Bob's adventures in cold climes

Time to go back for another project!

2011-06-27T23:28:00.005+01:00

I'm back once again in Greenland- in Kangerlussuaq. We arrived this evening and are now safely set up in the Kangerlussuaq International Science Support building.

This season will be a first for me on many fronts- for starters, not going to Summit! In this project, we plan to drill to the bed of the ice sheet near the margin, to investigate the subglacial hydrological system. So we'll be in the margin of the ice sheet (a first for me), at "warm" temperatures, so we will experience a melting surface (sounds like it's slushy up there right now)- another first.

I'll also be working with 6 people with whom I haven't worked in the field before- another first, and to top it all off, although I know a lot about the equipment we are using and the measurements we'll be making, I have never used any of it in the field! ok, then!

Here's a shot from my testing of my new borehole "bed camera". I was taking a photo every minute automatically, and wanted to be taking a picture of something that would always be changing, so I decided to use a clock!

Ok, all for now- tomorrow we fly to Ilullisat, and thence to the ice! I may or may not be able to post from the field, as we will be on a sat-phone data link. Stand by!

Packing up, hopefully flying out!

2010-06-22T21:38:00.002+01:00

Today was a day of packing boxes, getting things ready to be shipped back to Dartmouth. By the middle of the day, we'd gotten our gear all packed and "palletized" which means that it's strapped down to an aluminum Air Force pallet, the basic unit of cargo on the LC-130 aircraft on which we fly. Above, our cargo sits ready on its pallet, waiting for the plane! Once this was done, our team joined the GA pool. GA is short for General Assistant, which means doing odd jobs around camp to help out. Our task was to re-set some flags marking hazardous areas around camp. Job almost complete, we'll work on it more tomorrow while waiting for a plane!

FInal pit of this trip

2010-06-21T23:47:00.001+01:00

Weather today was beautiful, and we started early to help Gifford with his last melt experiment pit of the season. In addition, it was Gifford's turn to "house mouse" (see my post from 2006 about this duty), so I worked on many of his chores while he worked the pit, since this is really his experiment. Above, Gifford cleans the pit wall to prepare for visible and NIR photographs to view stratigraphy.

Stormy day

2010-06-20T22:44:00.000+01:00

No pits of today, as it was really too stormy to do much work outside. But we could still look at our data, and repackage our ice cores, which we did. Long day spent mostly indoors.

More pits!

2010-06-19T23:43:00.000+01:00

Today we dug another pit at a location we call ICESat-Center. This particular pit is the last in a series of pits that Zoe dug while on the traverse from NEEM to Summit. Above, Zoe teaches Gifford the finer points of recording physical stratigraphy in the pit.

More GPS surveying

2010-06-18T23:59:00.000+01:00

Today the winds were pretty high, so it would have been difficult to dig a pit (it would fill in almost as fast as you could dig it out). I spent much of the day working with the science techs, going over the protocol for the GPS surveying they do each month (I posted about this surveying a while ago here). Before we went out, I placed a standalone GPS station (above) to record a very accurate measure of one spot along the transect. This way we can test out other GPS receiver on the sled- processed kinematically- to see how close it gets to the "real" answer for he surface elevation. Despite the high winds, the whole thing went off beautifully, and I came back with many modifications to make to the sampling protocol, a document that outlines exactly the procedures to take for this experiment.

Chemistry sampling in the pits

2010-06-17T22:43:00.002+01:00

Today was another long one. We performed a melt experiment for Gifford, who wants to look at how chemical signals in the snowpack may be alteredin the presence of melt. The day started out at 5, getting up to be out on our snowmachines (loaded, fueled, with some food in us, ready to go) by 6. Gifford and I went out to our site and applied some "artificial melt", snow that he had collected from this site the night before and melted inside the heated structure. Then, since we needed to give the melt time to percolate and refreeze before we sampled, we came back to camp for breakfast. Following that, we went back out and dug a large pit, took near infrared photographs to record the stratigraphy, and collected snow samples to be analyzed for chemistry- one set where melt had been applied, one set in an unaffected region. Above, Gifford and I sample in tandem. It was a long process- we "broke ground" on the pit at around 10 am, and were filling it back in after we'd finished our work around 5pm. We arrived back in camp after dinner around 7:30, ready for a nice hot meal.

North Winds and IT issues

2010-06-16T20:39:00.001+01:00

This morning we woke up at 5, ready to head out to our site for another melt pit, but when I got out of my tent to walk to the Big House, I noticed we had winds from the North, which means no motorized travel- we were stuck in camp for at least the morning.

In some ways this was lucky, as Summit had been experiencing some network problems for the last day or so, and this allowed me to help troubleshoot them. It's a complex system, with a central server and wireless bridges to 10 other structures on station. Troubleshooting took me, Lana the Science tech, Andreas from another science group, and Andrew Young, on the phone from California and also logged in remotely. We finally traced the problem to a faulty ethernet switch, and when we replaced that, we had fixed the problem. This took most of the day, but as the winds were from the North all day, we were stuck in "town" anyway...

GPS surveying

2010-06-15T23:47:00.001+01:00

Today was another long day, getting out to survey the area we are using for satellite altimetry validation. Above, the route we drove with the GPS running. We had a false start when our base-station GPS acted up, but managed to get back out and running by early afternoon. Of course, this meant that we would be having another late night, since we had a finite amount of GPS surveying to do. By the end of it, we were ready to get inside!

Melt percolation experiment

2010-06-14T23:40:00.001+01:00

Today was a long day. Up at 5, Gifford and I left camp at 6 to spread artificially-induced melt over a small area to see if we can determine the effects of melt on the chemistry of the remaining snow- does melt percolation preferentially transport certain chemical species? After we spread the artificial melt, we needed to wait for a while for it to do its thing, so we came back to the camp for breakfast. Unfortunately while we were there, the winds started to come in from the North, meaning no travel on snowmachines. So we were stuck back in camp for a long time waiting for the winds to change. We busied ourselves helping the crew prepare for another core to be drilled for another investigator. When the winds finally shifted for us, we took off, but the sampling in the pit took a long time and we ended up arriving back in camp around midnight. Above, Gifford excavates the pit.

Checking out the GRIP casing

2010-06-13T23:13:00.000+01:00

Today I led a group of 8 folks on a trip to visit the site of another deep ice core, GRIP (A European project contemporary with GISP2). It's about 30 km from Summit, so we had a little drive to get there. My agenda there was simple- measure exactly how much casing still protrudes from the snow (it's 102 cm, in case you are interested). It was a nice, uneventful trip, and all went well. This evening, I gave a Sunday Science lecture to an engaged audience, which was really nice. Tomorrow morning is an early start to work on Gifford's melt experiment.

BOS logging of Owen, setting up thermocouples

2010-06-12T12:31:00.004+01:00

Today was a long day- mainly in the office constructing a set of thermocouple strings and programming the datalogger to measure them for Gifford's melt experiment. Then after dinner we headed out to install the thrmocouple strings and log the Owen boerhole with BOS (we decided to name our core Owen, after our collaborator's new baby boy). It turned into a late night, but the light was beautiful with the sun at a low angle.

Packing up, on to the next task!

2010-06-11T01:21:00.000+01:00

Today we started out by packing up the drill out at the site, and bringing it back, ready for its next tasking, which will be to drill another hole near camp for another experiment. We, however, will be moving on to our next tasks, which involve borehole logging, digging pits, and GPS surveying (more on these later). As I was walking through camp, I saw the Norwegians about to launch their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), so I stopped to see how it went. They are testing the UAV for albedo measurements over the ice sheets. Above, the pilot readies the UAV for launch.

Finished drilling!

2010-06-09T22:16:00.002+01:00

Today we finally finished our 100 meter core. We had a few drill runs in the morning where we were having trouble penetrating, but changing the cutters helped. In the end, our driller Terry reports the following statistics for our drilling operation:

975 minutes of total drilling time (16 & 1/4 hrs) over 3.5 days total site time.
101 runs = with an average of 10.5 minutes per run.
Depth of 10255 cm = an average of 101.5 cm per run

Special thanks to Zach and Dorothy who came along and gave us an extra hand.

Now it's on to the next activities...

Another full day

2010-06-09T00:11:00.002+01:00

No photos from today's drilling, because I was in the clean suit all day, processing core. So I wasn't able to pull out the camera for any shots. But we had another successful day of drilling, reaching 85 meters by the end of the day. Fingers crossed for finishing the hole tomorrow!

More drilling!

2010-06-08T02:44:00.002+01:00

More drilling today! That's about all we did, really, spent the full day out drilling. Above, I hold the drill barrel as Terry tests the motor in preparation for a drilling run. We cranked through the drilling today, reaching a depth of 65 meters, and filling over 4 boxes of core. These are now down in a freezer trench underneath the Big House, where they will stay until it is time to fly them to our lab in Hanover.

Drilling!

2010-06-07T01:37:00.003+01:00

Lots of progress today. Having staged most of our equipment out at the drill site yesterday, we went out this morning to build up the drill and get started drilling. We had a very successful day, getting the drill put together by early afternoon, and even drilling 20 meters of core by the end of the day! Above, Terry, our driller, tends to the controls of the drill. The very top of the drill can be seen as it descends into the hole. Below, Gifford strikes a pose in his Tyvek clean suit. We wear clean suits and clean gloves to handle the core, to avoid contamination from our clothing.

First data of the season!

2010-06-05T23:13:00.002+01:00

A great day today. We brought the rest of our drilling equipment out to the drill site, and got the drill partially assembled. Also, I went along with Liz Morris and her assistant Martin, and we established a new site for science- ICESat-Center. We began a satellite validation experiment there, drilling a shallow hole and looking at shallow stratigraphy using Liz's Neutron density probe, and also my Borehole Optical Stratigraphy system. Above, I get the system ready to lower into the borehole.

2010-06-05T00:44:00.002+01:00

The Beginnings of our drill setup. the large white boxes are known as ISC or core boxes, specially designed to keep ice cores frozen while in transit back to the laboratory for analysis.

Back to Greenland!

2010-06-05T00:26:00.002+01:00

Hello again after a _long_ hiatus! 2008 was the closing year for my previous project, and in the intervening 2 years I've been very busy writing proposals. Fortunately, some of them have been funded, so I will once again be in Cold Climes.

This season my project takes me once again to Summit Station at the top of the Greenland ice sheet. The project involves a traverse from the coast to Summit, and our particular task this season at Summit is to drill a shallow core to help us interpret the measurements we have been collecting along the traverse. So far, there have been a couple of days in transit- yesterday we finally made it to Summit, after flying from upstate New York to Kangerlussuaq, a village on the coast of Greenland. It's been a busy few days with organizing cargo and packing and repacking. But today we finally started staging gear out at our drill site.

An Extended GRIP

2008-07-30T20:29:00.002+01:00

On arriving back at camp, I confered with Kathy, the camp manager, and we decided it was a good day, weatherwise, to make the trip to GRIP, which I needed to do in order to extend the casing of the borehole there.

It was a great day, and in spite of the flat light, we made excellent time on the trip over. The new casing extension was quick and easy to add, so we were quickly on our way again.

The GRIP borehole, over 3000 meters down to bedrock. The blue section is our extension.

On the way back, the light became quite beautiful, and the ride back was very nice. There's something about the flat white, simultaneously featureless and full of the fine detail of sastrugi, that's hard to describe but wonderful. Even harder to capture in a picture, which is why you won't see one attempted here!

Next task is cargo management, and then 2 flights home tomorrow and the next day!

Back from a "road trip"...

2008-07-30T20:14:00.002+01:00

You may have noticed that I haven't posted for a couple of days; this is because I was out at a "remote" (about 7 km) site known as Sandy Site, Zoe Site, or the Johnnyport site.

While there, I was making density measurements in a borehole using a Neutron Probe system. I brought along the PolyPod, which last year we set up for use during gps surveying.

The PolyPod with the logging gear set up next to it. The electronics and laptop for control are inside the PolyPod:

Inside the PolyPod with the logger set up and recording data.

On the evening of the second day I'd finished the logging I could do at the site, so it was time to go home. But then I noticed that the wind was blowing straight from my location towards the Clean Air sector, in which high-sensitivity atmospheric chemistry experiments take place. So after checking in with the main camp and getting a weather forecast, rather than start up my dirty 2-stroke snowmobile and smog the clean air sector, I decided to sit tight for another night and hope the winds changed. They did, and in the morning I headed home with favorable winds.

Weather station excavation

2008-07-27T11:20:00.003+01:00

Today's task was to excavate the weather station that has provided firn temperature profiles throughout the project. The last time I dug it out was in 2006, so we estimated it to be about 2 meters below the surface.

