We just celebrated 3 birthdays here on the ship, and we have one more birthday to celebrate now, as of September 10. Our ship, the Akademik Fedorov, just turned 26 years old! She has served nobly as the main research vessel of the Russian Arctic and Antarctic programs, and continues to make expeditions to the Arctic as well as annual expeditions to Antarctica. Lots and lots of scientists who hail from all over the world have called her their temporary home over those 26 years, and I could not begin to guess the number of nautical miles she has traveled, nor the number of moorings, CTD casts, and other experiments that have taken place onboard – not to mention all of the things we have learned about the polar environment because she was able to crack through the ice to get there. (And as I have said, she was even the ship that went all the way to the North Pole to plant the Russian flag on the seafloor.) Here’s to a safe and productive ending to this journey, and many more to come!
The Akademik Fedorov, from my vantage point out on the frozen ocean that she has safely navigated
Standing on the ice by a newly-deployed ice-tethered profiler; from left, Meri, Eric, jake, Tobias, Ioana, Kensuke, and Vladimir (NABOS Summer School Director). Photo from Tobias Wolf
As we have been headed in and out of the sea ice, groups of students have been working with Alice Orlich, an ice researcher and one of the instructors of the NABOS Summer School taking place onboard, to record ice conditions along our track.
The first thing you do in “ice obs” is use your eyes. Ioana, Sveta, and I went up with Alice to the top level of the ship to get the best view. First, we get the full view and feel of the weather and the ice. A panoramic scan of the icescape is captured in pictures around the ship: forward (the bow), left (portside), and right (starboard). Then the next cool task is to enter the “bridge” where the Captain and crew navigate the ship. There is even the wooden “steering wheel” as you might expect to see on a ship – however this one is surrounded by a long panel that stretches the whole width of the ship, with electronic instruments, levers, and radar screens constantly monitoring the sea and ice conditions surrounding the ship. (FYI, it is ship protocol to be very quiet on the bridge so as not to disrupt the serious responsibilities of navigation – no one seems to talk, unless necessary.) We employ the ASSIST (Arctic Shipborne Sea Ice Standardization Tool) software to input the visual observations, which is done hourly while we’re in ice conditions. This is where an incredibly detailed observation system kicks in – to identify the type and percent concentration of the primary, secondary, and tertiary ice present, but also many other physical characteristics and processes that help researchers study the role of sea ice in the ocean, ice and atmospheric system, and aid navigators with a more complete record of the current ice conditions. There are places in the system to input other environmental variables, such as weather conditions, visibility levels, the swell and waves on the ocean, and wildlife sightings. If you want to learn more about the international effort to standardize shipborne sea ice observations in the Arctic via the Ice Watch program – or to see our data from today, and other ASSIST data, visit http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/icewatch.
Alice, Ioana, and Sveta (and me) on the bridge, doing ice obs
The view from the bridge provides a perch about 21meters above the ocean surface, making it convenient to spend long hours contemplating the subtleties of the weather, ice, and sea characteristics along the ship track. Observers are mesmerized by features such as ice thickness, stage of melt, and depth of snow cover, which are revealed as the ship breaks through and overturns or displaces the ice.
Photo from Alice Orlich
This screen shot of the ship’s RADAR shows the 4nautical miles (nm) of ocean and ice surface around the ship, at the center. Each ring is spaced at 1nm, and our heading is 335°, or NNE (North/North-East). The hourly ice observation estimates ice conditions within 1nm of the ship, and here we had approximately 80% total concentration, and the two darkest areas are open water “leads” (ice-free openings).
As the ship cracks apart an ice floe, as in the photo above, the thinner area is fractured, including the teal-colored “melt pond.” The different shades of color on the bottom of the pond define varying thicknesses of the ice. The ridge to the right of the melt pond marks where this ice converged with thicker ice (where you can see the more resilient bright blue pond).
Photo from Alice Orlich
At this time of year, areas of open water begin to fill with new ice growth. In the photo above, “grease ice” is forming along the edge of the ice floe in the upper right (notice the matte band between the ice and the water). “Dark nilas” (ice less than 5cm thick) is seen at the lower left, and the wind mixes the falling snow into ribbons of slush in the lower right of the open water lead.
Within a few hours, we reached the ice edge, where winds and ocean swells and waves had broken apart and sorted ice floes and brash (brash is broken-down, loose pieces of ice). Notice in the photo below the relatively continuous pattern of level, first year ice floes (that formed during the 2012-2013 ice growth season), separated by the soup of brash ice. The dark sky above the open water is actually the reflection of the water onto the underside of the cloud layer. This phenomenon is known as “water sky.” Do you think that might have helped mariners find open water in the days before radar?
