Disko Bay Ice Coring Project

Posted by Matt Bingham on Apr 17, 2014

Today’s post is about our day on the ice sheet yesterday.  There is a lot to tell and it is probably best done with photos so this post is a photo post.

 The Twin Otter with our load of gear waiting to be loaded.

Waiting to take off.  Us in the back.  Gear in the front.

Flying out of Kangerlussuaq.  Ice sheet is on the horizon.  Foreground is the unglaciated coastal area of Greenland.

Crossing onto the ice sheet.  Out the left side.  You can see the coastal land and then the ice.

Right side with the ice sheet “pouring” down to the ice/land margin.  Ben photographing out the window.

Ice margin. Lower left is snow covered land and a frozen lake.  Ice sheet is coming over land from upper right.

 View to the northwest.  Ice sheet is under us with ice edge in the middle of the photo and land and sky on top of photo under the wing.

View towards the middle of Greenland.  Only the margins of the ice have lots of relief.  Within about 50 km from the edge the ice sheet is nearly featureless.  The ice is very gently sloping upward.  In fact the pilots flew at the altitude of our landing site and the land rose over the next hour to meet us.  Very cool.

This photo is straight down.  Hard to make out but the snow on the surface is showing two distinct prevailing wind.  There are linear snow dunes going one way and they another set on top going another way.

Getting closer to the ground-or the ground is getting closer to us.

On the ground.  Flat, hard snow and -32 C (-25 F). But sunny! Odd to have put on lots of sunscreen for such a cold day but the reflected light will burn you badly.

Getting to work.  Left to right: Laura getting ready to use the Kovacs drill to drill holes for 3 m bamboo poles that will mark a GPS station.  Matt and Ashley starting on the snow pit and Sarah setting up the coring materials.  The pilots put “pajamas” as they called them around the engines (big blankets to keep the heat in).

Matt and Sarah working on the ice core.  You have to get up high to start the drill and as it gets deeper you can add sections to the handle.

Sarah measuring the core.  When it comes out of the core tube, it gets laid on a tray were it is “logged” with the number of pieces that came out, the length, the width, the weight (but our balance battery died in the cold) and the temperature about every meter.

Sampling in the snow pit with a an ice bear visitor.

This is the finished snow pit.  The pilots wanted to help so they actually dug most of this and then Ashley and I cleaned the face and sampled.  It is 1.69 meters deep at which point we hit a very hard ice layer that we think is the 2012 surface melt that refroze.  Round samples were to gather snow for major ions (MSA and sea-salts) and the rectangular ones are to measure snow density and snow water equivalent (the sampling tool measures the same volume every time) and for isotopes. This took a long time and was pretty cold. Ashley and I both had very cold (as in numb) fingers by the end even with hand warmers in our gloves.  After this we sat in the plane, which was not that much warmer, but enough, to thaw fingers.

 Finishing up.  This is about 6 pm.

Flying from the ice sheet to Ilulisaat we passed over more and more crevasse fields as the ice sheet drains down to the Jacobshavn outlet glacier.  The pilots flew us right down over it.

Along the way we were seeing a lot of large melt water lake beds.  In summer this will be full of water.  There are many of them around the 1000m elevation contour of the ice sheet.

As we got closer to the ice edge we started seeing lots of crevasses and what looked like a “river” of ice-an area that was clearing flowing faster.

This is the Jakobshavn with the trunk of the glacier coming in from left and curving towards bottom right.  Another tributary ice stream comes in from middle right.  The ice calving front is the prominent “line”  in the lower right. The calving front is about 100m high.

 Looking back up to the Jakobshavn.  In the foreground is the ice berg/sea ice melange floating on the fjord surface.  Note the huge berg casting the long shadow.

A massive berg floating in the melange of sea-ice and smaller bergs that have calved off the ice front.

As we went down the fjord (not very far-maybe 2 km) the melange breaks up and there is open water with ice bergs floating.

The airport at Ilulisaat closes at 9pm and we landed at exactly 9pm.  We were met by Audrey from Polar Field Services who drove us to our hotel which is right on the water.  This photo was along the drive from the airport to town.  It is about 9:45 pm and still light out.  We had pizza at about 11 and all crashed into bed.

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Posted by Matt Bingham on Apr 17, 2014

Today we flew the Twin Otter to the Greenland Ice Sheet.  As I said yesterday, we planned to visit two sites because high winds have forced cancellation of tomorrow’s field day.  We only made it to one site today but we worked hard all day.

