Another day on the ice

Had another fantastic day out collecting samples from the helicopter today. I was awoken up by the usual breakfast announcement and weather forecast over the ships intercom: Minus 15 and fog. I snuggled back under the duvet for at least an extra 10 minutes while contemplating the exact whereabouts of my thermals and thermos. Needlessly as it turned out, because it was too foggy to fly anyway. By midday the fog had burnt off though, leaving some stunning flying (and working) conditions. Which was lucky as my thermos turned out to have been incubating some coffee for about a week!

Anyways, we jumped into the helicopter at about 13:00 after having eaten our packed lunches on the ship, and headed towards the Greenland coast to try and bag some of the most westerly samples that we will collect. As we approached the coast, a distinct line was visible in the ice running north-south as far as it was possible to see in either direction (see picture below). This is the boundary between sea ice drifting slowly southwards over the East Greenland Shelf (left hand side ) and 'fast-ice' which is sea ice that is permanently frozen to the coast, and pinned in have run aground (right hand side). The ridge is the result of the moving ice being pushed up against the stationary ice.

Theoretically one could walk to Greenland from the western side of the ridge, as the ice doesn't drift and there are very few leads (areas of open water). In fact, there were so few leads that we couldn't find anywhere to deploy our instruments and had to turn around after searching for a while.

We did manage to land in the two other places we had planned to though, and both sites turned out to be quite spectacular, with big pressure ridges and blocks of ice, which had been pushed up as floes had collided.

The flying team is now generally made up of two oceanographers and one sea-ice specialist. Today Gorm came with Edmond and I so that he could make some ice thickness measurements. This basically involves drilling a hole in the ice with a very big and very long drill bit, then measuring the depth of the hole. You can see him and the drill bits in the the picture below. The ice is quite easy to drill through, so he can just use an pretty ordinary cordless drill at the end of that thing even when all the sections are stuck together.

The crew of the KV Svalbard were having yet another safety practise (these happen every couple of days, and I keep having to play the guy with horrible burns and smoke inhalation!) when we wanted to fly back to the ship, so we had to wait on the ice until the helideck staff had finished extinguishing a fake fire before we could take off to return - so we got to spend some time just admiring the scenery and drinking coffee which was really great. Usually we have be quite focused and work quickly when out on the ice so there's not much opportunity to absorb the environment.

When we returned to the ship we got to fly several loops at quite low altitude while Edmond took a video of the ship out of the window to be used in .... another a safety simulation for the crew! Still it's pretty cool to look out of the window and see people on the bridge at eye-level.

Ok well that's all for now. The helicopter is back inside the hanger, looking a little sad lashed to the deck with it's rotors pulled off. We're heading back out towards open water tomorrow so there won't be any flying for a while. We're all going to have to have a bit of a marathon lashing-down session tonight. I tend to slip into living in 'caravan-mode' when we're in the ice (leaving half drunk cups on tables, and not securing chairs) and that doesn't make for restful night if the ship reaches the waves while your in bed. It wouldn't be the first time my coffee table tried to climb into my bunk either...
Still, hopefully the weather will be kind to us!

Paul

Busy

I've been working very hard CTD'ing. Not much exciting to report though - just been stuck on the ship really. Here are some quick pics from yesterday!

Spring in Norwich!

Today was such a beautiful day... temperatures over 20 degrees, a light breeze and lots of sunshine! After always needing several layers of clothing to go outside in Tromso, it's such a luxury to just go out without even a coat! :)

I went to town with Karla and we decided that it was a waste to spend time in shops with such beautiful weather, so instead we went for a walk around the cathedral. All the trees are in blossom there, very pretty!

Of course we weren't the only ones enjoying Spring time... :)

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm happy we went out and enjoyed today!

It's strange to think Paul is in such a different world now... scroll down for his pictures of a polar bear!

Polar bear

"Good morning good morning, it's 7:20 and there is a polar bear outside your door!"