I didn’t tell you yet about a super cool instrument that was deployed out on the ice the day we got to get off the ship and walk on the ice ourselves. So let’s “return to the ice” for a minute. (I still can’t get over these photos – they look like they belong in a nature or science magazine, but we were actually there!) Irina Repina’s group installed a Meteorological, or “Met” Tower on the ice, and in the photo you can see Irina and her team working on it. Here’s how this one works: it measures wind speed and direction in 3 dimensions (using a sonic anemometer), as well as temperature. The idea is that they can then calculate the turbulent fluxes (in other words, the heat and momentum exchange) acting at the boundary between the ice and the atmosphere. One of the different things about this installation, as compared with the buoys I told you about before, is that we leave the buoys there to take measurements long after we leave, and the Met Tower was put up then taken down before we left. So it only took measurements for about 6 or 7 hours, while people were physically on the ice – and there is a good reason for that. As you can imagine, the ship is its own source of heat and turbulence, so these measurements need can only be done out on the ice!
Irina and her team of scientists, setting up the tower. On top is the sonic anemometer
Irina and her science team out on the ice, working on the tower
Irina and her team of students working with her during the onboard Summer School. From left: Anna, Svetlana, Maria, Ekaterina, Irina, Irina Repina, and Elena
Summer School is not only about attending lectures and learning from the professors, but also about learning from each other. We have all been invited to give talks on our research projects or other topics which are important to us. Yesterday I gave a presentation about some of the tools which we oceanographers use to gather our data. Perhaps you would be interested in these topics as well? Warning: I am a biological oceanographer, and this affects the way I use certain tools and what samples I’m most interested in.
Our first tool is the ship we sail on – this beautiful creation of steel + human ingenuity that allows us to reach the wild regions we have chosen to study.
The next most versatile tool, which is shared between many different disciplines of Oceanography, is known simply as the CTD (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth) profiler. But that is far from all it does. While the simplest version of the CTD can be operated on its own and return just those three variables, the one we have on board is much more exciting. The CTD is deployed as part of the ‘Rosette’ – a cylindrical steel cage with 24 big plastic water bottles bolted to the frame. These 10 liter water bottles are known as “niskins” and they are what allow us to bring water samples back up from different depths. Below and around them, our various instruments are also bolted to the frame:
Me and the CTD
Conductivity: a sensor which measures the ability of the water to conduct an electrical current, from which we are able to derive the salinity of the water parcel. Salinity is a great natural tracer, and combined with temperature, will give us the density of water. These 3 characteristics can serve as a ‘passport’ and allow us to pinpoint the origin (river, sea, glacier, ocean basin etc) of the water.
Oxygen: a sensor which measures the amount of oxygen in the water – this is useful for biological studies and can also be used as an origin tracer in some special cases.
Temperature: How hot or cold the water is – water has what we call a “high heat capacity,” meaning that it takes a long time to warm it up and a long time to cool it down. This property is what allows us to use temperature as an origin tracer. It is also interesting from a biological standpoint because every critter in the ocean has a range of temperatures in which it will survive better than others. So knowing the temperature of a body of water can help you figure out what lives there.
The conductivity, temperature, and oxygen sensors are here at the lower part of the CTD
PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation, aka sunlight): Scientists like fancy names and acronyms – but it can get annoying too I know. This little white bulb measures how much light is in the water at any given depth. This can tell us how far down photosynthesis (plants making food from sunlight) can happen, and at what point plants and animals change to different survival methods (that don’t require light).
ADCP: Acoustic Doppler Current profiler – This instrument is for physics mostly. It uses the Doppler effect (like when you hear a fire engine coming from far away and the sound seems to get louder/speed up as it passes you and then slows down as it gets farther away) to measure how fast, and in which direction, the water is moving at each depth. This can help us calculate how much water is moving through a given area, and how currents interact with each other.
The upward-looking ADCP – there is another at the bottom of the rosette looking downward
Depth (pressure + altimeter): These are a pair of really quite important instruments which work together. The pressure sensor measures how far our instruments are from the surface of the water – we use this to know when we want to take a sample. The Altimeter bounces sound waves off the bottom of the ocean to tell us how close we are to hitting the bottom. With so many expensive instruments on the Rosette, NO ONE wants to hit the bottom and risk breaking anything. In shallow water and calm seas, you can get within 5 meters of the bottom and be safe. Out here in the deep, and without perfect maps, we stay 30 meters off the bottom just to make sure we don’t hit any unexpected rock spires.
Transmissometer: Super awesome, it shoots a beam of light from one end of a tube, and catches it at the other and measures how much of the light beam actually got through. From that we can calculate how much stuff is in the water. Depending on how cool your particular model is, it might be able to tell you if the stuff is sediment particles (dirt) or plankton (cells & other biology) based on the way the light beam scatters.
