After several, well fed and cozy, but cabin fever-inducing days of weather delays in Qarsuut, we were off to our third and final site, Greeland Central!   The “GC” site was our first and only site of the year on the Greenland Ice Sheet, situated at 2400 m (7874 ft) elevation.  The central part of the name comes from it’s being located centrally between two sites where our group drilled shorter firn cores last year (Work at one of these sites is detailed here: http://www.miltonacademy.info/science/the-ice-sheet-2-photo-blog/).

On the flight out, we savored the incredible beauty of the glacially carved coastline, knowing that we were headed for a flat expanse of white ice as far as the eye could see.  Indeed, the trip to the ice sheet was filled with beautiful views of mountain glaciers and small ice caps.  As we got closer to the ice sheet, we began to see the large and heavily crevassed outlet glaciers that drain the Greenland Ice Sheet.  We flew almost directly over Store Glacier, which terminates in a thick mélange (a dense pack of small icebergs trapped by a seafloor ridge).

Above: The heavily-crevassed tidewater margin of Store glacier in the lower right and its thick mélange of icebergs and bergy bits in the ice-covered fjord.

We arrived at the ice sheet after about an hour and a half of flying and found that the weather here was much nicer than that along the coast.  We immediately got to work setting up camp.   At this point in the field season, we were operating as a well-oiled machine.  Setting up the drill and other tents was faster than ever, and even though we were delayed getting in, we had plenty of time for Oz to make some of his now-famous bean burritos.

The GC camp after the big storm (minus the bathroom tent, which we sent out on the first flight with our ice cores!).

Drilling commenced the following day, and like everything else, core recovery and processing was smooth and efficient.   Much of my time at GC was spent on core processing – tasks involving taking each recovered ice core section, logging and taking inventory of the length, diameter, weight and other physical characteristics, and bagging and ultimately boxing the ice for shipment back to the States.

During this time spent core processing, I also got a first hand view of climate going back in time.

Melting at the surface of Greenland has quite dramatically accelerated over recent decades.  The area of the ice sheet undergoing melt has increased with some places melting for the first time in more than a century.   The volume of meltwater produced across the ice sheet has also increased, and this melt makes up about half of Greenland’s likewise increasing contribution to sea level rise (the other half is from glacier flow and calving into the ocean).

The recent ramp up in surface melt was clearly visible in the GC core (although detailed analyses are still a ways off).  As this site is located in the ice sheet percolation zone, melting at the ice sheet surface drains (or percolates) downward into the near-surface firn and then refreezes.  These refrozen melt layers are quite easily distinguished in firn as being nearly bubble-free and glass-like, whereas unaltered firn looks more like compacted, white snow.  Because warmer summers produce more melt, reading the melt layers back in time via the ice cores can provide detailed information on past variability in summer climate.  What I observed was a much higher frequency and thicknesses of refrozen melt layers in the top of our GC core (i.e., the most recent time) and a decrease in both frequency and thickness as we drilled deeper and back in time.   The core was clearly documenting the widely known recent intensification of melt across Greenland.  However, just how unprecedented are these changes?  There were certainly periods as we drilled deeper that melt again increased.  What is driving these changes in melt and therefore summer warmth across Greenland?  The answers to these questions are ones that my research seeks to address after further analyzing what the cores are telling us.

Image from the National Ice Core Laboratory’s ice core scanning system of one the previous year’s cores from the ice sheet.  In the middle of the image is the notable 2012 melt layer, stemming from a series of events in which nearly 100% of Greenland’s surface experienced melting.  (As I was pretty busy processing the ice cores in the field, I didn’t get any field photos of the ice layers.  However, we’ll be imaging this year’s cores at NICL in just a few weeks from now.)

After several days of drilling and finally reaching our goal of 100 m depth, we had a day of flights scheduled to retrieve us, our camp gear, and our extracted ice off of the ice sheet.  On our first flight of the day, we sent out our most precious and important cargo: the ice cores!  Almost simultaneously as the plane took off, a dense fog rolled in.  This prevented any further flights that day and ushered in a two-day storm.   These days were spent mostly being tentbound and building the snow walls surrounding our tents both higher and longer as the winds shifted direction.  At times the wind was so intense that our kitchen tent seemed as if it might collapse!  I couldn’t help but think this may have been one of the most intense polar storms I have experienced.  It’s hard to tell though – ice sheets can get to be very windy!  And of course, it was likely nothing in comparison to that experienced by the folks studying the firn aquifer in SE Greenland this year (link to blog: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefield/2015/05/05/away-from-the-ice-sheet-until-the-fall/), who received 3 feet of snow in a five-day, intensely windy storm!  Luckily for us, there was a momentary calm before another storm approached, and after only two days of being tentbound, our incredible Twin Otter pilots were able to pull us out.