Today was quite simply one of the most amazing days I have had anywhere, anytime, mostly because it was gorgeous, but also because we did some awesome science, and finally because it was fairly extreme.  It was crystal clear so the flying and scenery were spectacular.  When we landed on the ice sheet, our pilot told us it was minus 32.  That’s in Celsius; in Fahrenheit its -25.  According to Sarah Das, who has worked in the field many times in Greenland and Antarctic, that was the coldest day she has been in the field.  It is amazing we got all of what we got done in those temps.

I would love to tell you all about our work today, but we worked about 10hrs and did not get to Ilulisaat until 9 PM.  It is now 11:30 PM and I am ridiculously tired.  So check in tomorrow for photos from the ice sheet and our amazing flight back right over the Jacobshavn Glacier.

 

 

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Posted by Matt Bingham on Apr 16, 2014

Your taxes were due today.  Hope you didn’t forget.  I didn’t because Sarah Das reminded us all before we left not to forget to do our taxes!

Today was a big day of planning and packing.  The only place for breakfast that is open right now is a cafeteria at the airport so we headed over there this morning about 8.  Thats where I took this photo-looking out across the snowy airport runway.

After a fairly European breakfast of muesli, dried meat and cheese, danishes, Nutella, it was time to go over gear (again!).  This time we had to go through all the science equipment that various Ben and Sarah and Matt sent up on an earlier C17 flight a few weeks ago as well as a bunch of equipment that Polar Field Services has for us.  PFS is the outfit that the National Science Foundation contracts to handle all the logistics for NSF projects in Greenland.  So we spent most of the day in a concrete block of a windowless (but warm) warehouse sorting all our gear and making decisions about what to take and what to leave behind.

 So what’s in the gear?  Clockwise from the left: the big black and yellow Pelican boxes are Ben’s ground penetrating radar and GPS sensors.  The radar will be pulled on a sled to measure ice thickness and stratigraphy (layering) and the GPS units will be used to measure a strain grid.  We will insert long bamboo poles into the snow and measure their position with his very accurate GPS and then remeasure the same poles a year later to see how the glacier has moved over that time.  The white boxes are the the ice core boxes.  They look like cardboard boxes but inside are insulated.  Ice cores go into insulated tubes that then go into the insulated box and when we get back to town, into a a freezer.  Eventual they fly home on a “cold deck” flight of a C-130 (they don’t turn on the heat in the cargo area). At the top of the photo is a silver box full of equipment to do snow sampling in the snow pits followed my more small Pelican boxes (black and yellow) will all our “coms.”  We have a UHF short range walkie talkie for each person, 2 longer range VHF units, and three satellite phones.  Next to those are bamboo stakes which are used to stake out anything from a tent to a wind-break tarp.  Then we have shovels to dig the snow pit and a chainsaw in case we hit an ice melt layer on the way down (to cut weight in the plane, we are likely to leave that behind).  Finally the green bags are our “survival bags” with tents, sleeping bags, pads, stoves, fuel, and food for several days.  Those are in the event that we are stuck on the ice because of sudden weather changes or aircraft breakdown.  In the middle are some Crazy Creek chairs, tarps, and pads.  These are to sit in when taking breaks, and to stand or kneel on when sampling in a snow pit.  They give a little extra insulation between you and the cold snow.  We had to go through all this gear to make sure it fit our needs.  That included setting up the survival tents so we were sure we knew how.

Around lunch time I came back to my room at KISS and did a FaceTime call with the 3rd and 1rst Grade at Charles River School.  The kids got to ask me about being in Greenland-they wanted to know if I saw any animals (only Ravens so far), if polar bears or penguins lived here (bears-penguins are only in the southern hemisphere), if Santa was nearby (I haven’ seen him), and how may clothes I had to wear (not a ton so far but like winter in Boston).  I also got to take them outside KISS to see the view of nearby mountains and the town.  Here is what I saw on the left and what they saw on the right.

