Me with all the instruments on the helo-deck, Photo from Masha Tsukernik

A completed buoy looks like a pipe, standing perpendicular to the sea ice cover, with the majority of its length underwater (remember that when ice floats on the surface of the ocean the majority of its mass is underwater). Initially we drilled a 2-inch hole to measure the ice floe thickness. It was 140cm thick with a 5cm snow layer on top – an ideal thickness for our buoy deployment. We then drilled a 10inch hole for an actual buoy to be deployed in. The anchor goes in first – we held it with a metal rod while we attached the rest of the pipe to it. Without the pipe, the anchor would have sunk, but the overall density of the buoy makes it buoyant, and ensures that it floats. The SIMB has a simple design, to ensure a novice like me can deploy it in the field. However, it does help to be prepared – a set of tools, such as a flathead and a Philips screwdriver, electrical tape, a knife, and a power drill, will speed up the installation dramatically. Luckily I had our cruise technicians around and could borrow their tools and expertise. It also helps to have extra hands around – balancing a long pipe as you lower it down into the hole is rather awkward if you only have one or two people around.

A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from my mom. She went to the buoy website and was able to obtain new measurements. It turns out that it was snowing on the sea ice floe where we left the buoy – about 3cm of new snow has accumulated over the first week. At the same time, sea ice has been melting from the bottom! The bottom melt has traditionally been overlooked as it is really hard to observe. However, it is believed to be an important contributor to sea ice changes in the Arctic. Buoys like SIMB help us understand the processes important for sea ice mass balance in greater detail.

– Masha Tsukernik