As our successful fieldwork campaign comes to an end, the research phase begins.  In just a few weeks we will head to the National Ice Core Laboratory, where we will begin processing the ice cores for further analysis.  In some ways, the research phase is just as exciting as being in the field– who knows what we will find and experience as we unravel the climate history stored in the ice.

The following post was written by Matt Osman (and edited minimally for clarification).

Saturday, May 2nd, 2015

 After a pleasant, albeit unintended delay in Ilulissat, we were finally able to make it to our first field site!

Following two days of snow and clouds, it happened all at once; on the evening of April 28^th there appeared a patch of blue sky on the horizon near Disko Island.  Soon after, we were approached by our two (very dedicated) Twin Otter pilots with exciting news of this being the start of a possible 6-8 hour window of clear weather to get up on to ice cap.  The pilots quickly made some calls and scheduled the airport to open at 5 AM the following morning (try making that happen at an American airport!), and following some anxious packing, a few precious hours of sleep, and a short plane commute, voila! – we were standing on the ice cap. True to the pilots’ predictions, the site’s surrounding scenery was short-lived; no more than hour after landing we were socked in with clouds and snow.

 The Twin Otter plane taking off after dropping us off at the Disko Island Ice Cap. Can you spot the horizon to the right of the image?  Its absence underscores why clear weather is needed for safe air travel in Greenland.  (Photo credit: Matt Osman)

By midday our camp was set up; the cook shack and the drill tent sat center stage, surrounded by our little village of personal tents and a storage/restroom tent (check out image below).

 Our camp on the Disko Island Ice Cap. (Photo credit: Matt Osman)

By afternoon, Mike, our driller, had the drill set up and we were ready to get coring.  From analyses on our 2014 short ice cores and ground penetrating radar profiles, it was clearly evident (and expected) that Disko Island Ice Cap was the meltiest of all the drill sites we will visit this year.  This year’s core was no exception; within two meters we were in solid ice.  In total, we ended up drilling about 40m of core total at Disko Island (a bit less than our goal due to some unexpected circumstances!), which will give us valuable new records on the last few decades of oceanographic and climatic variability in the region. Furthermore, we are now true experts at managing our “Ice Core Extraction and Processing Line” system.

Here’s a quick tutorial of how it works:

• Step 1) An approximately 2 meter deep pit is dug, allowing the core barrel to be rotated into the bottom of the pit where the actual borehole resides.  Mike Waszkiewicz and myself (pictured) work in tandem to lower and lead the drill barrel into the borehole.  (a)
• Step 2) Mike uses a control box to lower the drill barrel down the borehole; the deeper into the glacier you drill the longer it takes to travel to the bottom. (b)
• Step 3) After drilling a core section (we extract 1-meter long sections at a time), Mike brings the drill barrel back up and the barrel is rotated to the horizontal position again, ice core intact. (c)

 (Photo credits: a & c) Dr. Sarah Das, b) Matt Osman)

• Step 4) Mike and I bring the core barrel outside to discard the extraneous snow/ice chips and extract the ice core.  It is then handed-off to the core-processing table. (d)
• Step 5) At the processing table, Luke and Sarah don sterile gloves and face masks to clean up the core (if necessary) and take measurements of its mass and length/width. (e) & (f)
• Step 6) Finally, the core is bagged up and put into tubes, which are stored in special insulated boxes (not pictured). A long journey awaits the cores over the next few weeks, one that will ultimately end at the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver, CO.  Our group will travel to NICL in June to finish processing the core for chemical and physical analyses.

 (Photo credits: d & e) Dr. Sarah Das,  f) Matt Osman)

Additional photos from Disko:

  Two adjacent snow pits provide a beautiful backlit history of the last ~2 years worth of snow accumulation on Disko Island.  The snow pit depth is approximately 2.3m, down to the snow-ice transition.  In lower left Matt Osman points to an interval of snow accumulation likely occurring between two summer 2014 warm events. (Photo credit: Matt Osman)

(Dusk on the Disko Island Ice Cap (Photo credit: Matt Osman) 

Waiting: A Sucker for Sucker Holes

May 7th, 2015

Hurry up and wait has become the mantra to which we’ve obeyed since arriving in Greenland.  Since arriving in Qaarsut, it seems that we have spent a good portion of the last week frantically gearing up to go to the Nuussuaq field site, only to get caught holding on standby due to weather.  As I’ve come to realize, there exists a simple yet definitive hierarchy to which science adheres in Greenland. We scientists are at the whim of the helicopter/plane pilots, who control transportation in Greenland (the other, less viable travel option includes a mixture of boats and dog sleds).  The pilots, on the other hand, are at the whim of the weather; a simple cloudy day can create whiteout conditions on an ice cap, making landing impossible And what controls the weather? Seemingly, the God of Randomness; weather has proven completely unpredictable these past couple weeks, and we are often left waiting, in hopes of blue skies.  Sometimes, a spot of blue will appear – these are termed “sucker holes”, as I’m informed by Sarah (Das) and our helicopter pilot, Inge, and you don’t want to get caught a sucker for thinking they’ll last. The realistic caveat, though, is you also don’t want to get caught unprepared to go in case they do.  And so, we are left hurrying up and waiting for “optimal” flying conditions.