I was very lucky to have the able assistance of Chris, the camp medic, who was willing and even keen to dig for the weather station. I won't mince words- Chris dug the whole thing out! I spent most ot the time disassembling the weather station instruments, and we were even able to excavate the thermistor string which had been lowered 10 meters into a borehole made in the 2004 summer surface. Quite a lot of digging!

Chris at the bottom of the hole. He's moved about 900 kilograms of snow to get there!

boomeranged again, but now arrived!

2008-07-24T00:37:00.001+01:00

Just got to Summit; this morning we got on the plane, took off, flew for 10 minutes before having another mechanical problem; turned around and went back to Kangerlussuaq.

After about an hour of repair and testing, we loaded up again and this time the weather held, the plane stayed together, and we are now at Summit. Now it's getting on with the business of science! Today's tasks are mainly to organize my gear, find my cargo, and get used to the altitude.

Boomerang!

2008-07-23T22:45:00.002+01:00

In this line of work, that's the term for the kind of flight we had today.

up at 04:15 we got our gear on and ready to go; after about an hour of waiting we filed onto the bus to take us to the waiting aircraft. The 2 1/2 hour flight to Summit was uneventful, as we like it to be; but when we got to Summit the wind was too strong and blowing across the skiway. In a crosswind like that landing becomes more dangerous, so we went into a holding pattern to see if the winds would abate or change to a more favorable direction.

After a bout 45 minutes of flying in circles above Summit, our fuel had reached the point that we needed to decide to land or head back. The winds continued unabated, so we had to fly back. All in all about 6 hours of flying, to land back right where we started. Now that's a Boomerang!

We'll try again tomorrow, and hopefully the third time's the charm!

Back for another season!

2008-07-22T21:43:00.003+01:00

I'm back in Greenland for another season- the last for this project. This year the main project objective is to pull out our equipment and pack it for return to the US. Of course there are, as usual, some add-on experiments to do, and so I'll spend some time doing those as well.

For now, we're on weather hold; we flew from New York to Kangerlussuaq yesterday, and were scheduled for a flight to Summit this morning, but after we'd loaded on the plane, the crew were going through the pre-flight checklists and found a problem in one of the engines, so they shut down and we all climbed off and waited on the tarmac while they worked on repairing the engine.

20 minutes later, we'd boarded and were going through the preflight checks again when the weather came in up at Summit; winds of 30 knots, blowing snow, and visibility down to 200 meters.

A plot of wind speed at Summit today; guess when we were on the ground fixing the plane!

So we were cancelled for the day, which allowed me to do some testing of equipment that I've borrowed for one of the add-on experiments. This was successful, so everything's now re-packed and ready to go on the plane. We're scheduled to fly tomorrow morning _very_ early; our bags need to be ready to go by 4 am. It'll be an early night tonight, and hopefully I'll post tomorrow from Summit!

Back to Kangerlussuaq

2007-08-21T22:04:00.000+01:00

Today the plane arrived exactly on time, and in spite of some heavy fog we made it back to Kangerlussuaq. The next steps for me are to arrange for the shipment of my cargo back to Cambridge, and then take the flight to Copenhagen on Thursday, followed by another flight to London on Friday.

And so another season draws to a close. I expect to be back up next summer, for a fairly short stay to pull out my equipment, as this winter will be the last for the project. Stay tuned- I'll keep posting about this or whatever other polar project I'm involved in!

Frustration.

2007-08-20T23:47:00.000+01:00

In my polar research, I often categorize my days using the early polar explorers. On an Amundsen day, everything goes smoothly, things work, and it's all good. A Scott day means a pretty tragic day, where things break, and at the end of the day you're in a worse state than where you started the day. Today was a Shackleton day, in which I didn't manage to collect any data, but at the end of the day I'd managed to get back to the state in which I'd started the day; everyone came back alive.

The goal of the day was to log a borehole drilled by colleagues from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, about 5 km from camp. I'd been given GPS co-ordinates, but in some confusion earlier this season, the flags marking the hole had been removed. The GPS co-ordinates were taken with a handheld GPS receiver, and so were probably good to about 3 meters or so. So I brought a team of carpenters out with me and we covered the area within about 10 meters of the GPS location, using avalanche probes to penetrate the snow and try to find the plywood covering the hole:

Probing for the borehole. Photo by Chico Perales.

To make a long morning short, we didn't find anything. We're now pretty sure that somehow, at some point, the plywood covering the borehole was removed; otherwise we'd have found it with our probes, which had penetrated almost 2 meters, at a spacing of about 15 centimeters, over a 100 square meter area around the borehole location. We felt hard ice layers with the probes and thought we'd identified the area of activity where the drill had been (and feet had packed down the snow there), but no borehole.

Ok, time to shift into backup plan; there were 4 additional boreholes near this site, which were well-flagged. If I couldn't log the same hole from which my colleagues extracted the core, at least I could log one nearby.

So I set out to log the nearby holes, only to discover a major failure with the logging system. The winch simply wouldn't work. Aborting the mission, I went back to the lab to diagnose the problem. It turned out to be a wire that had simply shaken loose sometime in the previous week's travelling:

The broken wire. I managed to solder it back together, and then got the system working again. In the end, I'd returned to where I'd been that morning- no additional data, but at least the system was working correctly again, which is the most important part; this gear is used by the science technicians every month through the winter; had I not tried to do this log, I might not have discovered the broken wire, and that would have possibly cost me the winter's data collection. So in the end, what happenend today was good.

Inspection of the GRIP casing

2007-08-19T15:00:00.000+01:00

The video inspection of the GRIP casing went very well. The casing is completely intact, right down to the ice plug we have known about since 1996. There was a bit of snow on the walls of the casing in some places, but not very much. In all these images the depth in the upper left corner is nominally feet.

A typical casing joint in the shallower regions of the casing. No noticable damage here.

A typical casing joint in the seeper sections of the casing. Snow on the joint is evident, but it doesn't look like there's any buckling. Seems like maybe this casing is a stronger kind of fiberglass.

The ice plug, right where we expected to find it. In past seasons when wanting to do a deep log, we've brought a large, heavy piece of steel and used it as a battering ram to break the ice plug apart so that we could get logging tools in and out. Of course, since we didn't have tools to fish out the broken pieces, it re-forms again soon after our operations are completed.

Getting to GRIP with it

2007-08-18T19:46:00.000+01:00

Today I went to GRIP to inspect the casing of the borehole there. It's always a popular destination, and this time I brought 7 other folks from camp- they were happy to get out and about!

Logging the GRIP borehole to inspect the casing.

I'll post the results of the survey later when I've processed the video, but the first look indicates that the casing is completely intact, with none of the buckling we saw in the GISP2 borehole. The survey was cut short by a plug of ice which has formed about at the fluid level, and which in past seasons we'd had to break through with a heavy weight. The plug looked pretty solid! Pictures of it soon.

GPS surveying

2007-08-18T00:47:00.001+01:00

Well, the winds were slightly better today, and we're now in crunch time, so we had to do our work today, even though the winds were light.

So today, we went out and surveyed 121 snow accumulation stakes, and hauled a GPS survey sled behind us the whole way, to measure the precise topography of our route.

Howie, science tech, measures the difference betwen the actual snow surface and the bottom of our GPS sled. This is important for constraining the exact surface height within centimeters.

OUr survey was successful, largely because of the time I was able to take yesterday refining the technique we used.

Here's the GPS survey sled (the 'pod') in action. The small disc mounted on top in the rear is the GPS antenna.

Tomorrow, we'll go to GRIP to survey they casing there to see if there's any damage. Hoping for good weather!

The North wind that blows no good...

2007-08-16T23:54:00.000+01:00

This morning the winds were from the North. This is a bad thing for Science at Summit, because there are a large number of "clean" chemistry experiments here, lookging at snow chemistry and air chemistry, all depending on the prevailing Southerly wind to keep the exhaust from camp from blowing into the "Clean air" sector, which is to the South of camp.

When the wind is from the North, many Camp operations shut down. We'd planned to move much of the wummer cargo to the winter-over berm today, but this would have required the use of the Cat forklift, and heavy equipment does not operate on North wind days.

The Cat forklift and the Argo sit motionless, keeping thier exhaust from fouling the clean air sector.

This also caused a change in schedule for science- we'd planned to take some snowmachines to survey a long accumulation and surface topography line outside of camp, but with the North wind we didn't want to run any engines if we could avoid it, even just to get out of camp.

The wind isn't enough to push our new wind generator...

By the afternoon, the wind had died entirely. This is still not enough to operate the equipment, as we want at least 3 knots of wind from the south, to carry the exhaust away.

I took advantage of the lull to test our GPS equipment and work on the protocols for a new GPS surveying experiment, which we'll try to perform tomorrow.

So, better luck tomorrow. The forecast is for more of the same, but we'll be pressed for time- camp will "close" a week from today, leaving the winter-over crew of just 4 souls for the next 3 months!

But the real purpose of this trip...

2007-08-16T01:00:00.001+01:00

Was to come up and train the new phase 1 winter science technicians. Today we finally made space in their busy training schedule for us to go out to my borehole site and do some training with the video logging gear.

Here the new science techs Howie and Kathy are bringing the camera back up to the surface. Howie is watching for the camera to emerge from the hole, and Kathy is running the winch and keeping an eye on the video and depth counter signals. They did a great job, and I'm confident that they'll have a good, productive season and collect good data for not only me, but over 20 other investigators with experiments ranging from atmospheric sampling to snow chemistry.

Further Borehole Inspection...

2007-08-15T00:47:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I inspected the newly-drilled DISC borehole casing and my battery lasted far longer than it had on my previous GISP2 inspection. So today I decided to attempt to reach the fluid in the GISP2 borehole, to see the extent of any other damage, and to see if pieces of casing were afloat on the fluid.

Here's a section that is so damaged I'm surprised any tools were able to fit down the hole last time we were here logging, in 2004.

This example is typical of the state of many of the casing joints. There's some damage, but it's not too bad.

Here is the casing just above the fluid level. My old logbooks indicate that tools have definitely snagged here on the way up...

And at last I made it to the fluid. It was a little unnerving- when I stopped the winch the camera continued to creep downhole, because of the amount of weight on the cable; I had to quickly hit the brake to keep the camera from splashing down! Not sure if that is casing bits on top or not. Any ideas?

House Mouse, take 2

2007-08-13T21:08:00.000+01:00

Here at Summit, we take turns being the "House Mouse". The House Mouse takes care of things like dishes, cleaning up the building, etc. I was house mouse today, and so didn't get much done, aside from some improvements to my logging box. I posted about this duty a year ago, complete with pictures. I didn't take any pics of me doing dishes today, so check out my previous post (link above) for details and a picture...

More science tomorow!

Borehole Inspection

2007-08-12T18:07:00.000+01:00

Well, I've finally used my first borehole camera for the purpoose for which it was originally designed: pipe inspection. We had reason to suspect the integrity of the GISP2 casing, both because instruments had snagged in the casing in the past, and also because GPS measurements of the height of the casing indicated that the top of the casing was sinking faster than we would expect, if the casing was locked-in to the firn at its base.

So this season I brought a second camera system, based on an old downhole camera and winch, with the intention of looking at the casing from the inside. Yesterday I put the camera in the borehole to see what we could see.

It wasn't very long before we ran into the first irregularities:

This looks like what you might expect if the casing is getting compressed along its axis; the joints in the casing are flare joints, and the piece of casing going into the flare gets fractured and forced into the pipe.

A closer view of the same.

After making the decision to move past this damaged section of casing, I came to the next damaged section:

This on isn't as bad as the first, but will probably get worse over time.

Then the third:

And then I found a strange thing- what I think must be a piece of fiber from the fiberglass tube, dangling down the hole:

And beyond that, more compressional damage:

Not long after this point, the battery in the camera died, so I had to return to the surface. I have a second battery pack, which seems to last longer. Perhaps I'll go down again with the better battery, and see if I can make it all the way down to the fluid! I did that this afternoon at the DISC borehole, drilled 2 seasons ago for testing purposes.

Starting to tick things off...

2007-08-10T23:46:00.000+01:00

Sorry no pics today, but I forgot to bring the camera when I went out to download the data from the Automated Weather Station (AWS). But that's the first task truly checked off: the AWS is still running perfectly, 4 years after installation. Another task I worked on today was resurrecting an old borheole camera system, not used in years, so that we can use it to inspect the casing of the GISP2 borehole. We have reason to believe the casing may be getting crushed because it's locked into several places in the firn, which is compacting and attempting to compact the casing with it. More news on that when I get closer to doing the inspection!