The transmissometer
The key to good science is good record keeping. As we send all these nifty instruments down to the bottom, we write down the latitude and longitude of our station, the time, the date, the weather outside, how deep the bottom is and how deep we’re going, the depth of the first layer of water (which is typically denoted by a rapid change in density known as the pycnocline), the depth of any interesting features in the profile, and the depth where we close each water bottle to get a sample. We also record what further samples (like salinity, nutrients, chlorophyll-a, oxygen isotopes, etc) we will take from which niskin bottle. I could go on, but I think you have enough to process for today. As always, let us know what sparks your curiosity, and we’ll answer you as best and as fast as we can!
To continue yesterday’s note about rocky water: rocky has become rockier. As I’m writing, we are at 80°N latitude, 107°E longitude, with air temperatures of -1°C, and water temperatures of 0°C (and windy). Before I even left my cabin, I was looking out the porthole – seeing the waves and whitecaps, noticing how the level of the water seemed to go up and down as the ship swayed side to side, and holding onto the wall to I didn’t lose balance. And… WHOOSH! Water splashed up across the window. I can tell you, that makes you appreciate the power of the ocean. Then when we all arrived at the first lecture of the day (and after duct taping the projector to the table), we got some warnings: go back to your cabin and secure anything that could fall… don’t wear flip-flops on the ship… don’t walk with an open laptop … close/open doors using the handles only (i.e. don’t wrap your fingers around the door itself)… and, don’t go outside. We are also not able to do any CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) measurements of the ocean in these conditions, because the water is too rocky to be able to securely lower an instrument into the water on a cable. We’re on our way north again, and I think we’re all looking forward to the bumpy rumbling, but relatively stable, movement through the ice again!
This was taken from inside – and this perspective does NOT do the waves justice!
At what rate will the Arctic sea ice melt if we double the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? By observing the world, the only way to answer this question would be to keep on emitting such gases, and to see what happens. Doing such a one-time experiment with the real climate system is probably not the best way to proceed (although this is exactly what we are doing now – think about that).
Climate models offer an alternative to this real world experiment. A model is a simplified representation of a part of the climate system. They are usually so complex that we need super-computers to produce and analyze their results. In models, we control everything: we can restart experiments whenever we want, we can do experiments with the continents or the Sun removed, we can do experiments in the future … To put it in a nutshell, we can do EVERYTHING!
We have models for the ocean, atmosphere, land, sea ice, glaciers… Each of these systems is already complicated by itself to represent, but even greater difficulties arise when we have to make them exist together (as we say: to “couple” them). For instance, water must be transmitted from the atmosphere to the ocean or the land when it rains, and water must be sent back to the atmosphere through evaporation.
I work with an ocean and sea ice coupled model called NEMO-LIM3. Ocean and sea ice exchange momentum (e.g., ocean currents tend to drag rapidly moving ice), heat (e.g., warm waters melt ice from below) and salt (e.g., when seawater freezes to form sea ice, only a small fraction of the salt contained in the seawater is enclosed in the ice – the remaining salt is released into the ocean). My job is to refine the representation of the ocean and sea ice interactions in the model. I am especially interested in understanding how the exchanges between ice and water affect the upper layers of the ocean, and how this feeds back on sea ice.
One enjoyable aspect of international science is the exposure to many and varied cultures. Our hosts on the Akademik Fedorov have taken us on a culinary journey to Eastern Europe and beyond, with meals being the typical home-style fare of Russia. There are four meals per day; Breakfast (7:30am), Lunch (11:30am, the main meal of the day), Afternoon Tea (3:30pm) and Supper (7:30pm).
Grain-based porridges such as semolina have appeared for breakfast, as have a selection of cheeses and cold meats. There is usually a large slab of butter on the table along with light and dark breads, plus at least one type of preserves or jam. On occasion, eggs have been prepared fried or very hard boiled for the morning meal.
Afternoon teas have ranged from sweet sugar buns with raisins, to baked cottage cheese cake, to a simple bowl of cornflakes with milk, all the way through to smoked fish with fried potatoes. Apples, oranges, pears or grapefruits have been added as an accompaniment. Breakfast and afternoon tea feature a hefty metal kettle at the end of each table for tea or coffee.
Lunch and supper both feature a soup as the starter. The soups are typically hearty, highlighting items such as onions, mushrooms, and potatoes, and often a meat is included for extra flavor. The traditional beetroot-based soup of borscht has been served up once or twice in proper style, of course, with small dabs of sour cream floating amongst the crimson. A glass of compote (a drink derived from stewed fruits) is also served with lunch and supper. For some NABOS participants, dishes such as beef tongue in a sauce of sour cream, onions and pungent garlic is quite an adventure in dining. Other meals are not so exotic but maintain a cultural twist, such as simple sausages are served with boiled buckwheat.