 A classic sucker hole, as viewed from above.  Here was our view from the Sikorsky helicopter on the first attempt to land on the Disko Island Ice Cap. (Photo credit: Dr. Sarah Das, @sarahbdas on Twitter)

Yet, some time off is not necessarily a bad thing, and has allotted us time to explore the villages of Kangerlussuaq, Ilulisatt, and Qaarsut, and observe some of the daily habits of their inhabitants. A consistent aspect of Greenlandic villages I find particularly aesthetic are the assortment of house colors.  In a landscape that is snowy and essentially acts as a bleached canvas the majority of the year, the colorful towns seem to me to be as much an artistic expression of the inhabitants as they are a refuge.  I have to wonder though if the house colors are coordinated among neighbors; rarely will you find two next to each other the same color.  Pink with baby blue accents is probably the most vibrant color I’ve seen; personally, I would opt for a purple house.

(Photo credit: Matt Osman)

 Greenlandic sled dogs are another commonplace sight (and sound!) in Greenland villages.  They are an ancient breed, descended from the dogs brought by the first Inuit hunters to Greenland, and are considered work dogs used for travel, not pets. On Sunday last week we had a fun opportunity to join the Qaarsut locals in a village dog-sled race for small children and grandmothers on the sea ice adjacent to town.  It was a blast, and everyone was in great spirits.  After completing the race, the participants were victoriously hoisted up in celebration, as seen in the photo below.

(Photo credit: Matt Osman)

 The main livelihood, and the number one export in Greenland, is fishing.  Below, Luke and our helicopter pilot contemplate a rack of dried cod in Qaarsut.  Yum.

 (Photo credits: Dr. Sarah Das @sarahbdas on Twitter)

Drill Site #2: Nuussuaq Peninsula (Drill Baby, Drill!)

Monday, May 11^th.

The Nuussuaq drill site was an overwhelming success, but it wasn’t without its difficulties and a fair bit of stress leading up to the fact.  Unlike the Disko Island Ice Cap and the Greenland Ice Sheet drill sites, the plan at Nuussuaq was to get chartered up via helicopter for daily trips ( approximately 10 minutes flight time), and to return to Qaarsut in the evenings. After nearly a week of waiting, on Thursday, May 8^th the weather finally cleared and we were able to make it up to the Nuussuaqq ice cap and get everything set up.  The entire ice cap sits perched on a plateau dramatically rising from sea level to 2100m ( about 6800 feet) up from sea level, and it’s one of the more incredible landscapes I’ve ever been to; a view from the summit grants you a stunning 360˚-view with the Greenland Ice Sheet on the eastern skyline, Disko Bay and Island to the south, sea-ice covered Uummannaq Bay to the west, and a never-ending supply majestic carved peaks everywhere in between. Check last year’s posts for more photos.

 A view to the east from the Nuussuaq drill site.  The glowing white line on the horizon is the Greenland Ice Sheet. (Photo credit: M. Osman)

 Thursday’s success in getting everything set up and ready to go to drill was met the following day with poor weather, forecasted to get worse the following three days.  At this point, our team had to make a decision – the daily commute plan was no longer an option as we had only a few days left to drill at Nuussuaq, and the incoming storm system would render the site a total failure.  We had to get in at all costs and stay. At noon on Friday, a sucker hole appeared in the sky, offering one final chance at getting in.  Without time to pack all our tents and camping kits, we hastily threw together our survival kits and sleeping bags and took off.  Understanding the weight of the situation, Inge, our skilled Norwegian pilot, was as determined as us to get us on the ice.  After circling above our socked in drill site, an opening in the clouds occurred fortuitously over a nearby red flag placed in the snow the previous day, and Inge rushed in to let us jump out.  WE HAD MADE IT!

Though the following three days did indeed consist largely of snow storms and whiteout, we were able to work the entire time.  With no other tents/amenities, our lives centered around drilling; we ate, slept, and worked around the clock in the drill tent (photo below). We had originally guesstimated the depth of the entire Nuussuaq ice cap to be 140m; at the end of the third day, we had retrieved an outstanding 138.4 meters of ice core (our original drill plan allotted 5-6 work days for 100m).  Needless to say, we were exhausted. Since annual ice layers become increasingly compressed the deeper and closer to the bed you dig, our ice core may contain a history of climate substantially longer than the originally intended 300-400 year record.  I am quite excited to get back to the lab and begin analyzing the data!