Arrived at Summit!

2007-08-09T23:51:00.000+01:00

Well, there you have it. The summit flight this morning went off without a hitch. We carried a massive triple-length pallet onboard, stacked with construction materials for the camp, with my Green Logging Box perched jauntily on top. We also carried 7 additional passengers who were on a "turnaround" flight, folks who work with the program in different roles who would get a tour of camp and then take the same flight back to Kangerlussuaq.

Once in camp, after greeting old friends and being introduced to some new faces, I started parsing my cargo into the various locations it needed to be: computer and tools in my lab, sleeping bag and clothes in the tent, toiletries in the Bighouse. I've been hydrating to help me acclimatize- although the actual elevation here is around 10,000 feet, the thinning of the atmosphere near the poles makes the altitude feel more like 13,000.

The best surprise of the day was to see the Pod. This is a new sled/portable survival hut which was brought in for the winter crew to take on the monthly 10 km traverse to measure snow accumulation and surface elevation:

Even better for me, we'll be able to mount GPS equipment on the Pod, which means that the science techs will only have to haul one sled with them on the traverse, and better still, I don't have to build a custom sled to carry the GPS, a task which I'd given myself several months ago. One item almost checked off my list already, and I haven't even been here a full day yet!

There (to Narsarsuak, then Raven) and back again.

2007-08-09T00:13:00.000+01:00

In the morning, the weather looked poor at Raven, so it turned out to be a fine thing that we were going to fly to Narsarsuak first. We loaded up on the plane, and headed south, carrying, in addition to Steve, me, and our gear for Raven, 2 members of the G-NET team who were to be setting up continuous- monitoring GPS stations in the area, along with about 8,000 pounds of thier equipment.

The flight to Narsarsuak went smoothly, with mostly no particular scenery, but when we got close to Narsarsuak we came down through the clouds and there were some very nice glaciers to see. in particular we noticed one with a peculiar set of moraines:

Here you can see that there are 2 tributary glaciers 'feeding' the main trunk of the glacier, but the moraines tell an interesting story: The tributaries must be stagnating, because otherwise the moraines where they join the main glacier would not be straight across as they are, but would arch out into the main glacier, as can be seen in this picture.

We landed and offloaded our cargo and passengers in Narsarsuak, not without the standard delays one might expect when one needs a forklift to unload the plane. When we got ready to depart, the pilots told us that they were not optimistic about our chances to get into Raven, but that we'd try anyway. Not seeing anything through the small portholes, I began to think we might make it when I saw the loadmaster, who had direct communications with the pilot through his headset, change from his eyeglasses to his sunglasses, and start fastening the cuffs of his flightsuit.

We landed, and arrived at Raven, population 2:

Those 2 are Drew and Silver, who welcomed us warmly, gave us fuel, supplies, and food, and helped us on our way.

We first went to my site, about 5 km from Raven, where I made my video measurements. At the same location (or rather, around 100 yards upwind), Steve started taking his samples. We finished that site and moved to a location 10 km from camp, where Steve took some more samples.

Steve's looking at soot, or balck carbon, concentration in the snow. Such soot may not turn the snow black, may be hardly notable by the eye, but has a strong affect on the albedo of the snow, a measure of how much radiant energy is returned.

Steve is collecting snow samples in ball canning jars. He plans to melt them , filter them, and look for signs of soot.

We wen to one final site, 20 km from camp, collected samples, and headed for home, where Drew and Silver were waiting for us with a wondeful coconut curry. We had dinner, chatted a but and caught up (last time I'd seen Drew and Silver was 2 years ago), and went to bed. In the morning, a plane came, did some takeoffs and landings for practice, and then took us back to Kangerlussuaq, from where I write this.

Tomorrow morning, weather permitting (again), it'll be off to Summit!

Repairs and packing

2007-08-06T23:23:00.000+01:00

Sorry, no decent pictures today, but then there wouldn't have been much to see. Today was a day for checking out my equipment and getting gear ready for tomorrow's flight to Raven. The science techs did a great job packing my gear, and noted where there was a loose connection for the video data, so I was able to pull the system apart and solder in a new wire with little fuss.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we fly to Raven, via Narsarsuak. Might be a nice flight, with some good views; on the other hand, we might get scrubbed by weather at either of 2 locations- frequent readers of this blog will note that it does indeed happen. Anyway, stay tuned- if I don't post tomorrow evening, it means I made it to Raven and am getting to work!

Arrived in Greenland!

2007-08-05T22:49:00.000+01:00

Well, I've made it to Greenland once again. One night in Copenhagen, then by a miracle of jet engines and time zones, we flew away from Copenhagen at 09:25 this morning, and arrived in Kangerlussuaq at 09:45 this morning. Odd, huh? But I sure am JetLagged!

I've got today and tomorrow to get my gear ready to head to Raven on Tuesday, so I mostly took it easy today, repacking a few boxes and arranging a few things. Tomorrow I'll test out the logging gear lately arrived from Summit, and make 'final' preparations for the trip to Raven. Apparently we're heading to Narsarsuak, at the Southern tip of Greenland, to drop off some cargo before heading up to Raven. Should be an interesting flight, with hopefully some good views.

In the afternoon, I went with Ed Stockard, logistics man of mystery, paraglider pilot, and photographer extraordinaire, to see if he could get some good photos of a Peregrine Falcon he knew of. We drove out of town a ways and then set out on foot. After about 15 minutes of walking, we were warned by the falcon that we were getting close. We climbed up a little and Ed set up his camera to see if he could get a good shot.

I didn't get any good Falcon photos, but Ed's got some good ones over at his his flickr photo page. The view was excellent from where we were, though the falcon was swooping down at us. We took some photos and then went on our way.

Getting ready to head back once again...

2007-07-30T14:04:00.000+01:00

Hey Folks. It's been quite a while since the last season- almost a year! Well, this year we're extending the project by a year, since the science technicians were able to get such good data last winter, so that we can collect 2 winters' worth of solid data.

For those of you just joining us, my current project aims to measure the compaction of the upper layers of the ice sheet at Summit and Raven camps in Greenland, and the seasonal changes in compaction rates. To do this, we send a video camera down a borehole once a month, using the images of the wall to track features in the borehole wall as they move from one month to the next.

A screenshot of my in-house software for analyzing a video log. The camera s looking straight down, and you can see the walls to the side (it's a very wide-angle lense). Clearly visible are the ice layers. This is from a borehole at Raven camp, where there is significant melt. Higher up on the ice sheet, at Summit, you wouldn't see such striking features, but with this post-processing software, we can resolve many features to track.

We do this in 4 boreholes each month throughout the year. I should point out that it's the Science Technicians who do the grunt work most of the year, braving the -60c temperatures which seem to penetrate clothing and make most any piece of equipment stop working. I travel to Summit and Raven each summer to repair the gear that's been broken, make improvements to the system based on feedback from the techs, make similar measurements at Raven, and train the new crew of science techs, who rotate out every 3 months.

Anyway, stay tuned, I leave Cambridge for Greenland on August 4, stopping for a night in Copenhagen on the way. See you again soon!

AMNH Science Bulletin online!

2007-05-16T10:13:00.000+01:00

This is all very exciting- the documentary we were filming with the American Museum of Natural History is finished. It's part of their Science Bulletins series. It's now online, and if you are near NYC, you can see it on the big screen, as it will be playing in the Hall of Planet Earth (not sure how long it will run). The crew did an amazing job; I'm impressed with how they were able to edit so much footage down into a 7-minute film.

well, with no further ado, here it is. You can play it directly in this page by hitting (you guessed it) Play, but if you want to see a larger version (and why wouldn't you?), go directly to the AMNH page for it: http://sciencebulletins.amnh.org/?sid=e.f.melting_ice.20070514&src=e.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped make this film happen! There are too many of you to list but look at the acknowledgements at the end of the film for some key players.

Heading home again

2006-09-18T23:14:00.000+01:00

Today I fly to Copenhagen, spend one night there, and then fly to London for a bus to Cambridge tomorrow. It'll be good to get home to see my family again, my wife Suzanne and our daughter Olivia.

Then the real work will begin, as I work on getting my new processing software together and processing all of this data! But for now, I'll leave with a pic I've been showing off to my friends here:

Olivia in her cute bonnet, sent by Grandma Steffens. For more of her adventures in baby-hood, check out her blog!

Back from Raven...

2006-08-23T22:49:00.000+01:00

In the morning, I awoke to fine, cool weather. This was very good news, as if I was going to make it home on schedule (always good if you have a 10 month old daughter at home), I needed to get back to Kangerlussuaq today.

After enjoying some fresh home-roasted coffee that I'd brought for Mark and Lou (they generously shared with me!), we set about getting cargo ready for the plane, which was planning to come in, on schedule, midmorning. When we got out to the flightline, Mark was ready in the Piston Bully, waiting to haul pallets out to the plane to be loaded.

Mark in the Piston Bully.

The plane landed, and following the Golden Rule of getting places in the polar regions ("If the aircraft lands, get on it!"), I got on it. An uneventful flight brought me back to Kangerlussuaq, where Sparky regaled me with tales of yesterday's Jakobshavn glacier flight. Apparently they'd harnessed the cameraman and a loadmaster, and opened up the rear door and ramp as they flew low over the glacier, so the cameraman could film out through the back unobstructed. It sounded like a spectacular flight, and I was sorry to have missed it, but glad I was able to get my science done in good time. Now it's just get my cargo sorted, bring it to Air Greenland, and get on the plane home tomorrow!

Actually making it out to Raven!

2006-08-22T23:12:00.000+01:00

Actually got out to Raven today, but not without some drama...

When waiting for a ride to the field in Kangerlussuaq, the first thing I usually do in the morning is wander down to the office to see what the weather's like at my intended destination. This morning the weather was pretty similar to recent days, too warm to make me confident, but it had cooled quite a bit overnight, so it looked like we might go. With optimisim I went and grabbed some breakfast. On my return, I found Sparky (Mark Begnaud, VPR Construction Manager) on the satphone with Mark Albershardt, who'd called in to say that the Spryte, a tracked vehicle they use for grooming the skiway, had just died in the middle of the skiway. They were running through scenarios of what had gone wrong and how they might move it so a plane could come in.

To make a long, coffee-fueled couple of hours short, in the end Mark and Lou managed to get the Spryte off the skiway, and weather was holding, so we headed out to the plane. In addition to me and the film crew, we had the US ambassador to Denmark, his personal assistant, and his 2 bodyguards coming along for the ride, to see Raven camp and get a nice scenic flight down Jacobshavn glacier. From the start the pilot told me that if they had trouble getting off, I'd be spending the night, and if we got to the skiway and they didn't like the look of it, they might not even land at all. No worries, I said, just hoping to get on the ground. As soon as we took off it was clear that this pilot wanted to show the film crew some spectacular scenery, as he flew "the long way" along the ice edge before turning inland to head up to Raven. WIth now window to look out of, I was never sure if we'd be landing until the skis touched down. Yes! made it!

We offloaded the cargo and I was met at the back of the plane by Lou, who always has an infectious smile.

Lou, Geared up for talking to the airplane.

I loaded up my snowmachine and wasted no time in heading out to my site, as if they came back I'd have no time to spare. My work went smoothly, and I was done in a couple of hours. Although I was 5 km away, I could hear the plane trying to take off, as they taxied back and forth along the skiway, trying to get up enough speed to fire the JATO boosters.

I began to wonder 1) if I'd finish my work in time to get back on the plane, and 2) if they'd all be spending the night! But after an hour or so I heard the unmistakable sound of a flying herc. I knew before Lou called me to let me know, that I'd be spending the night. Lou and Mark cooked up some fine burgers, and we had a lovely evening, and then went off to sleep after a very long day for all.

More logging, more filming, back to Kangerlussuaq, but no Jakobshavn Glacier!

2006-08-21T23:10:00.000+01:00

So, as advertised, we were up at dawn this morning (well, not really at dawn, as the sun only dipped below the horizon briefly during the night...) for more logging and filming. I'd finished the training for the science techs last night, so I was working alone this morning. I extended the casings on each borehole (they are buried by the new snow that falls each year), and finished logging the rest of the holes as the film crew got lots of good footage. It was perfect for filming, because I was doing almost exactly the same thing at 3 different boreholes, so there were lots of opportunities for them. I still ended up doing things multiple times for the camera, but that's the way it is in the film business!

I finish up the logging as the cameras roll.