The wake up announcement was 10 minutes early so that we had time to go and have a look at him before breakfast. Very well organised this ship :-). The bear was about 20 meters away, from the ship, so I could just take the photo from starboard corner of the stern. After wandering around for a bit and sniffing all the instruments it turned round, did a crap and wandered off. I guess he didn't think too much of us!

We're on the move again this evening. I haven't seen much outside as I've just finished up a long session in the salt mine (lab), but I felt the engines rumble into action a while ago.

There's just been an intriguing announcement: "There will be a social event in the officers lounge at 21:15, everybody's invited. Bring your luck and good charm and it will be an experience..." Guess I'll find out in a bit!

More Helicopter Adventures

Here's another batch of photos of our helicopter exploits. We're doing much the same kind of thing every day - still every landing site is different! Unlike doing CTDs from a ship.

It was a couple of degrees cooler today and a little bit more windy too, which made it feel a lot cooler. I am using bare hands when collecting water samples to try to avoid contaminating them, so they get pretty cold if it's windy - have to be very careful to keep my gloves dry too. I have 3 pairs though and just move on to the next ones when one pair gets damp. We were collecting samples for the biologists today too, better not to get too much fluff from our gloves in those - takes them ages to work out what it is under the microscope ;-)

The photo below shows some cloud/fog over open leads in the ice. Heat flux in action! The ice insulates the warm ocean from the atmosphere, but where there are leads and the sea water is exposed it steams in huge clouds. If there is no wind, it's incredible, the clouds are almost frightening, they are so black and have almost vertical sides around the edges of the leads - don't really have a good photo of that yet.

When we got back to the ship today we found that the big (1km by 1km) multi-year ice floe it was moored to had broken in two. Not very good news for the sea ice scientists who want to study it! Tonight we're on the move again looking for another big one that will be tough enough to last a few days while it is studied. ie: lots of breaking through really thick ice.

Right, well I should probably either do some more data processing or sleep. Or possibly eat waffles. There's a waffle-iron and a big pot of batter put out in the mess every Wednesday night - nice idea eh? I didn't have any last week, so I might go and make up for it tonight!

Misty Norwich

Hello!

I've been in Norwich for a week now, quite nice to be back and spend time with friends!

The things you do for a free breakfast... today if you cycled to university you got a free breakfast, but supply was limited and they started giving them out at 7:45. We were so keen that we actually got there at 7:45!! I don't think I've ever been at uni that early ;) It was nice though, a beautiful morning, we ate our breakfast outside. We saw a hot air balloon coming over the university as well...

I've been working very hard - sometimes I'm at uni for over 12 hours which is very unlike me ;) But I am nearing the end of my funding faster than the end of my research... I'm trying to work as hard as I can so I can finish as soon as possible. I'm so ready to find a "real" job sometimes, I even went to an open day about becoming a primary school teacher. Scary stuff...

Anyway, when I finally left university today, I noticed that there was a very spectacular case of ground fog. This type of fog is called radiation fog occurring on very clear, still days at sunset. The layer of fog was really thin, less than a metre in places! I tried to take some photos, I had to use my backpack as a tripod so I was a bit limited but I am still happy with the result! You can see people in some of the photos, they are taken near the student accommodation and I was not the only one fascinated by the fog.

Paul also sent me more photos and stories from the Arctic. The internet connection on the ship is very slow, so I'll put those online for him. Coming soon!

Update from the Arctic

They finally dished out computer passwords! It is very slow though, and hard to get to the computer in the evenings. All is well in the ice and everything on board is quite relaxed, so I think it is going to be a nice cruise. The journey over here was horrible though! The ship has no keel and rolls to about 40 degrees!

A couple of photos of the midnight sun...

We are now in thick ice with big pressure ridges, and the ship pretty much can't get any further, so they are going to moor to a big ice floe and start the 5-day drift station.

I saw my first Polar bear! :- ). Quite a long way away - but managed to get some photographic evidence of it. I think there are quite a few around, as I also saw some foot-prints in an iceflow that the ship broke throught. I wish I got a photo of that!