One more site to go: next up, the Greenland Ice Sheet. Stay tuned!

Our sleeping bags lined up in close quarters next to the drill.  (Photo credit: Matt Osman)

Mike Waszkiewicz hooking up our ice core boxes to the helicopter on our last day at Nuussuaq. They’ll be flown back down to Qaarsut and stored at -20˚C, until being transported on a cold deck flight back to the USA. (Photo credit: Luke Trusel)

 The team, relieved to be done after a tiring (but successful) three days at Nuussuaq. Left to right: Mike Waszkiewicz, Sarah Das, Matt Osman, and Luke Trusel

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Today we flew from Kanger to Disko, but had to turn around at the last minute because cloud cover obscured our site.  The pilots dropped us off in Ilulissat and then departed back to Kanger; they were on SAR duty and needed equipment that they were not carrying during our flight.  We got several rooms at the Hotel Hvide Falk with the intention of trying to catch a flight the next day in a Norlandair Twin Otter station being used by the OSU group.

Meanwhile, it was a beautiful day in Ilulissat, with clear skies, lots of sun, with a bit of a cold breeze blowing from the ice sheet.  I ate some leftover pizza I had from Kanger and set out on a hike out to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ilulissat Icefjord.  On the way I was greeted by some curious and very cute sled dog puppies.

Close-up of a Sled Dog (Photo Credit: Luke Trusel)

As I reached the crest of the hills to the south of town, I discovered a breathtaking view of the fjord and several immense icebergs grounded in the shallow water.  This view reminded me of the awe which the ice can inspire.  At the same time, seeing the size of these icebergs was a reminder of the very real impacts of a warming climate on the Greenland ice sheet.  These bergs were likely calved by Jakobshavn Isbrae, one of the fastest flowing glaciers in the world and one that is undergoing rapid retreat and thinning in response to a warming atmosphere and ocean.

A view of a fjord South of Ilulissat (Photo Creidt: Luke Trusel)

An iceberg floating near Ilulissat (Photo Credit: Luke Trusel)

Satellite imagery perfectly captures the day’s weather.  In visible imagery from NASA’s MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite, we can see a long band of clouds extending up the coast of west Greenland and concentrating over Disko Island.  At the same time, clear skies surround much of Disko Bay and Ilulissat.  ESA’s ASAR radar instrument on the Sentinel-1 satellite can see through these clouds.  Here we can see much of Disko Bay showing up as dark black, indicating open water.  The cloudy section in Davis Straight is sea ice, and the bright white to the southeast of Ilulissat is the thick mélange of icebergs in Jakobshavn Icefjord. We can also see our field site on Disko Island as if no clouds existed!

Terra satelite imagery showing the clear skies around Disko Bay and Illulissat (Satellite images courtesy of the DMI (http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/disko.uk.php))

ASAR satelite imagery showing the Disko Bay area without clouds (Satellite images courtesy of the DMI (http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/disko.uk.php))

Our day capped with smoothies at a local café and the goal of catching the Twin Otter out of here first thing in the morning.  That goal was not met, however, and we are looking for the weather to clear – hopeful for Thursday.

The following post was written by Luke Trusel (and edited minimally for clarification).

Friday, April 24, 2015

This morning, I woke up and met Sarah Das and the rest of the 2015 Disko Bay team at 5:00 AM at a hotel near the Air Force National Guard. Our flight, “Chalk 3,” was set for departure at 10am.

An LC-130 from the National Science Foundation (Photo credit: Luke Trusel)

We took a stopover in Goose Bay, Newfoundland at about 1pm. It was actually colder in NY than in Goose Bay. We had smooth flying for the next few hours. There were some beautiful views of ice along the southwest coast of Greenland on the flight. About three hours later, we all arrived in Kangerlussuaq.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

We had an early breakfast at the new restaurant this year – it serves Thai food and pizzas, as well as some American-style breakfast.  That morning I had fried and scrambled eggs, bacon, bread and coffee.  For lunch, I had a pizza, and for diner I had curry.  Perhaps surprisingly, all of the food was very good!

Kangerlussuaq at dusk (Photo credit: Luke Trusel)

Science wise, our day started with a meeting regarding field safety and communications.  We then met with our helicopter pilots to discuss plans for camp put-in on Disko Island. The pilots were excited to fly there.  We’ll be taking a very large Sikorsky helicopter that can hold 24 passengers (but only 19 if there’s no in flight attendant, apparently).

We then went to purchase some last minute perishable foods and then went to sort through our remaining cargo.  At the site, we had a dry run at setting up all of our tents.  The Mountain Hardwear Space Station tent we use to house the drill rig and processing station was huge and a tricky to set up.  However, it does sort of look like a disco ball, so it’s appropriate for Disko Island.