As usual, it was then a rush to get all our stuff packed before the plane arrived, and we had another mad dash on a snowmachine out to the skiway in an attempt to catch the plane landing, but to no avail, as they landed farther up the skiway than we could get in the time we had.

So after about 18 hours, we said goodbye to Summit again. Unfortunately, the weather over the Jacobshavn glacier was bad, so we didn't even try to fly over it on the way home; there would have been nothing to see anyway!

Now the real question on everyones mind is: will we get out to Raven? The weather there has continued to be warm and the surface has been soft. But there has been a prediction of cooling for the next day or two, so we are hopeful. Even if we do get in, it's likely that anyone who gets off the plane will stay the night, and the plane could also get stuck. Since the film crew needs to be back on the rotator flight on Wednesday, they won't be able to come out to my site with me. So, the plan for tomorrow: Flight to Raven, the film crew hop off for a few minutes to shoot unloading the plane, and the plane takes off, flies down the Jakobshavn glacier while I do my work at Raven, and then comes back to pick me up. They've already told me that if they have trouble getting off the skiway when they drop me off, they won't be coming back for me, so I've got everything I need to be comfortable overnight. And of course there's still the possiblity that we get scrubbed altogether for tomorrow, if the weather at Raven doesn't cool off or if visibility is poor. Fingers crossed!

The plan worked!

2006-08-20T23:56:00.000+01:00

This morning we had some luck yet again- we made it to Summit! Hope it lasts.

It wasn't without the standard amount of wondering if we were actually going to get called to go, waiting for another hour, speculating on what decisions may or may not get made (it turns out that people waiting for an airplane in the polar regions develop a keen interest and expertise in meterology, aviation, and psychology!)...

But in the end we got up to Summit, and immediately borowed a snowmachine to see if we could get some good footage of the plane taking off:

The crew set up at the side of the skiway, shooting the plane as it taxis downwind.

We then had some dinner and got ready to go out and do some actual science! In this case, the plan was for me to complete the training of the science techs, which would make good material for the film crew. I'd started training the techs while we were stuck in Kangerlussuaq, which was a great help. We ended up working and shooting until about 11. The current plan is to fly back tomorrow around mid-day, following the Jacobshavn glacier which can have some pretty spectacular scenery for filming. There's more to do here though, so we'll get up eeeearly tomorrow to finish it up before the flight arrives.

As usual, it's really great to see all the folks here who have become good friends over the years. Wish I had more time to catch up with them!

Russell Glacier, and another permutation of the plan...

2006-08-20T03:36:00.000+01:00

Today dawned overcast with rain. It seemed that things weren't looking too good for a trip to Russell Glacier, as shooting in the rain isn't too high on anybody's list.

So we didn't head out first thing in the morning. This gave me a chance to catch up with the plans that the National Guard had started making for flights this week, and we weere able to come up with the next plan. Now, the goal is to fly to Summit tomorrow, then back from Summit the next day, and hopefully turn right around and fly to Raven that same day. This makes the shooting schedule tight, but at least I can get it all done. This is all contingent on having another plane with skis fly up from New york tomorrow, because the guard wants to have a second plane with skis available for search and rescue if anything goes wrong. This plane will perhaps fly around midday tomorrow, so our flight to Summit would launch around then as well.

But today we did indeed go to the Russell glacier, just after lunch. It turned out to be a very successful day of shooting. It's late, so I won't go too much into it now, but at the end of our shooting we still hadn't gotten much of the way of falling ice, so we decided to wait 10 minutes more, and trained the camera on a particularly active piece of ice. 2 minutes later a huge chunk of ice fell off and crumbled. It was a very spectacular scene, and we got it all on tape, as the camera was pointed straight at it. wahoo! Now we're hoping that was a harbinger of good luck to come, rather than that used up all our luck for the trip! we'll know more tomorrow.

An afternoon interview, with Russell Glacier in the background.

The plans they are a changin'

2006-08-18T13:49:00.000+01:00

Well, it didn't take long for the ambitious schedule for this week to start to change. On my arrival yesterday I was met at the airport by VPR's Ed Stockard. When I asked him how things were going, he responded- "Well, do you want me to just say 'fine', or do you want the real story?" I knew at once that our carefully-laid plans were soon to be in transition.

The 109th Air National Guard planes were still grounded with mechanical problems, and so wouldn't be arriving that day. This gave me a little more time to do some repairs on my equipment, but also threw a wrench into our plans. Now, 2 planes should arrive today, but only one with skis, and without a second ski-equipped plane for rescue if something goes wrong, we won't be flying anywhere until we have another ski-equipped plane available. This is likely to be Sunday at the earliest.

So the trip to the Russell Glacier that we'd planned for later in the week has been moved to tomorrow, since it only requires a truck, which we do have. It's all about using our time as efficiently as possible. After that, the plan, with any luck, will continue to follow as closely as possible to the original plan, with us flying to Raven, then to Summit, and eventually back here. I have yet to meet with the film crew, so I don't know quite what they are wanting yet in terms of shots.

More later as the plan evolves!

Headed back for Fall, with a film crew!

2006-08-04T14:45:00.000+01:00

I've had some time now in both Seattle and Cambridge, and am now gearing up for the coming August trip. One of the things I've been doing is building a control panel for the camcorder and depth counter, using some bits of electronics and a pic 16f84a microcontroller (many thanks to the assembly code from David Mead that I hacked for this project).

The finished control panel- it'll get installed on the electronics box for this winter, so the science technicians will be able to keep the box closed while outdoors; I think it's a good improvement!

While I was in Seattle, I was contacted by someone from the American Museum of Natural History. They want to do a short documentary (for Science Bulletins on glaciers, sea level, and climate, and they want to feature my work with Borehole Optical Stratigraphy. Far out!

So for the past few weeks I've been planning and co-ordinating to get the AMNH film crew of 4 and all their gear to Greenland to do some filming during this upcoming trip. All this amid a surprise grounding of the LC-130 hercules aircraft that we use to get into the field, with troubles in teh wing fuel tanks. So there were some days when we weren't sure if the trip would go ahead for sure at all, but now it looks like a go. More when I get to the field!

To Kangerlussuaq, then home

2006-06-09T19:03:00.000+01:00

With all my work at Summit and more completed, I flew to Kangerlussuaq 2 days ago. After washing some clothes, getting a shower, and arranging my things for my return this August, I set about trying to do some good around Kangerlussuaq.

The shop at Summit, with Sundogs. Sundogs are atmospheric optics created by ice crystals in the atmosphere.

Here in Kangerlussuaq, today we took a trip out to see the Russel Glacier, one of the outlet glaciers at the edge of the ice sheet. It was a 30 minute drive and then about a 40 minute hike, and the glacier was fantastic.

The Russell Glacier. As we watched, a decent-sized chunk of it fell off and into the river below.

From here, it's back to the states, for some time in Seattle working on my University of Washington research. Then back to Cambridge. Then, in August, I'll be back on the ice for a whirlwind weeks tour of Kangerlussuaq, Raven, and Summit- tune in then!

Medical Preparedness

2006-06-06T00:07:00.000+01:00

Today saw the enactment of an emergency medical drill. Our new British guests were apparently cooking in their shelter when the stove malfunctioned and then exploded, leaving them with possible carbon monoxide poisoning and several burns. The medical team swung into action, with several certified Emergency Medical Technicians in camp.

Katie Hess and Pat Smith treat John, who is unconscious and possibly suffering from CO poisioning.

Within an hour or so, the casualties had been treated, decisions made regarding evacuation, and the incident was picked apart to see what things went well and what things could be done better next time. Practice makes perfect!

Search and recovery

2006-06-04T18:23:00.000+01:00

On Friday, science technicians Katie and Jeff launched an Ozone Sonde, a balloon which carries an instrument package up through the atmosphere, measuring the amount of ozone, the air temperature, and relative humidity, among other things. The sonde relays its data back to the ground with radio telemetry as it rises up to and through the stratosphere. Eventually, the balloon rises so high that it bursts, and a parachute carries it back to the ground.

Katie had been able to watch the balloon all the way until it burst, and she'd estimated the angle between the balloon and the horizon, so she was able to calculate, using some trigonometry and the altitude the sonde reported as it burst, the distance from Summit where the sonde should have fallen. We also knew which direction to ogo. These sondes are worth several hundred dollars, and it was a beautiful afternoon, so we decided to see if we could find it. To make a long story short, we did!

Katie celebrates her discovery of the ozone sonde, the small box at her feet.

This was something like finding a needle in a haystack, as a light dusting of snow had come in overnight. The balloon was white, and the box was white except for some red duct tape. The parachute was orange, but in the snow it was dificult to see:

The parachute under snow. Katie's eagle eyes saw the sonde box first- nice work Katie!

Mission of Opportunity II

2006-06-04T12:01:00.000+01:00

With Liz's arrival, I'm able to use her neutron density probe to measure densities in the same borehole I ran my Borehole Optical Stratigraphy log in yesterday. Since the probe moves very slowly, it was going to be a long day, so I was up at 5 and out to the site by about 7.

Here's the neutron logging setup; the entire system runs off batteries and solar panels, a real boon when you're on a traverse as Liz has been.

The logging went uneventfully, and actually went faster than I'd anticipated, so I had time to measure part of the borehole again.

For lunch, I'd brought some leftovers. With no microwave, of course, I devised something of a solar oven with my snowmobile windshield and black parka:

Soaking up the solar radiation, my lunch was warm in about 1/2 hour- a
nice treat!

Arrival of the British!

2006-06-03T00:08:00.000+01:00

Today Liz Morris and John Pailthorpe arrived at Summit after more than 30 days traversing on snowmobiles from close to the West coast of Greenland.

This is actually a picture of Liz arriving at Summit 2 years ago, as they arrived a little earlier than I'd expected and I didn't have my camera...

It's great to see Liz and John, and they're happy to have hot showers, fresh food, and some new company after over a month on traverse!

Liz has also agreed to lend me her Neutron Density probe (see my Svalbard trip for more discussion of how that works), so I'll be doing some logging tomorrow morning, bright and early!

A mission of opportunity!

2006-06-02T02:52:00.000+01:00

Short post this evening, because I'm just back from a late-ish night out at a site several kilomaters away. A group here at Summit has been drilling a core and sampling firn gasses for the past week, and today they finished drilling. For me, anytime there's a borehole available, it makes sense to log it, because the more data I have the more things I might be able to do, and it only takes a short time to log a 100m hole. So this evening after dinner I loaded up the sled and went out to the site, and logged the fresh borehole.

The camera descends into the borehole.

It was a nice night, although it felt a bit chilly (it's about -23c as I write this) while standing around as the camera descended. Since we were going in the evening, I invited Sarah, the cook, along to help and see the sights. Cooks rarely get an opportunity to get out of camp or see science in action because they work in the kitchen all day, and Sarah had a great time. Thanks for coming Sarah!

A Mouse in the House

2006-05-30T23:58:00.000+01:00

At Summit, there is no designated dishwasher or cleaner. Instead, everyone in camp takes turns doing the cleaning chores. It's called being the "House Mouse", and today it was my turn. When you wash dishes for 35 or so people, it turns into quite a job, and along with vacuuming, wiping down tables, mopping, taking out the trash, and all the other standard little chores that keep a house clean, it takes up most of the day.

Here I'm in the scullery, finishing up the lunch dishes. The white counter at the front of the scullery gets filled with dishes by the end of each meal.

Snow traffic control

2006-05-30T01:32:00.000+01:00

Today was mostly an office day, analysing data and planning changes in the sampling protocols for the science techs to follow when I'm gone.

One of the more interesting things I got to do today, though, was play snow traffic controller. One of my colleagues, Liz Morris from the Scott Polar Research Institute, is on a snowmobile traverse with an assistant, and will be arriving at Summit later this week. We talked to her on the phone today and since she is coming from the South, a direct route into camp would take her through the clean air sector, where atmospheric sampling takes place and we never drive motorized equipment.

So I gave her a slightly longer route that will avoid the clean air sector. I plotted it out:

Here you can see Summit as the red star, and the skiway as the blue line next to it. GRIP, an old European drilling camp, is the blue star to the right. Liz's last sampling location on the traverse is T41, at the lower right. Between the end of the summit skiway and GRIP is almost a road, as people have visited GRIP a couple of times this season already. So I've given Liz a route that intersects the GRIP 'road' and heads to the skiway, then to camp. This way she'll avoid the clean air zone directly south of camp.

Another pit!

2006-05-28T21:49:00.000+01:00

Most of yesterday was spent working on making improvements to my borehole logging system, not a very photogenic activity. Today, however, I helped Lora dig another pit. We drove about 7 km from camp, to the center of a satellite pixel (she's doing a satellite validation study), and dug a _big_ pit. I estimated from the volume of the put and the density of the snow that we moved about 1000 kg of snow out of, and then back into, the pit. Sore back muscles!