After lunch we were back to the packing.  It became apparent that we had a LOT of gear and might not make the weight requirement of the plane so we started triage on what we really needed and cut some things out.  About 6 PM the pilots of the Twin Otter arrived and we learned two things.  First that we did not have to worry quite as much about the weight and second that the weather looked good for our first flight tomorrow but bad for the next 2-4 days thereafter.  We were supposed to visit two sites on the Greenland Ice Sheet-one tomorrow and one the next day.  After a long dinner of discussion of all kinds of options, a phone call to the pilots, more discussion, two phone calls back with the pilots, we finally decided (at 9 PM, which seems way earlier because it is still light here at 10 PM-just dusky), that we would try to visit both sites tomorrow and scale back the sampling at each site a little so as to get something at each site.  Next year, members of the team will return to drill 100m ice cores and we need to know which site is better so visiting each, even if we did not get all the data we originally wanted, was going to be sufficient.  These are the types of decisions you have to make on fly in order to maximize what we get out of our limited time here.  So that means that tomorrow will be a BIG day.  We will likely be on the go for about 14 hours tomorrow.  It will be impossible to post to Instagram from the Ice Sheet and I probably won’t get much of a blog out tomorrow, but the next few days will be more relaxed if the weather in fact pins us down.  Tomorrow we should be spending the night in Ilulissat.  Wish us luck tomorrow!

 

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Posted by Matt Bingham on Apr 15, 2014

If you aren’t following me on Instagram, please do!  There is a camera icon link to it on the right side of every page.  At least today I have been posting a lot of photos-essentially live photo blogging through the day.  I won’t be able to do that when in the field, but on the in-between days I can. The blog is also having a hard time uploading photos so the Instagram link is the place to go for photos.

So after months (years really from when we first submitted the grant proposal) we are finally in Greenland for the first of two field seasons.  Yesterday I posted an overview of what we will be doing and today, it all actually started to happen!

MOnday was a weird day.  In some ways Greenland seems like a far away, remote, strange, possibly hostile (in terms of environment) place. But then you can get on a plane (not a commercial flight mind you) in upstate NY and in 4 hours be in Greenland, non-stop.  Pretty easy really.

At the end of my last post we were just getting ready to take off.  Flying in a plane with no windows is an odd thing.  I don’t get air-sick but I did feel a little funny sometimes without being able to see the horizon while the plane lifted off or banked.  It was also VERY loud.  So loud that you you basically can’t talk without shouting.  As we drove onto the tarmac before loading the plane we were given ear plugs which everyone wore the entire flight, which also made the flight weird because no one could hear no no one was talking.  The flight was mostly uneventful.  As air travel goes though it was actually quite nice.  Being 6’4″ leg room is always an issue, but as you can see above, not on this plane!  Folks mostly slept or read books or working on their computers-just like any other flight.

About an hour out I looked out one of the two tiny porthole windows and saw something I have never seen in person-sea ice.

We were over southern Baffin Bay and through the clouds I could see the broken up pack ice. A bout an hour later they told us it was time to land.  The Load Master who was sitting next to me had attached a GoPro camera to the inside of the cockpit window.  From his iPad we could watch what the camera was seeing. 

When we landed in Greenland it was a beautiful sunny day, but cold!  We immediately boarded another bus that took us to Kangerlussuaq International Science Support (KISS).  Here they have offices, bunk rooms, some science labs, and lots of support equipment for science groups.  It, and the buildings next door, are large rectangular 2 story buildings that look like giant shipping containers.  They are left over from when Kanger was a US Air Force base so they have a very barracks-like feel to them.  After a little orientation meeting from the KISS folks we put on some warm clothes and walked down the street to a bridge over a river and then up the other side of the valley to where we could look back over the river to the town and then the fjord in the far distance.  It was COLD!  We got a pretty taste of how it will feel to be out all day working and we will certainly need to be bundled up! Tuesday we will be planning and packing for our first day in the field.  Wednesay we are scheduled to fly a Twin Otter up to the ice sheet.  More on Tuesday’s planning at the end of the day.

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Posted by Matt Bingham on Apr 14, 2014

Right now we are sitting in the C17 awaiting departure. This morning we took the hotel shuttle to the air base but the shuttle could not enter so we had to throw all our gear into the back of a big military police pickup and cram all 6 of us into the cab with the driver. Then we hung around an auditorium for about two hours while the crew “palletized” our luggage. They strap them to pallets and pack the plane as you see behind us. Finally, about 9:45, we took a bus out to the plane and loaded up. The seats are a little uncomfortable but not bad. Certainly more spacious than a commercial plane. The commander gave me a tour of the cockpit and explained that the C17 is one of the few aircraft this size with a stick (like in a helicopter) for control rather than a yoke. I was not allowed to blog the photo of the cockpit!

Me are on board with 12 folks froM Polar Field Services, the outfit that runs most of the science logistics for research projects in Greenland. The gear you see in the back is equipment for research teams for around the country that will be coming Greenland in the months to come. This is really a cargo flight and we are basically part of that cargo. pilot flight crew is currently running through the aircraft systems in their preflight check so looks like it is time to go soon. Next blog post will be from Kangerlussuaq!

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