Setting up the tent (Photo credit: Sarah Das)

Tomorrow we’ll depart somewhere around 9AM.  The next update will be from the village Qaarsut, hopefully after having successfully collected 100 m of climate history from Disko Island.

Dr. Trusel, a post-doctoral scholar at WHOI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, shared that his longtime curiosity about how the world works inspired his decision to pursue a career of science. He stated, “Going into science is just another outlet to explore things and understand something the best you can.”

Matt Osman articulated that his interest in science stems from his childhood natural curiosity of the Earth. Having grown up in a small, rural farming community in central Illinois, Osman had always imagined and contemplated the past. He is “inspired (and equal parts humbled) by the interwoven complexities of the Earth’s climate system, as well as impassioned by the increasing relevance that understanding this complexity has in our changing world.”

Dr. Trusel and Oz explained that the main goal of this trip is to collect ice cores about 100 meters long at three sites in west and central Greenland. These cores are a record of how the ice and climate have changed. Two sites will be the same as last year, the Disko Island Ice Cap and Nuussuaq Peninsula Ice Cap, and the a new drill site, the Greenland Ice Sheet “Central” site, will be located between two sites on the Greenland Ice Sheet that the team visited last year.  Compared to the ~10m cores drilled last year, these longer cores will indicate a much longer climate record, potentially extending as far back as 300-400 or more years. They will measure many physical and chemical signals, known as “climate proxies,” within the cores that will ultimately inform the scientists about “local temperature, sea ice extent, marine primary production, and atmospheric circulation” behavior.

Dr. Trusel enthused about going to Greenland for the first time. He commented, “I’m sure it will be an absolutely beautiful place and it’s a place I’ve always wanted to go. I’ve been on 5 Arctic and Antarctic research trips, but this is the first time to Greenland!” Similarly, Oz expressed excitement over the “adventurous aspect of traveling to far off and remote (not to mention beautiful) field sites,” as well as over learning first-hand the “intricacies of conducting self-supported, polar ice core research…[He’ll] have the unique opportunity to play an integral part in each aspect of the mission…Also…[He is] quite excited for a second round of winter.”

On the flip side, when asked about what they were most apprehensive, Dr. Trusel answered that he hopes he has packed all of the right gear. Oz reflected upon his nervousness to control his sweet tooth; “Since being in cold conditions 24/7 is itself an energy-intensive activity, [they] take high calorie foods, including a large [stash] of chocolate.”

To prepare, both scientists have been packing gear since winter. They devoted a week to take inventory, purchase, and pack scientific equipment, field supplies, and food to last a month, all of which, through the New York Air National Guard, they sent to Greenland ahead of time. They also dedicated time to field training, and as Dr. Trusel joked, hanging out in large freezers. “Special gear” was mainly composed of an updated wardrobe to stay warm in -30 to -40˚C temperatures, including big down jackets, waterproof pants, and big gloves and mittens. To further prepare, they trained by climbing Mt. Washington. Dr. Trusel received certification in wilderness first aid and has been working to stay in shape, as the sites will be of high elevation and extreme cold temperatures. He commented that it was a “great opportunity to work together as a team.” Similarly, Oz renewed his NOLS Wilderness First Responder certification, and he explained, “it is requisite that [they] also all be versed in basic mountaineering, glacier travel, and cold-weather expeditionary skills, as [they] will be camping on the glacier for extended periods of time.”

Once there, the team will have rather limited access to basic luxuries, like Wi-Fi. They will have wi-fi at the ends and middle of the trip when based in villages, but there will not be Internet access at the field sites. However, they have a satellite phone available at all times. In regards to connection back home, Dr. Trusel plans to communicate through the satellite phone and to send online updates when granted Internet access. Oz anticipates the use of intermittent email communication. He added, “This blog will be nice.” When asked about being away from responsibilities on the home-front, Dr. Trusel noted that his wife will have more house and dog duties, and Oz remarked that his biggest challenge would be missing and making up a month’s worth of coursework at MIT—(and as he jested, seeing “if [his] aloe desk-plant can last a month unattended).

To conclude, when we asked if they would like to add anything else, Dr. Trusel encouraged that we “study earth science because you get to go to some of the most amazing places!” To complement, nicely along the lines of our thoughts, Matt added, “Stay posted!”