Today I got in the helicopter at about 9.30 and don't think we landed back on the ship until about 19:30. Lots of flying around to find leads for the ship through the ice, and also two landings for CTD's.

We had to spend some time following polar bear foot prints in one area to check the bear was not hiding near! Then we actually landed on his trail, so I got to put my boot in one of his footprints - very yeti like! :-). There's millions of the beasties, but don't worry - I'm fairly sure I'm not the slowest runner in the group!...

These pictures are from mooring the ship to an ice flow this evening.

I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow, so that's all my news for now!

Paul is at sea

Paul is away at sea until 2nd June. The reality of this statement suddenly dawned on me this afternoon as I scribbled a note to stick on my office door. I have less than 48 hours left on dry land! On Wednesday afternoon I will join the Norwegian Coast Guard ship KV Svalbard and head towards Fram Strait where my friends at the Norwegian Polar Institute and I plan to collect measurements to determine how much freshwater (from precipitation and melting ice) is flowing out of the Arctic Ocean. I've posted a map below that shows roughly where we'll be going.

The ship is alongside in Breivika (Tromsø's docks) at the moment and I went to have a look on my way home from work this afternoon. My first impression is that it has very few windows! - but that's not all bad with 24 hour daylight. I should have internet access onboard and plan to post some more updates from much further north...

Snowshoeing up Grønnlibruna

Last Sunday we planned another attempt to the top of Tromsdalstinden (a.k.a. "The Beast...) but we decided to abandon that plan when we found out it was an extremely windy day. Tromsdalstinden was not actually visible (despite clear skies) because of all the blowing snow! Instead we drove to a village called Straumsbukta. We found a valley on the map that looked like it should be out of the wind. And indeed it was :)

The valley is very beautiful. In Summer there are marshes, now just mostly big empty spaces. We didn't ski this time, we used the army snowshoes that Paul bought a few weeks ago for a bargain price. I am not exactly "army-sized" so they are a bit big for me but they work fine!

The second photo (below) is taken on the hill. Going steeply uphill is not that easy with such big snowshoes, and quite tiring - the trees became my best friend ;) good for a little break.

In the middle of the forest we found tracks. We assumed from a skier, but when we looked closely, they were from a moose! Wow he made such deep tracks, very impressive! The tracks looked quite recent but we didn't get to meet Mr Moose himself...
In the other photo I am trying to work out where we are... we actually climbed up quite a bit higher than we thought. Nice ;)

We had a nice view over the valley and the sunset - these photos are taken at 19:30, it's getting very light up here these days.

We reached the top of Petterbolhaugen, at 367m. Click on the left photo to see what the army snowshoes are like! They actually have good bindings and quite good grip.

I was quite tired by the time we got up there, but we found that Grønnlibruna (400m) was blocking our view of Tromsø... and it was not that much further... so even though it was late, we decided to continue. It didn't take that long, and the view of Tromsø was nice indeed. Unfortunately it had gotten too dark for good photos by then though. We got back to the car very late, and quite exhausted, but it was a nice trip!

Time is flying, and I'm soon going back to Norwich for a while. Paul is preparing to go to sea until early June, a very long cruise! They do get a few days off in the middle, at Spitsbergen, and I decided to fly up there as well, I'm very excited about going there!!

Spring has also arrived to Tromsø, even if it still looks very wintry. The constant dripping of the snow melting is getting louder and louder. Many of the streets are snow/ice free now - makes walking a lot easier :) The birds are coming back as well, which is really nice. I'm passing through Tromsø on my way to Spitsbergen in early May, will be interesting to see the changes by then!

Aurora

No matter how many times I have seen them, they keep amazing me! I just wanted to share these two photos, the first one was taken last weekend when we went aurora hunting with Paul's parents (we needed LOTS of patience but we did get rewarded in the end). The second one was taken just an hour ago from the balcony.

This is my last week here for a while, and the aurora forecast is predicting pretty active aurora's... now I just hope we'll have clear skies as well!

More photos soon!