One of the things we did was measure the snow density. To do this, we have a special 'density cutter' that I push into the wall of the snowpit:

putting the cutter into the wall. You can see the square-shaped holes left where I've already taken samples.

We know the volume of the cutter, so all we need to do, since density is mass per unit volume, is weigh the sample of snow we just cut out:

Weighing a snow density sample.

Once we've done that down the full depth of the pit, we have a density profile! This is useful for a wide range of applications, since the properties of snow (for example the thermal properties we were also measuring) frequently depend on the snow density.

Tomorrow will probably be another day of upgrading the borheole logging system, but maybe I'll get some photographs in- we'll see!

Working the Pit

2006-05-26T23:40:00.000+01:00

I realized that the pit I'd dug yesterday could be put to use for other science. So I suggested to Lora Koenig, of the University of Washington, that she might like to use the pit to test her instrumentation. So I went out and helped her. We measured density, grain size, stratigrahy, thermal conductivity, and used a radiometer to characterize the microwave emmissivity of the snow for satellite ground truthing.

Lora measures thermal conductivity in the snow pit.

We finished the pit in time for me to put the finishing touches on the weather station, so now it's all ready for the next two years, when I'll dig it up again. The camp cooks made pizza for dinner tonight, which was very well received!

I dig weather stations

2006-05-26T00:36:00.000+01:00

My main task for today was to get a start on raising my weather station. I'd installed it 2 years ago, and with the high accumulation at Summit, it's getting buried. The electronics are all in a box under the snow, and the only things visible at the surface were the anemometer for measuring wind speed and direction, the thermistor for measuring air temperature, and the solar panel to keep the batteries charged.

The buried weather station. The flat green bit is the solar panel, which was about 1.5 meters off the surface when I installed the station. Can you guess why I would mount it facing down?

In the morning I downloaded all the data from the station, and checked to see that it was all in order. Then it was time for digging. I'd carefully made a diagram when I inastalled the station, so I knew exactly where to dig. A couple of hours later I'd found my box!

At the bottom of the pit with the datalogger electronics.

I brought everything up to the surface, and then was about to fill in the pit, when I realized at least one more scientist at Summit might want to make measurements in it; the pit's already dug! So tomorrow I'll help Lora with some conductivity measurements, then fill in the pit, re-bury the box just beneath the surface, and it'll be ready to go for another 2 years!

A whirlwind start to the Greenland season.

2006-05-25T00:57:00.000+01:00

Getting out of town:

Getting everything ready for this trip happened quickly. I had one
week between returning from Svalbard and shipping my gear to
Greenland. In addition, I still needed one test run for my Physical
Qualification (PQ), which NSF requires of all participants in the
Arctic and Antarctic programs. The TB test, as usual, was negative,
so I'd faxed the results to the NSF doctor and figured it was now just
a matter of time for my PQ to come through. Then 3 days before we
were to leave, I got an email from the NSF medical office- they were
missing one blood test. I'd had so many blood tests that the nurse
drawing blood from my arm had to use 13 vials to collect it all. When
the results came, I just sent them all in, but didn't see that one was
missing amid the rest.

This could put a serious damper on my season, as I won't be able to
stay at Summit if the PQ doesn't come through. I investigate with my
doctor, and it turns out a consent form had not been signed for the
tests and so they weren't done. We quickly sign the form and get it
started, but the tests will take a few days. I'll keep calling
them. I call them every couple of days while in transit, each time
hoping for the news that the results have come in, but each time it's
the same answer: no results yet.

I spend a day flying West to East, and my backpack misses a tight
connection in Dulles. I explain to the baggage handlers that I'm
flying to Greenland in the morning (at 5:30) and that I'd really like
to have the bag. I can manage without it, but I'd prefer to have it,
all the same. They'll see what they can do. I get to sleep, and
then at 1:30 the phone rings; my backpack has arrived. I go down and
get it and then go back to bed. 3 hours later my alarm wakes me for
the flight to Kangerlussuaq.

To Raven- 4th time's the charm!

After an uneventful flight to Kangerlussuaq, followed by some cargo work in the
evening, this morning I got up and got ready for the trip out to Raven. My
first orfder of business was to call England to see if my lab tests
have shown up yet- no word, so I'll try again when I get back
tomorrow.

My "showtime" for the flight was 9:30, so I came down packed and ready
to go. There was some time waiting, but then the call came to hurry
to the plane. On the plane, strapped in, ready to go, and then one by
one I heard the engines shutting down. Usually they leave on the
auxiliary power unit (APU), but this shut down as well, and I knew
something was amiss. Then all the lights went out, and I heard the
words "exit the aircraft"- we all got off pretty quickly!

It turned out that there was a possible fault with the wing de-icing
heaters, and that one of them might be overheating. Since the fuel is
also stored in the wings, this would be bad. As they were working on
diagnosing the problem, someone smelled that 'hot' smell, so we
evacuated the aircraft and all gathered away from it while we waited
for the fire crew to arrive. After we had the all-clear, we later
learned that the sensor was probably faulty, and the smell might have
been the exhaust of a passing poorly-tuned pickup truck. So we went
back for another try. This time there seemed to be a problem with the
generator on the #1 engine, so we skipped that attempt as well. In the
end, that mission was scrubbed and my gear and I were transferred to
the next plane headed to Raven, but I got there nonetheless.

At Raven I met Mark and Lou, old friends and the current residents of
Raven. It's always to see them. I quickly got all the additional
gear I needed, and got going.

Mark and Lou at the 'helm' of raven camp.

A big grin forms on my face as I drive out into the flat white
untracked snow. This is the part I love. I arrive, find my sites,
add casing to the holes, log them, finish by 9pm and head back to
camp. I had a lovely dinner with Mark & Lou, then showed off some
photos of my daughter Olivia, then went to bed.

Next day:

I awake at Raven, have a nice breakfast and coffee with Lou and Mark.
The plane arrives. I head back to Kanger, then set to work dealing
with the medical. Now the lab is done with my bloodtests, but they
haven't sent it to my doctor yet. More phone calls, and at the last
minute (it's 5:30 pm British time) the fax comes through- the blood
test results, and as we knew, I don't have hepatitis :). Then the
race is to get the results to NSF medical, so I can be PQ'd for the
flight tomorow. A few faxes and emails later, I'm pronounced good to
go, so we're on for tomorrow. Then I do some re-packing and catch up
with some old classmates Ginny and Tom. It was great to see them, if even only for a short time. Now off to Summit, More on that tomorow!

Packing up, signing off!

2006-05-01T20:01:00.000+01:00

Well, we've reached the tail end of another field trip. Today I've been packing up, but had enough time to walk up on the largest fuel tank and take a few pictures.

Ny-Alesund from above.

It was clear enough that I had a pretty good view of Kronebreen, the glacier "next door" to the Kongsvagen:

In a colder year, we would be able to drive over the sea ice to get to the glacier more easily.

Well, It's been a great week. In the morning I'll be flying home. It'll be good to see Suzanne and Olivia again.

My next field work will be in a couple of weeks in Greenland. Tune in then, different polar field location, same web address!

Belated report on the L O N G day on the Kongsvagen...

2006-05-01T19:17:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening (or more porperly this morning), we arrived from the Kongsvagen and I was too tired to create a post. Here's a rundown on what we did:

In the morning we saw that the weather was favorable for a trip to the Kongsvagen, so we loaded our sleds, made some big sandwiches to bring, filled our thermoses with tea, and headed out. Almost imediately we discovered a new meltwater stream had formed across our planned route. Fortunately this was not difficult to circumvent.

This time, instead of trying to go where we were stopped by water last time, we picked our way through the moraines higher up. This involved some tricky driving to avoid the bigger rocks.

Riding through the moraines. Photo by John Burkhart.

There were plenty of slopes we had to drive across, which can be difficult if you have a heavy snowmachine or a loaded sled. On one of these, a snowmachine slid down the slope and turned over. Once we'd righted it, our attempt to get it back up the slope ended with the snowmachine spinning its track in water, getting no traction at all.

Another sunken snowmobile.

Once we'd freed it, we dug a road for the rest of the snowmobiles to avoid the same hazard. We had no further mishaps on that spot, so we could move on to the next trouble spot. After some more shoveling and moving some of the bigger rocks, we were able to clear this obstacle as well. On to the glacier! Then it was smooth sailing to out study site.

The fog had come in, and we started our work, drilling a shallow ice core:

Ola working with the core.

And logging two boreholes. We also ran ground-penetrating radar, GPS surveys, snow depth sounding surveys, and placed corner reflectors above the snow surface, in anticipation of an overflight by an airplane carrying a radar altimeter and a laser scanner. The reflectors will help to calibrate the radar.

The corner reflector at stake 8.

After many hours, our work was done and we could finally head for home. This involved retracing our steps over the same obstacles we'd traversed on the way out, but this time tired from a long day of work! We managed to clear all the trouble spots with no difficulty, but then I noticed a flickering light on the dashboard of my snowmobile; it was running out of oil! This would be an easy way to burn up the engine, so I stopped immediately and we discussed the options. We were very close to home, and really wanted to get home without having to leave the snowmachine there. Finally we had the idea of using a tube to suck some oil out of another machine to put it in mine. This managed to get some oil in both the snowmachine and Ola's mouth! Fortunately, our Fearless Leader Jack had planned ahead and handed over several very strong mints.

In the end, the weather was clearing as we rode in, and we were treated to some of the beautiful scenery as we came into town at almost 2am. It had been a long day, and we were happy to be back.

Coming home is always a treat. Photo by John Burkhart.

Made it to Kongsvagen!

2006-05-01T01:56:00.000+01:00

Well, I fianlly made it out to Kongsvagen today. It was a really long day (Not sure what the time zone of the timestamp on the post is, but we returned to Ny-Alesund about 2 am. It's 24 hour sunlight here though, so it doesn't make a difference for visiblity...

there are lots of stories from today's trip, but I won't tell them here, or even show any pictures- because I'm going to bed! I'm TIRED. more later. zzzzzzzz.

Midre Lovebreen- Day 3

2006-04-29T20:59:00.000+01:00

Well, it seems quite a thing to get out 3 days in a row in this weather! Today we went to Midre Lovebreen again, to finish what we'd set out to do yesterday. We had a slightly later start (it _is_ saturday, after all), but got out and started driling. The wind started to pick up, and the snow started to come down. Put them both together and it becomes a bit more difficult to work. We were able to get our core drilled and the log started, and since it was no picnic outside, we piled into the logging tent to have a picnic inside!

Knut, Kirsty, and Pascual (L-R) have lunch in the relative calm of the tent.

I didn't take too many pictures outside, but I decided to try to make a short movie with my digital camera to try to convey some of the way the wind was. This is my first try embedding a quicktime movie in the blog, but lets try:

Press play on the lower left to start. Note that the wind is fairly loud- if you have, say, a napping baby nearby, you might want to turn your speakers down first.

If this isn't working for you, try downloading it directly:
CLICK FOR MOVIE (8 MB download)

in the end, we got the core, got the log, and because of all the snow, we're scheduled to go out on the Kongsvagen tomorrow- fingers crossed!

Another day on Midre Lovebreen

2006-04-28T23:04:00.000+01:00

It was fairly warm again last night, but it didn't rain much, so we were confident we could get back out to Midre Lovenbreen again. The plan today was to collect some radar profiles, drill a shallow core, and make 2 density logs.

The first step in any day, after getting packed up and loaded on our sleds is to drive to the edge of town, stop, and load our rifles. We always have to carry these in case of Polar Bears.

The surface was a little softer than yesterday, but we all made it up onto the galcier without any trouble.

After drilling an exploratory hole, the next step was to make radar measurements:

Getting the C-band radar set up on the sled.

Then we set up the logging system and got the density log started. While we ran the log, we also got started drilling the core.

The view of drilling operations from the logging tent.

After about 3 meters of coring, we were not getting very good core quality, which makes the core difficult to analyze. Because of this, we decided to come back with some new drill gear, which we hope will collect a better core. By this time it was late afternoon, and a core takes many hours to drill, so we'll have to do this tomorrow. Still, we got a good density log and radar profiles. Right now it's raining pretty hard, though, which might make getting out tomorrow difficult. The temperature is supposed to drop tomorrow, so we hope to get some snow on the route to the Kongsvagen, maybe enabling us to get out there Sunday. fingers crossed!