Other team members will also be presenting on related work at AGU:

Laura Stevens et al (including Sarah Das):  Hydrologically Induced Basal Slip Triggers Greenland Supraglacial Lake Drainages

Ashley Stevens, et al (including Karen Frey, Sarah Das, Matt Evans, Ben Smith, and Luke Trusel): Assessing the influence of sea ice conditions on outlet glacier retreat in Disko and Uummannaq Bays, West Greenland

Kenneth Mankoff, et al ( including Sarah Das): In-Situ Observations of a Subglacial Outflow Plume in a Greenland Fjord

Luke Trusel, et al (including Karen Frey and Sarah Das): Divergent trajectories of Antarctic ice shelf surface melt under 21st century climate scenarios

Other work being presented by each of the PIs or their students can be found here:

Karen Frey

Sarah Das

Benjamin Smith

Matthew Evans 

If you’ve been following Matt’s blog, you’ll know that we worked hard in the field this April collecting firn cores and snow pit samples and completing radar surveys at five different sites across west Greenland. But the work doesn’t stop there. Our cores were shipped from Greenland on a ‘cold deck’ flight to the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Lakewood, Colorado outside of Denver. From June 30 to July 3, PI Sarah Das, her new PhD student Matt Osman (yes, we have yet another Matt joining the team, so we will refer to him as “Oz”), Luke Trusel (currently a PhD student at Clark University working with PI Karen Frey, but starting a postdoc at WHOI with Sarah in the fall), and I (a PhD student at Clark University working with PI Karen Frey) traveled to NICL to begin processing the ice cores we collected this spring.

The National Ice Core Lab is maintained by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the University of New Hampshire.  The physical facility includes an archive freezer held at a temperature of -36°C where some of the oldest cores from all over the world are stored. There is also a cold laboratory held at a temperature of -25°C which is where we spent most of our time processing our cores. We couldn’t have done any of the processing without the help of NICL employees Geoff Hargreaves and Richard Nunn. For lots of great information about NICL and the frozen facilities visit icecores.org.

The door to the frozen lab at NICL. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

One hallway of the National Ice Core Laboratory’s archive at -36°C. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

We spent the first half of our first day getting the lab tailored to our needs. Ensuring the equipment, such as the saws, and especially the imaging system worked. In the afternoon of the first day, we got into a rhythm with everyone having different tasks as the core moved along and leaving the opportunity for people to take breaks at different times. It was important to stay hydrated and take breaks from the cold at any point when you felt cold to avoid not only frostbite, but also disorientation especially since we were working with saws. As far as the science goes, the most important thing to remember when handling an ice core is to know where the top is! In order to keep this consistent as the core moved around the lab from person to person, we always kept the top to the right. There are very helpful arrows indicating the top direction drawn throughout the lab so you don’t forget.

The first processing step was handled by Richard, who removed the core from its original tubing and layflat from the field. He then measured the length, diameter, and weight of the core. Using a saw, he then removed the top centimeter from the core so that it was now flat on top. These cut off portions are called “wings” and were saved and bagged for later use.

After measuring the core, Richard Nuun of NICL packs the core securely in the tray for the top cut. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

After the top portion of the core was cut off, it was digitally imaged. I turned to Luke for the following more detailed explanation of the imaging system at NICL. “The imaging system at NICL is an inline scanning system designed to create a visual archive of the core and allow for analyzing its physical properties.  You can think of it like a scanner or copying machine.  Each tube of ice core is placed on a tray and is slowly moved past a high-resolution camera sensor that records an image of the core at sub-millimeter scale.  Two LED lights on each side of the core illuminate features like melt layers, firn grain size changes, and cracks within the core. The images can be useful for analyzing annual layering (to determine how much snow fell in a year) and refrozen melt layer thicknesses (to determine how warm summers have been).”

An example of a firn core digital image. (Photo Credit: Luke Trusel).

After the digital imaging, Luke hand-drew some basic plots (on super cool meter-long graph paper made just for this!) of the core to take special care of noting what was a melt layer versus a break in the core, as they can sometimes be confused in digital form.

Luke hand-plotting the core to double-check the digital images. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

After Luke plotted the core, he passed it along to Sarah. Sarah cut the three round sides that remained on the core off, making the core into a clean 5cm X 5cm square the length of the core. She also bagged the cut-off outer wings for later use.

Sarah cutting the core down to be square.

An example of the center of the core after all the outside edges have been removed. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

After Sarah cut the core down to be square, she passed it along to Luke who cut the interior square in half lengthwise, creating two 5cm  X 2.5cm sections for the length of the core. The first of these length-wise sections was bagged and saved for future use at Sarah’s WHOI lab.

Luke cutting the square core into two length-wise pieces. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

The second length of core was then passed to Oz and me. I cut the core into smaller 5cm X 5cm X 2.5cm discrete samples sections.

Ashley cutting the core into small discrete samples. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

Oz then bagged these samples and we stapled labels onto the bag to know what site and depth they correspond to.

Oz bagging and labeling the discrete samples. (Photo Credit: Sarah Das).

Once we had our jobs organized during the second half of the first day, we were able to power through most of the cores on the following day, and leaving only a few to do on the morning of the third day. We processed a total of about 33.4 meters of core taken from four different sites in Greenland. Next year we plan to collect hundreds of meters of core from three final sites. Needless to say, we expect to be spending a bit more time at the National Ice Core Lab next summer.