As I described in the previous post, I led a science communication workshop onboard as part of the Portal to the Public initiative, and challenged the scientists to design an activity that would illustrate their research to the public. Here are some things we did in the workshop to get everyone’s ideas going.
To showcase the point that everyone brings their own perspective to any situation, I passed around a “thing-a-ma-bob” and asked everyone to complete a few sentences. What do you think this is in the photo?
Caption: Does this “thing-a-ma-bob” remind you of anything? Can you guess how it might work?
Here are just a few of the scientists’ responses:
The first word that came to mind was: “mechanical clockwork toy”… “Easter egg surprise”… “vehicle with scissors”… It reminds me of: “a bicycle”… “steampunk firebug”… “my little train model when I was a child”… I’m curious about: “who made it and why”… “how long it will spin after a full turn”… “can the sparks light a fire”… I know this about how it works: “spring force”… “friction”… “clockwork”… There’s proof that people “see” different things, even when looking at the same thing!
One of the other challenges of the workshop – take some colored pencils, and draw your research in pictures. When I first presented the activity, I saw lots of nervous expressions, which eventually melted away as everyone got some momentum on their thoughts and drawings.
Tobias, Alena, and Drew hard at work on their drawingsAnna and Eric creating their own scientific artworkIoana and Sveta drawing their research
I have over 20 pieces of artwork from the workshop, and here are just a few of the many spectacular drawings! The caption under each photo is the “simple statement about your research” that I asked the scientists to write to accompany their drawings. I can’t wait to see what they come up with for their activities!
I try to make our model show us real things that happen in nature.How do electromagnetic waves from the Earth influence the ionospheric plasma?I study the relationship between sea ice and the atmosphere.More accurate weather forecasts are possible when a model includes up-to-date weather.I try to reconstruct the paleoclimate based on preferences of modern diatoms.
There is understanding, and then there is communicating, and both are important. Scientists are of course incredibly intelligent people, who can analyze complex systems like climate, and problem-solve nearly anything. But sometimes, communicating that complex science to the general public can in a way be almost more challenging than the science itself, because it is a different kind of skill. As I have mentioned previously on the blog, the Miami Science Museum has recently joined a nationwide network of science centers on an initiative called Portal to the Public. Led by the Pacific Science Center and funded by the National Science Foundation, the goal is to work with scientists on strategies for communicating their research to the public. Making personal connections, appreciating different audience’s perspectives, designing meaningful activities – these really are skills. Portal to the Public is a pretty sweet deal for all involved – scientists improve upon or gain a new skill and maybe even see their research through new eyes, and the public learns about current science from the people living it. So at the end of the day, we may just inspire some next generation scientists.
As one of the Instructors on the NABOS Summer School taking place onboard the expedition, I have been leading the science communication outreach efforts. One of those efforts is of course what you are reading right now! After my first Portal to the Public workshop early on in the expedition, scientists have been incorporating some of those strategies into blog entries that they have written and I have posted for you (these blog posts are entitled “Post from a Scientist”). They have also been helping me with how best to respond to the hundreds of questions that students from Miami and around the world have been posting on the blog. And now I have just led a second Portal to the Public workshop, with perhaps the most challenging goal of all (next to understanding the Earth’s climate system of course). The challenge is for each scientist to design a hands-on activity for the public that illustrates their own research. Check out the next post to see some of the activities we did during the workshop, to get the juices flowing!
Lija, a scientist onboard, getting a closer look at the ocean she studies. Imagine all the ways you could communicate what’s going on in this picture…
Yesterday, we were “on station” (aka, stopped in one location) to deploy a mooring. If you don’t remember, or for new readers, a mooring is an AMAZING operation in which they use this huge red apparatus (in the photo below) with a system of pulleys and gears to lower instruments into the ocean. And when I say lower, I mean LOWER. All the way to the bottom. In this case, we were in a mid-range depth, at about 1,300meters. By the end of the mooring deployment, which takes a few hours, there is an anchor on the seafloor, and a vertical cable that reaches up to about 50meters of the surface. Along the cable are instruments that will measure salinity (salt content), temperature, and current, until the mooring is retrieved on the next expedition. In the photo you can see a technician sitting to the right (for scale), and a yellow buoyancy sphere that will end up being near the top of the cable to help keep it vertical in the water. You can also see in the photo that the cable is stretched far to the right. It was so windy and the water was sooooo rocky – which you can feel even more when the ship is stopped. I felt a little “off,” but I’m just thankful that I didn’t get officially seasick. But no one walked in a straight line all day – if polar bears are a danger when you’re off-board, doors and walls are a danger onboard! At one point I walked into a room, everyone was quietly working, and I proceeded to walk right into a chair which then loudly scooted across the floor. Only me.
Deploying a mooring under cloudy skies (clouds are a regular occurrence)The view a few hours later – still rocky seas, but now we’re moving back into the ice!