Actually getting out on a glacier! `

2006-04-27T21:27:00.000+01:00

Well, it wasn't the Kongsvagen, which is my principle objective in Svalbard, but today we actually got out on a glacier and made some measurements. Since the Kongsvagen is proving so difficult to get to, today we decided to take the neutron probe up to Midre Lovenbreen, a glacier very near Ny-Alesund. Since the route was on the north side of the mountains, it was far less slushy and we were able to get up on the glacier with little trouble. We went all the way up the glacier right near the head, in the accumulation area. The weather was beautiful, as was the view!

We started by making some radar measurements, then drilled a shallow borehole and set up the neutron logging system.

The neutron logging system, up and running on Midre Levenbreen!

The neutrom probe measures snow and ice density. It contains a radioactive source of fast neutrons and a detector for slow neutrons. The fast neutrons emitted form the source shoot out into the snow, and scatter off the water in the snow. In the process, they slow down, and, having been scattered several times, end up back at the detector. The rate of slow neutrons arriving at the detector is thus proportional to the density of the snow.

Since the emission of neutrons is a random process, data needs to be collected for a long time in order to get a statistically significant sample and get quality data. So, the neutron probe runs very slowly up the borehole- about 5cm every minute. Here's a little math exercise- what's that in miles per hour? well, I'll jsut tell you. It's 2x10^-3, sometimes written as 0.002, miles per hour. How slow is that really? When I first started the winch for the log, I was worried I'd broken something because I thought it wasn't moving. It's that slow.

In any case, slow or not, by the end of the day we had 2 density profiles. It's sure nice to have some success!

A day in the office...

2006-04-26T22:45:00.000+01:00

Waiting for cooler weather to prevail and grant us access to the glacier. Last night was very warm, so this morning when we gathered to decide what to do there was no chance that the whole team could to get up to the Kongsvagen. So a team of 3 headed out to attempt a different route to the glacier, travelling light and quick. The rest of us settled in for a day of office work, making sure our batteries stayed charged for the next time we have a chance to get out, and catching up on office work. At least it's a beautiful office to work in, with one of the best views on earth.

Panorama looking across Kongsfjorden, from Ny-Alesund. Click on the picture for a larger view! Photo by Pascual.

As we worked on papers and data analysis, the field party was turned around by a lack of snow on thier route. Snowmobiles can be driven over short stretches of loose gravel and such, but this was a bare batch at least 300 meters long, and there was no way around. So they turned back to reattempt the route we had tried yesterday.

This time, travelling with lighter sleds and more powerful machines, they made up onto the glacier. They made mass balance measurements at the permanent stakes installed on the glacier, measuring how much snow fell or melted at different places along the glacier. Then they rescued several pieces of equipment which had been left 'overnight' a few days before, and headed for home.

It wasn't long before they ran into trouble again- the slush and water were more extensive on the trip back, and one of the sleds sunk into the slush and capsized. This caused extra drag and the snowmobile, though powerful, got bogged down as well and partially sunk.

Jack Kohler, our Fearless Leader, surveys Kjell Arild's sunken snowmobile. Photo by Rune Storvold.

Fortunately, the engine stayed dry and they were able to pull everything out and continue home, albeit with some very wet feet!

Almost needless to say, we won't be trying to head up to the Kongsvagen tomorrow. Now it's time to look at contingency plans and see what else we can accomplish. It would be a shame to have to go home empty-handed!

Bogged down in slush!

2006-04-25T21:19:00.000+01:00

Well. Today we got up bright and early, got organized, and packed up ready to head out to the Kongsvagen. We got all our gear together fairly quickly, and were ready to go. The weather was warm, not a good sign, and it was drizzling rain, which made things even worse. This was a big change for me, since I'm used to working high on polar ice sheets, where rain is almost unheard of and the snow never gets wet.

the team assembled, ready to head out to the Kongsvagen.

We hadn't gotten far before we came to something else new to me, namely riding a snowmachine over topography; since the weather is so warm there is no ice in the fjord this year, we needed to traverse overland to get to the Kongsvagen, which involves going over a few fairly steep passes. As I had a heavy load to haul (geophysicists always seem to have heavy equipment), I had a big brute of a snowmachine, with an engine bigger than the one on my first car! Starting it up, it sounded more like a harley-davidson than a snowmobile. Fortunately with all that power I was able to get up and over the passes without much difficulty.

Then came the very soft, slushy snow on the other side. In order to stay on top of it and not sink in, it's important to keep driving very fast. We charged on, until we came to a wide section full of very watery, slushy snow. The lead snow machine was able to make it thorugh, but only with difficulty, and it was a very powerful machine with a very experienced driver. It didn't look very good for the less powerful machines and heavier loads. In addition, with the weather as it was, this section might well be impassible in the evening when we were heading back. It was time to regroup and decide what to do.

The team discusses the options.

We decided to head back to Ny-Alesund and hope for cooler, better weather tomorrow. 4 of the team would try in the afternoon to get over to the glacier for some mass balance measurements, not carrying heavy loads and taking a different route.

But it was not to be. On the way home we found that the snow had gotten softer at the steepest pass, causing trouble. We were able to use the powerful machines to bring the sleds over the pass, after a couple of failed attempts with the smaller snowmachines. But the least powerful machine of all just didn't seem capable of climbing the steep slope. Again and again we tried, but in the end it was decided that that machine would have to be ferried around on a much longer route, with fewer steep slopes. The plan for trying to take a lighter party of 4 to the glacier was cancelled, and the rest of us continued on home, to plan for tomorrow.

To the King's Road with the Norwegians!

2006-04-24T22:52:00.000+01:00

Hello again! I'm back in the field, In Norway this time. Svalbard, Norway, to be exact. Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, Norway, to be even more exact.

I'm here with the Norwegian Polar Institute, to work on the Kongsvagen glacier (literally translated as the King's Road). I'll be making density profiles along the glacier, using a borehole instrument called the Wallingford Neutron Probe. More about that later. For now, lets just get me to Norway!

The first leg of the journey is to get to Olso, because you need to spend the night somewhere along the way. In Oslo I met up with an old friend and former office mate Lars Karlof. After a nice evening with Lars, his wife, and 2 very cute daughters, it was back to flying. From Oslo, I flew to Tromso, in Northern Norway, then to Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard.

In longyearbyen a signpost tells the distance to various points.

Then from Longyearbyen, to Ny-Alesund, the research station. From here we will drive snowmobiles (the Norwegians call them 'scooters') about 25 km to the glacier.

This is the current webcam view from just above Ny-Alesund. As you can see it's a small place, but big for a field site!

On arrival, I learned that the weather is not terribly favorable. In this case, that means it's warm, which will make it difficult to travel, because the snow will be soft. If it warms up too much, we won't be able to get out to the glacier at all! To see the current temperature in our area, Click here.

Well, that's all for now, I'll let you know how it goes a little later!

Planning the next trip(s)...

2006-02-07T15:22:00.000Z

Hi Gang- back again. No pictures this time, since a picture of me on the phone or computer at my office probably wouldn't be too exciting...

But it's an important part of this field work, we have to make sure all our plans are set out before we arrive, or it'll all come crashing down around us (figuratively, that is). So here are a few of the things I'm doing these days:

- getting dates figured out. It looks like I'm going to Svalbard in late April, then Greenland (Summit and Raven) in late May to early June. Then another trip to Greenland in mid August.
- arranging plans for cargo transport. I need to get gear from here to Svalbard. Most of my gear for Greenland is already there, but I still need to get my clod weather clothing together. That can come later.
- thinking about what new spare parts I need or new parts to try out on the system. With an experiment like this, where Science Techs work with my equipment through the winter, there's ample time for things to break, and for the system to be refined. This is the chance to bring what I need, since there isn't a store "just down the road".

There are other things as well. This year I have another piece of logistics to think about: on October 22 Suzanne and I had a beautiful baby girl named Olivia. I'll be missing them both when I go to the field, and wanting to make sure Suzanne has all the support she needs to take care of Olivia at home. Take a look at Olivia's pictures and stories on her blog: http://oliviahawley.blogspot.com.

In any case, I thought I'd post now to point out that although I'm not in the field right now, I am doing things that directly relate to the field work that I'll be undertaking in a few months. Stay tuned as the time draws nearer!

Home again. Tune in next time!

2005-08-16T09:34:00.000+01:00

Hi all-- I'm back in Cambridge again. I had uneventful flights from Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen and then back to London. So, I'm now left with a bit of a cold and plenty of data to process. The next few months will be taken up with office tasks, and then the planning for next year will begin again. I'll probably have a longer season next year, so tune in then and see what happens! Same polar time, same polar channel! Thanks for stopping by.

Back to Kangerlussuaq

2005-08-11T19:35:00.000+01:00

This morning, all my work at Summit completed, I packed up my sleeping bag and boarded a plane for Kangerlussuaq, the first of 3 flights on the journey home. Today's flight had in store a special treat- the route took us down the Jakobshaven glacier to where it emptied into the sea, and past the small town of Illulisat, north along the coast from Kangerlussuaq.

We approach the end of the fjord, where icebergs float out into the sea.

the town of Illulisat

Ever hear the expression 'tip of the iceberg'? It's used because icebergs float about 90% submerged, so you only see a tenth of the ice that's there. Here you can see some of the ice below, connecting the dual tips of this berg.

Tomorrow, I'll be flying on the Air Greenland flight to Coppenhagen, spend the night in Coppenhagen, and then catch the flight to London and home. Almost there!

24 hours at Summit

2005-08-11T09:42:00.000+01:00

I've made it to Summit, and I managed to finish all the things I set out to do. First thing in the morning was to check the weather, to see if we were likely to fly. All was looking good so I went to a quick breakfast and got ready for the flight. The 3 hour flight to Summit left on time and was uneventful, so I was on the snow at Summit by about 11. The crew this summer has been busy over the summer, and have lifted the main structure, called the Big House, about 15 feet avobe the snow. To put this feat in perspective, when the sumer began the building was buried in snow almost up to the roofline.

The Big House back up on stilts.

After gathering my things together, I went to my first task, logging a new borehole about 5 km from the main camp. This all went well, and I was able to get everything done in a couple of hours. I left the site with a short casing that protrudes from the snow to enable us to return in future and access the hole again.

Back at camp, I trained the science technicians who will be running my experiment over the winter, and that went quite well as they are fast learners. After dinner I went over some more of my science with them and finished writing the 'instruction manual' for them to refer to over the winter. Then to bed, in an available Arctic Oven tent.

Commuting to Raven

2005-08-09T21:37:00.000+01:00

I didn't post yesterday, because it was a day of layover, in town, and there didn't seem to be too much to write about. Today was different, though. I flew to Raven, did my work there, and managed to catch the last plane back from Raven, completing my round-trip in one day, something I'd never done before. I had to work fast.

The flight to Raven takes us out over the ice edge, where the ice sheet comes out towards the coast and spreads its fingers wide.

Ice spreading out at the edge of the ice sheet. Its surface is crossed with many cravasses, cracks formed when the ice is under stress. Some crevasses can be quite deep and present a hazard to people trying to get across the ice.

I arrived at Raven, where Drew and Silver are just finishing out thier season. They gave me a warm welcome, and I wished I could stay around longer to visit with them, but I had to be off to my site and get to work if I wanted to catch the last plane home.

Drew Abbott, at Raven camp.

To make a quick story short, everything went fine and I was able to catch the last plane out. On the flight back, I was invited up to the flight deck and we flew in low over the ice edge which was a treat.

Look at the color of the water in this melt pool! These pools collect at the surface late in the summer and eventually drain to the glacier bed.

Crevasses on the way back to Kangerlussuaq. Imagine trying to find a safe route through there!

Headed back out!

2005-08-07T16:51:00.000+01:00

Well, I've been officially on the go for about 24 hours by now. Not 24 hours straight, mind you, but I left Cambridge a little over 24 hours ago. This will really be a whirlwind tour- in 8 days, I'll go from Cambridge to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, Kangerlussuaq to Raven Camp, Raven Camp to Kangerlussuaq, Kangerlussuaq to Summit Camp, Summit Camp to Kangerlussuaq, Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Cambridge. That's a lot of flying. 8 flights in 8 days, to be exact. You might think this means I'll be flying every day, but in fact tomorrow I won't fly at all, because there are no flights available. Of course this means that at some point I have 2 flights on one day, and hopefully that will happen in Tuesday. My goal for Tuesday is to fly to Raven, get my work done as quickly as possible, and get back that afternoon. Then Wendesday I'll fly to Summit, spend the night, fly back to Kangerlussuaq Thursday, and head back to Copenhagen Friday, to Cambridge Saturday.