The rest of the team, Matt, Sarah, Ben, and Laura headed up from Qaarsut with a new pilot to Nuus1, our second site on the Nuussauq Peninsula.  Ben and Laura were dropped off first and they started the normal routine of getting the radar ready and installing the first GPS.  They quickly realized that the area had some small crevasses (only a few inches wide), but even small ones is an indication of tension in the ice and suggests the possibility of bigger, more dangerous ones. So Ben and Laura assessed the situation and directed the helo to a different landing spot.    Sarah and Matt worked on the core and found lots of hard melt layers and not much quality firn.  The snow pit was only about half a meter before they found an impenetrable ice layer.  The conclusion-Nuus 1 is probably not a candidate for future deep drilling.  As the photos show, though, it was a great day out on the ice cap.

Ben and Laura on the ground.

Sarah working on the core. 

The very shallow snow pit with a Leatherman for scale. 

The team on Nuus1.  Another stellar day in the mountains.

After the final field day, the field crew enjoyed another two days in Ilulissat.

Pano of the overlook for the huge bergs.  If you compare this one to the one from earlier in the week, you can see how much more ice has moved into the bay.  

Ben, Sarah, and Laura survey the big bergs. 

Final dinner in Ilulissat: The Greenlandic buffet: cod, salmon, cod liver, reindeer in cream, seal, smoked whale, roe, cod milt, and capelin.  

In about and hour we board a plane for Copenhagen-the final (unplanned) leg of our Greenland adventure!

If you have been reading other posts you know to also hit the Instgram link to the left to see more photos.

You also know by now that we have been doing the same work at each field site: 1) drilling a core (usually about 5-9 meters deep), 2) digging a 1-2 meter snow pit and taking two sets of samples-one for stable isotopes (H and O) and density (rectangular holes), and one for MSA, Cl, and other chemistry (round holes), and 3) doing radar transects to map the subsurface ice layers and thicknesses and taking GPS measurements to see how the glaciers are moving and accumulating snow.  Because we have been repeating the same tasks, it has worked well to divide into teams of 2: Matt and Sarah core, Ashley and I (and the Twim Otter pilots on the GrIS!) dig the pit and sample, and Laura and Ben run the radar and GPS.

For the Disko and Nuussuaq sites, I jumped in with Ben and Laura so we could move as a rope team of 3, which is safer on glaciated terrain where the crevasse danger is unknown.  The auxiliary benefit of being on the radar rope is that you stay warmer moving around, and as you can see from the photos, you also get to walk all around the site and see the sites!  Because Nuus 2 is steeper, those walks away from the main work site quickly got you some unique views.

So today, Ben and Laura and I went up first.  The flight up the valley was just ridiculous in terms of scenery.  Like at Disko, Ben set to work on the radar set up while Laura put in the first GPS and I probed the area; we were very confident from Ben’s studies of hi-res satellite imagery that our landing site was crevasse-free but it seemed like a prudent thing to do anyway.  Once the radar was ready we set off on on our scenic walk.  We would walk following a GPS track that Ben had mapped on this satellite imagery on his computer and transferred to a handheld Garmin.  At the end of each track or “run” we would stop and Ben would reset his orange ground penetrating radar and Laura would reset the ice penetrating radar that I was towing behind me.  At each of these stops Ben would take off his pack, lay it on the ground,  and open it up to where his radar controls were located and I would fish out my camera and snap pictures.  As a result, most of my photos that have Ben in them show him “praying to the radar gods,” as he said. After the first radar circuit around the landing site, the helo came back with the rest of the team and they set to work on the other tasks.

At the end of the day, Ashley and Ben and I headed down to Qaarsut on the first flight down and organized gear for me and Ashley to take back to Ilulissat.  When the rest of the team came down, we said our goodbyes and then Ashley and I boarded the helo for the flight back with Peter.  As I explained earlier, Peter had to head back to Copenhagen today so he had to return to Ilulissat yesterday so he could catch a flight today to Kanger and then on to Copenhagen, plus our end-of -trip logistics got confused due to a number of factors that all converged.  Originally we were all going to come back to Kanger yesterday and today.  Because we were behind on field days due to weather, we were trying to use what would have been down days in Kanger waiting for the Air National Guard C-130 to take us home on Monday.  Right as we were trying to figure out if we could get a new pilot back to Qaarsut for the weekend, we found out that the C-130s were all grounded (world wide is what we heard) and that the first C-130 would be coming on Tuesday and then not leaving until Wednesday or after.  That meant that we needed to fly home commercially.  To complicate matters, there are only flights from Ilulissat to Kanger on certain days and the A-Star can only carry 3 passengers and a limited amount of gear.  Very long story (trust me!) short is that it worked best for me and Ashley to fly out with Peter and then fly down to Kanger today via Air Greenland (yet another aircraft-a Dash 8) while the rest of the team does one more Nuussuaq site and then makes their way to Kanger on Monday (because there are no flights over the weekend).  When we all meet up in Kanger we then fly to Copenhagen, spend the night, and then fly back to Boston via Newark (yeah Newark!), except for Ben who can fly to Iceland and then direct to Seattle.  Complicated!