So how does this all start out? Well, I don't own a car, so to get to the airport I needed to transport me, cold weather gear (22 Kilos of it), and my other gear (10 kilos of that) to the bus station. Fortunately I have a bicycle trailer.

It's mandatory to spend the night in Copenhagen, because the flight to Greenland leaves at 9:15 in the morning, and no flight from England can get there that early. Similarly, on the way back, the flight from Greenland arives at 7:30, and no connections will get back to England that night. So I flew to Copenhagen, checked my luggage at the counter, and took the train into Copenhagen to my hotel. After checking in, I took a stroll past Tivoli Gardens, along the famous pedestrian streets of Copenhagen. It was a lively saturday night and there were many people out and about. In the morning, I took the train back to the airport again and got on the plane to get here, Kangerlussuaq.

Tomorrow, the 109th Air National Guard will arrive with 3 LC-130's and many more passengers headed out to the camps. I'll get my things ready to go for tuesday, and might start work on a manuscript that I'm preparing. But for now, it's time to relax fo the evening!

Back in Town

2005-05-24T02:18:00.000+01:00

Hello! I'm back from the field in Kangerlussuaq, and will head home to Cambridge via Copenhagen tomorrow. The main thing I've done here in town (besides take a much-needed shower!) is to prepare my cargo for shipping and send it out- we brought it to the Air Greenland air cargo terminal this morning, so I'm almost done for this round.

I'll probably be back in the field in mid-August, so be sure to come back to see how things are going then!

Just about there

2005-05-22T22:21:00.000+01:00

Well, the work here is almost finished. Today I finished the changes I needed to make to my logging system, and brought science technician and camp medic Katie Hess out for some training. We brought the argo out since it'll be the new standard vehicle for my project. It was a beautiful day, and we positioned the Argo facing into the slight breeze. With the sun on us, out of the wind, it was quite warm. The training went very well, as Katie is a great science tech and an excellent learner.

Katie running the system.

The main thing left to do was pack everything away for the science techs to use during the winter, and pack the rest of my gear to head home. Tomorrow morning, with any luck and good weather, a plane will come and pick us up to take us back to Kangerlussuaq.

wish me luck!

Getting it all to work

2005-05-21T21:08:00.000+01:00

Well, yesterday was a long one, and last night I decided it was finally time to get some sleep when I powered up my logging system to test it and saw smoke coming from the electronics box! I immediately shut everything down and checked things inside, and discovered that in my tired hurry I had connected some of the electronics back together incorrectly. Fortunately I hadn't ruined anything, as when I got up this morning to test things it all worked very nicely.

The next thing was to get it all together and bring it out to my site (about 1 km from the main camp, not far away) and make some measurements. The science technicians who'd been here last winter in the coldest part of the season had told me that they'd come up with a better vehicle for the system than the traditional snowmobile and sled, so I decided to try it out. It's called an Argo, and is an 8-wheeled amphibious all terrain vehicle that has been winterized and fitted with tracks.

The Argo.

So I loaded all of my gear into it and went out to take some measurements. It all fits in rather well:

My first task was to find the boreholes; I had flagged them well last year, and that was good, because although they each had a PVC casing that protruded several feet above the summer surface, accumulation over the winter had buried all but one below the surface. To avoid digging the whole area out, I located each casing with my avalanche probe- a thin, strong steel rod which pokes through the snow. Once I'd located and exposed the casings, I attached the extensions that I'd brought with me, so the holes will be accessible for another year.

Once this was finished, I set to work making my measurements, logs of the boreholes. My project is measuring the vertical motion of the snow, as it compacts under the weight of the new snow that continually falls. I measure the motion by lowering a video camera down the hole, where I can see the different layers the snow forms over the different years, and by measuring the depth to a particular feature from one year to the next, I can tell how much it moved. Doing this over many different features give us a complete picture of how the snow is compacting.

My next task was to train the science technicians in the new way my system operates (they will continue to make measurements throughout the winter), but this would have to wait until tomorrow. In the evening, the camp crew decided to give the cook the evening off, and camp manager Toby Wood expertly tended the grill for an excellent barbecue- thanks toby!

Toby at the grill.

that's all for this evening, more tomorrow!

Summit at last

2005-05-20T21:53:00.000+01:00

Today I finally got to Summit. The morning dawned (as much as it can in the arctic, where if you're far enough north the sun just runs a circle around the sky instead of rising and setting) bright and clear. My first step of course was to check with Robin to see how the weather at Summit was. Weather in Kangerlussuaq is generally no indication of weather at Summit. The report from summit was that it was a beautiful day there as well. Looking good, but so many things can change that I never assume I'll get there until my feet are on the snow. We took off at our appointed time, had an uneventful flight, and soon we had camp in sight- and a wonderful sight it was after last night's fog!

Summit camp, seen from above.

We circled around camp and came in, with an uneventful landing.

Now I knew I was at Summit.

After having spent so much time at Summit, it's always nice to be back. It's a great camp. There are always old friends to catch up with and new ones to meet. The snow is cold and crunchy under your feet and the air is clean and thin- the actual altitude is about 10,000 feet, but because the atmosphere is thinner over the poles, the effect on the body more like 13,000 feet. Can you think of why the atmosphere might be thinner at the poles? Here the thin air is enough to cause altitude sickness, and people have had to be evacuated in the past because of complications. It's important to let your body adjust.

After catching up with some friends and getting my blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen saturation (a measure of how your body is reacting to the altitude) checked, I went to work checking to see how my gear survived the multiple flights, and making some improvements for use during the winter. Last winter my science technicians noticed that the electronics were getting too cold, so I decided to insulate them in a picnic cooler, keeping the warm with a bottle full of hot water and an electric heating pad. The repairs and improvements lasted into the night, and it was time for bed. Out to the tent.... more tomorrow!

Frequent flier miles- Greenland style

2005-05-19T22:59:00.000+01:00

Today was a day of flying. After a nice night at Raven in the 'E-shack', a small wood structure designed to house the Raven crew in the event of an emergency, I awoke to clear sunny weather, with very little wind- unusual for Raven, where wind is such a constant that the camp is powered entirely by wind and solar energy.

The 'E-shack', the guest room at Raven.

My flight back to Kangerlussuaq was due to arrive around 11 am, so I had some time on my hands before it arrived, since I'd finished my work the evening before. I took the opportunity to show a couple of folks around the DYE site, an abandoned radar post used by the air force (actually I think it was the 'Space Command') to watch for Soviet missles during the cold war. It's a couple of kilometers from Raven camp, so we went for a look around.

DYE-2, part of the Distant Early Warning system from the cold war era.

While we were there, Silver called on the radio to tell us that the flight was cancelled for the day (no weather problems, but there had been a problem with one of the airplanes, and they always need a backup airplane if they're landing on the ice). So, we had all the time we wanted to look around.

As we were finishing up, Silver called again to tell us that plans had changed again, that the plane was on its way, and that the new plan was for me to turn around, once I got to Kangerlussuaq, and fly right to Summit that afternoon! Plans change quickly in the arctic.

Silver reporting weather conditions to the airplanes.

So, back to camp, get ready to go, and in fact the plane came in as scheduled and picked me up, along with my gear. We flew back to Kangerlussuaq, and didn't even need to take my gear off the plane- this was the same plane that was going to fly to Summit. I got off, however, since they were going to need to fuel the plane and there would be some waiting. So I waited on the runway for a while, and finally we were ready to fly again. This flight was full with cargo, so I got to fly first-class; up on the flight deck with the pilots, flight engineer, and navigator. The scenery was spectacular as we flew over the hills towards the ice-edge, the pilot pointing out features of interest:

We were able to talk over the noise of the engines (millitary planes are much louder than civillian ones) using a headset intercom:

Once we got out past the edge of the ice sheet, the topography got less interesting, and the rest of the 2+ hour flight was passed mostly with the plane on autopilot. When we reached the location of Summit camp, however, we discovered that during the 2 hours we'd been flying a low fog bank had come in, making it dificult to see the runway, or any of the camp structures. We knew where the camp was because we had precise GPS co-ordinates, and the LC-130's forward-looking radar could 'see' the camp and the skiway markers, but when flying onto a snow runway it's important to have visibility.

This picture shows all we could see- we're at an altitude of about 250 feet- that's low!

Using the radar and maps of the skiway, the navigator skillfully put us on the approach. But even with great training and high-tech tools, we still needed to see. We flew in low, close to the skiway, and could only see the marker flags directly below us, rather than ahead of us. We didn't want to fly lower than 100 feet without a clear view, because there was a 100 foot tower in camp for sampling instruments. At the very last moment, the split-second decision had to be made- try to land or fly around for another try? Without good visibility, we had to go around. Again and again we tried- but the visibility wasn't getting any better. The pilot tried using diffferent goggles and sunglasses in an effort to see, but nothing worked. Eventually we had to face the fact that we were running low enough on fuel that we needed to turn back. So we radioed camp to give our apologies, turned around and headed back to Kangerlussuaq.

On the way back to Kangerlussuaq, we flew low over the ice edge again, with a spectacular view of the crevasse patterns that form when the ice is pulled in different directions going over steep topography:

Crevasse patterns at the ice edge. The directions of the crevasses can tell us about how the ice is moving- can you think of why?

By about 10pm, we were back in Kangerlussuaq. It'd been a long day, with many miles flown. Tomorrow morning the plan is for the summit flight to leave at 0800, so it'll be another early morning....

That's all for today- see you tomorrow!

Finally at Raven

2005-05-18T17:34:00.000+01:00

Today the fog was back again in the morning, but cleared in the afternoon enough for us to fly to Raven, a skiway training facility just up on the inland ice, about a 20 minute flight in a C-130.

The LC-130 banks as we fly towards the ice sheet.

By the time we got to Raven it was about 1pm, and I set to work. I was planning to try to catch the last plane back to Kangerlussuaq in order to catch a plane to Summit the following day. I started getting my gear ready for the 5 km trip to my experiment site, where several ice cores had been drilled last year. Because I was going to be out of sight of camp I needed to carry much more than I'd otherwise need; if a storm came up I could be stuck in bad visibility, unable to come back to the main camp, so I needed camping and cooking gear and food to last several days, even though I only intended to stay out a few hours.

My gear for an afternoon out. The 2 duffels at the front of the sled carry my emergency tent, stove , food, and extra clothing. The green box carries most of my science equipment.

My site was about 5 km from the main camp, but there aren't any landmarks by which to navigate, so we use GPS:

The view of untracked snow in front of my snow machine- not much to navigate by!

This GPS shows the lattitude and longitude of my site. Can you find where I was on a map?

To keep everyone informed as to how things were going, especially since I was trying to catch a plane, I checked in each hour using an Iridium satellite phone:

My work went well. I set up my gear and started making measurements:

My setup. The white cable runs down the pipe into a borehole in the ice, where I am lowering a video camera to look at the walls of the borehole. I can see layers in the walls, much like tree rings. I use these layers to measure compaction and settling in the snow.

Although everything went well, it took long enough that I missed the plane back to Kangerlussuaq, so I got to spend a nice evening with Drew and Silver, the crew who staff this small camp. Their job is to keep the skiway in good shape for the airplanes that train here, and to provide weather observations to the planes. They live in a small 'Weatherport', an insulated tent-like structure with an oil-fired heater inside. It's a simple life and they enjoy it. They're terrific people, and were wonderful hosts.

Drew and Silver outside their home.

Scrubbed!

2005-05-17T23:36:00.000+01:00

Well, our flights to the field were officially cancelled right around noon today. The irony is that the weather at our destinations was fine, it was the weather back here in Kangerlussuaq that made the pilots worried. The worry was compounded when, just before noon, an Air Greenland flight from Copenhagen was turned away due to the fog and had to land in Keflavik, Iceland (the closest airport large enough to land a full-size airliner).

The fog which caused our delay

So we no longer had to "stand by to stand by" and were free to take the afternoon off. I went along witha few others up to the hills outside of town to see if there were any Musx Oxen out and about. We did see a few, but only from a great distance.

Musk oxen, seen from a great distance...

Ed Stockard, paraglider pilot and veteran of many seasons in Antarctica and Greenland, considers the possibilities of soaring near Kangerlussuaq.

In the evening after dinner, we had a presentation by a group of architecture students who have designed a new structure to replace the various buildings at Summit.

Tomorrow morning, we'll get up and try the whole thing all over again, same schedule, different day, and hopefully different weather! here's to clear skies!

The inevitable weather-delay

2005-05-17T12:45:00.000+01:00

Got up this morning bright and early, after nearly falling asleep at the keyboard posting last night's entry, and got myelf ready to go- organize and pack the last minute items, get into the warm clothing, and then...

the fog came in.

So, now, we're in the mode known to polar workers as "Hurry up and wait". We have to be ready to go at a moment's notice, but we could be delayed for hours.

Seth (also heading to Summit this week) waits in the fog with everyone's luggage.

Some passengers take the opportunity to catch up on sleep the was lost to last minute packing and organizing chores at home or in town.

I took the opportunity to catch up with Robin Abbott, who co-ordinates Greenland logistics for the NSF contractor, VECO Polar Resources. Robin's been working in the polar regions for years and really knows what's going on in Greenland. She lives in Kangerlussuaq about 4 months each year, throughout the summer science season. Her job involves, among other things, co-ordinating cargo and passenger movements for many field groups in Greenland. At any given time she might be talking to the air national guard about how many pounds of cargo they can carry on the next flight, or talking to a contract pilot who needs the co-ordinates of the camp he's supposed to fly to today. Because of the weather, plans change quickly and everyone needs to be flexible. Robin does a great job of staying ahead of the constantly changing schedule, always ready with alternatives.

Robin Abbott, Greenalnd logistics coordinator

With any luck, I'll get to fly out soon, so the next post will likely be when I get back from Raven- wish me luck!

Greenland 2005- first day, and a long one!

2005-05-17T03:39:00.000+01:00

Welcome! I've started a new season. Yesterday I flew from my home in Cambridge, England, to Copenhagen, Denmark, spent the night in Copenhagen, and this morning flew from Copenhage to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. So here I am in Greenland. This season accompanying me are Richard Hindmarsh and Ed King from the British Antarctic Survey. We arrived at about 10 am local time, thanks to a several hour time change. We got right to work, starting by organizing our cargo.

Richard (holding the box) and Ed organizing our cargo

I also had some testing to do on my equipment, which had spent the winter at Summit. I found some problems with one of the components, and after some investigation, found a chip had broken off the circuit board!

The chip that broke off the circuit board. It regulates power to the video camera.

finally, I put it all together again, and did some testing to see how well the new setup dissapates heat.

testing- note the temperature module reads in C. what is it in F?

Now all the gear is packed and ready to go, and it's time for me to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning early, I'll fly to Raven while Ed and Richard fly to Summit. With any luck I'll be posting again tomorrow evening having finished my work at Raven in 1 day! if not, I'll be back online the following day.

See you soon!

A Season for Everything

2005-05-13T16:21:00.000+01:00

In the summer of 2004, I had another field season in Greenland. This time around, I ended up co-ordinating folks from 7 different agencies on 3 different NSF funded projects and 2 European projects. Some of the players were again familiar- I started in the field again with Gregg Lamorey, and Ryan joined us partway through. For this season, though, I had several significant objectives to cover for my own project, including drilling several shallow boreholes at 2 different locations and making 2 separate trips to the field to make measurements at different times. Also coming into the project was Simon Sheldon, a Brit working with the Danes who I knew from the North GRIP season, and Liz Morris, from the Scott Polar Research Institute.

This season we had plenty to do:

Logging sonic velocity in the ice, which tells us about the crystal orientation of the ice grains.

Unpacking the sonic logging tool. It's very long, but flexible sections make it easy to ship.

Shallow drilling:

ICDS drillers Jay Kyne and Beth Bergeron using the "Prarie Dog", a drill of Jay's own design.

Gregg Lamorey and Liz Morris making measurements on the core as it comes out of the drill.

Logging the shallow holes with my newest Borehole Optical Stratigraphy tool:

Greg, Mark Albershardt, and me (L-R) logging a shallow borehole. The sewer pipe is a shallow casing that protects the sides of the borehole as we repeatedly raise and lower instruments.

With the Danes at North GRIP

2005-05-13T12:23:00.000+01:00

The following summer, Gregg asked me to go to Greenland again, this time to run his logging system since he was unable to go. This team would be a reunion of sorts, since it would be composed of Gary Clow, Ryan Bay, me, and Frank Urban, who'd recently taken a post with the USGS.

The deep logging team at North GRIP

Our objective this time was to carry out deep logging in the North GRIP borehole, a project of the Glaciology group at the University of Copenhagen, which was nearly complete. We had to work fast, because we needed to finish our loggging before the drillers started to drill again, to avoid the disturbance caused by the drilling. The drillers themselves had an ambitious schedule, and were keen to get rolling. So we went in on the put-in flight, and were dropped off by the C-130 to start digging out the camp, which was buried under drifts from the previous winter.

Digging out the garage, to get to the heavy equipment...

Like this giant snowblower, which makes the rest of the job easier!

Once we got set up, the logging went very smoothly, and we had a good season at North GRIP. It was a great experience and a treat to be part of an international camp.

Back to Greenland

2005-05-13T11:46:00.000+01:00

After the Siple Dome project, I thought I was done with the field for a while, but it was not to be. In the usual manner, I got a call with a request to join a field team. This time it was Gregg Lamorey, from the Desert Research Institute at the University of Nevada in Reno. Gregg was planning a trip back to Summit, Greenland, to do more deep logging in the GISP2 and GRIP boreholes. My job for this season was mostly to run the USGS deep logging winch, and Gregg would handle the logger operations.

The USGS deep logging winch- there are 4 kilometers of cable on that spool!

Ryan Bay came on this trip as well and brought with him Nathan Bramall, who'd joined our team at Siple Dome during the 3rd season. They planned to use the dust logger and also test a new tool that they were developing called the Biospectral Logger (BSL).

It was an epic season. Some sould call it a "Shackleton season" in that we faced some seemingly insurmountable difficulties but were able, at the end of the season, to return home all in one piece and with most of the data we'd been seeking. The difficulties we faced included getting a tool stuck deep in the borehole, having the connector at the end of the cable break, and having the winch drive mechanism break several times while borehole tools were down the hole. In all cases, we were able to eventually overcome the problem, but the final breakage prevented Ryan and Nathan from getting some important data they were hoping for.

Graduate School and Siple Dome

2005-05-12T17:18:00.000+01:00

When I returned from the Greenland winter-over, after a sufficient time of relaxing in warm places, I asked Ed Waddington if he had any more glaciology field work for me. His response was that it'd be much easier if I were a graduate student- and so I applied to graduate school.

Graduate school entailed a lot of time in the office as well!

I entered graduate school in the fall of 1999, and immediately started work on a project at Siple Dome, Antarctica.

The main structures at Siple Dome, known as Jamesways.

This project, headed by Gary and Ed, built on the success we'd had in Greenland with our new shallow logging technique, and we installed pipes in an array of shallow boreholes across Siple Dome. We also made temperature logs in the main (1000 meter) borehole, and measured vertical motion using my video camera technique I'd developed a few years earlier.

The Siple Dome project lasted 3 years, and over the 3 field seasons we had many great successes. During the first season, I noticed that while raising my video camera I could see different shades of light and dark passing by on the borehole walls. I did some experiemnts with the camera and this led me to a new line of inquiry that has developed into Borhole Optical Stratigraphy (BOS), a technique I developed over the next several years and eventually formed the basis for my PhD dissertation, as well as several successful proposals to the National Science Foundation. I wrote a paper about the ability to detect annual layers using BOS that was published in Geophysical Research Letters. You can view the paper in HTML or PDF format.

In our second year, Gary and I enlarged our field team when we brought Rolf Tremblay, a math and science teacher from Goodman Middle school in Gig Harbor, Washington. Rolf took the photos in this post during his time in Antarctica.

Rolf standing atop Observation hill, near McMurdo Station.

Rolf helping me measure vertical motion in the upper layers of the snowpack.

Also joining our team in the second and third years was Ryan Bay, from the University of California at Berkeley. Ryan had a new boehole tool for measuring the amount of dust in the ice, and we tested it at Siple Dome.

Ryan and I lower the dust logger into the borehole- it goes straight down for a kilometer!

The Siple Dome project was a great success, and at the end of the last season I was sad to see the end of the project. But there is almost always another interesting project to pursue- it's one of the great things about glaciology, and polar science in general.

Wintering Over

2005-05-12T15:45:00.000+01:00

The "Greenhouse" where I lived for 11 months.

After my summer in Greenland, I figured I'd start getting back to work and graduate from the University of Washington. Still, I wanted to stay in the polar game. While I'd been in Greenland, I met Jack Dibb from the University of New Hampshire. Jack was putting together a team to spend the winter at Summit, which had not been done before. The project was diplomatically called the "experimental summit winter over" by PICO, then Arctic logistics support contractor. Jack and I got along well, and I agreed to join the team as lead science technician and camp medic in the spring of 1997. I decided I had to finish college before going, which involved a flurry of exam-taking and compressing the last few weeks of the term into a few days. I then went to SOLO in New Hapmshire for Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician training before heading to Summit in late spring of 1997.
To make a long story short, I spent 2 months at Summit during the summer, preparing for the winter-over, and then was joined by 3 others for the 9-month winter season. During the winter, we had visits by 2 airplanes, Twin Otters, that brought us fresh food, mail, and smiling faces. One visit was in November, the other in February- one on each side of the period of winter darkness.
During the winter, our job was to keep all the systems of the camp running, from the diesel generators to the science equipment like this weather station wind sensor:

Another of the jobs we did every single day was to take small samples of clean surface snow. This required careful cleaning of the equipment, and the use of special 'clean suits' for sampling:

Getting ready for the winter, USA Today did an article on the winter-over, which gave me a few of those 15 minutes of fame which everyone is entitled to.
By the end of the winter, I was ready to go home- I'd spent 11 months on the ice. Apparently I continue to hold the record for the longest continuous stay at Summit.

The Early Years- First Greenland season

2005-05-12T14:38:00.000+01:00

My Taylor Dome season had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to Antarctica. It'd given me an interest in the polar regions and fed my desire to go back one day. I thought, though, that it'd be a while before another opportunity like that came up. Imagine my surprise, then, when Gary Clow of the United States Geological Survey sent me an email in the spring of 1996. I had worked with Gary at Taylor Dome, and he was gearing up to go to Summit, Greenland, the location of the GISP2 ice core, drilled over 3km to bedrock in the early 1990's.

A shot of Summit camp as it is today. You can see the yellow tents we sleep in. The main structure now has a satellite communications antenna which looks like a ball- in the old days we didn't have such luxuries...

Our goal was to log temperatures in the 3016-meter-deep main borehole, and to attempt a new technique to log temperatures in shallow boreholes. Because the shallow parts of an ice sheet are porous like snow, shallow boreholes will not hold fluid. For our temperature measurements, we wanted a fluid-filled hole, since air movement in the borehole can change the temperature the sensor feels, making measurement of the temperature of the ice difficult. For our new technique, we would lower a sealed pipe down the borehole, open at the surface. We would then fill the pipe with a special heat-transfer fluid. Since no borehole is absolutely vertical, the pipe would lie against the wall of the borehole, and the fluid in the pipe would come into thermal equilibrium with the ice. Air would be kept from moving in the hole by a "packer" that was installed about 10 meters deep in the hole, which we then filled in with snow, sealing it from the surface. Here's a shot of us lowering the pipe down the borehole. The black arching obhect is the pipe, made of a flexible plastic, intended initially for irrigation.

When I came back from that season, I wrote a report on the activities of the season, which I posted here in html.

The Early Years- First Season South

2005-05-11T14:10:00.000+01:00

My first season in Antarctica was in 1995-96 at Taylor Dome, just up on the Antarctic polar plateau. This was the location of a 554 m ice core to bedrock, drilled in 1993-94. Participating in the field season under the NSF's Research Experience for Undergraduates program, I was a member of a 4 person team led by Ed Waddington of the University of Washington's Department of Earth and Space Sciences. We spent 6 weeks at Taylor Dome, making glaciological measurements, from surveying stakes using GPS to measure ice motion, to measuring accumulation and ablation on the ice sheet, measuring temperatures in the borehole left over from the coring operations, and looking into the borehole with the video camera you see below.

This is the downhole camera we lowered into the borehole. The camera looks straight down the borehole- the view is like this:

In the field of view you can see the prism that hangs at the bottom of the camera, and there is a dark circle, which is a metal marking band that has been inserted into the hole. We used the camera to measure the motion of these marking bands, and from these measurements, we calculated the age of the ice deep in the hole. I wrote a paper about this technique in the Journal of Glaciology. You can view the final paper in either HTML or PDF format.

This was a life-changing experience for me, and opened my eyes to the possibility of a career in polar science, and to working in the Antarctic and Artcic. When I came home, I decided to become a glaciologist, and I've stayed in glaciology ever since.