So what follows is a string of photos showing the days events.

 Peter, our pilot, with his machine.

Ben prays to the radar box of goodies

And to the GPS.  This was the most amazing view I think with the peaks sticking out the clouds. 

A little shift to the right for the rest of the view of the above photo. 

Plotting our next course. 

This is the real “Ben prays to the radar gods” photo.  I have lots of these photos.  

Tough place to be but someone has to do this science!

The big view!

Hack-a-zoom.  I love this valley and this peak.  I could not stop trying to photograph it.

Laura takes in the view. Being a grad student has its challenges.  This is not one of them.

Team 2 arrives.  Matt taking a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture of me . . . 

Matt E, aka the cosmonaut, drills into Nuus 2.  We pulled 11 m of core from the hole below.  

Looking down the hole.  Held the iPhone real tight!

Taking the ice’s temperature. 

The tubing that the core goes into is called “lay-flat.” It is flat but hollow.  It gets stapled at one end and labelled so that when core is ready, it can be slid in.  Then it goes into the silver core tube and eventually into an insulated core box to be shipped cold back to the US.  

“Comrades, you must eat to stay warm!”

Flying back down to Qaarsut.  Out in the distance are the huge rock fortress islands whose tops were sticking out of the clouds and in the foreground is a large iceberg frozen into the sea-ice.  

That rock cairn on the right of the foreground peak is the one we hiked to two days before when we were grounded in the weather.  

Peter slowed down so I could get this shot of the airport hotel without the big water tank next to it.  

After refueling in Qaarsut, we took off back to Ilulissat.  On the right of this island is a town called  Uummaannaq. No I did not hold down keys-that is how it is spelled. Greenlandic is full of a’s, u’s, i’s, l’s, t’s, and m’s and n’s.  Very cool language to see in print.   

Then we turned up this valley and flew right back past our field site and up over the clouds on the other side.  

Peaks coming through the clouds. 

My favorite valley and peak wrapped in clouds.  

Islands in the sky. 

My favorite valley (again!) 

Crazy cool!

Looking up a long valley that cuts through the peninsula.  

 As we got out over the ocean the clouds thickened and Peter took us down to the cloud tops to look for a hole.  Along the way we got chased by the helicopter fairy.  

After Peter found a hole and dove down through it (a little stomach in the throat!) we spotted this gem!

90% of a berg is underwater so we are seeing both the “tip of the iceberg” and the tip of the bottom.  Presumably these connect below were we can see.   

 Some scale!

Ilulissat with the truly colossal Jakoshavn bergs around the point.  

Parting shot on a gorgeous day.  

But here are three photos to whet the appetite:

On the flight up to the field site, which is right on top of the dome on the left at the head of the valley system.  

Grainy iPhone zoom but give a great sense of the drama of the position of the field site.  We were way up high on a small ice cap surrounded by mountains that were sticking up out of a much lower layer of cloud.  Words can’t describe it (though I will try them later!)

My after-school Milton crew, this is for you.  This is one of the shallower pits we have sampled, but from here I have two different kinds of snow/ice samples and Matt (Dr. Evans) is starting a core.  These will all go to Milton for us to work on!

Yesterday and today, I posted some photos from the Qaarsut area to Instagram (camera icon on the right).  Qaarsut is the closest thing we have seen to what remains of traditional Greenlandic culture so check out the photos of the dogs, drying fish, and frozen seal and whale meat.

Compared to our field days there isn’t much else going on, so . . . I thought I would post something about our Easter in Ilulissat a few days ago.

The day started with the arrival of the Easter Bunny who left some treats outside our doors (see my earlier post for photos!).  We then had a pretty lazy morning before going for a walk around town.  We visited the local museum, the first floor of which is full of Emanuel Petersen paintings.  Apparently he is well known for his paintings Greenland in the early 1900s.  I also like the name.  My maternal great grandfather was Christian Petersen, from Denmark.  The paintings give a good idea of what one would have found in the earlier days of exploration of these areas (at least early exploration of Europeans-the Inuit and Vikings were here well before that).

Upstairs in the museum were some nice, more modern and abstract paintings and some sculpture.  I especially liked the one shown below of an Inuit face carved from a whale vertebrae.

After the museum we went to a small local artisan shop that Sarah knew about.  The men working there were all Greenlandic and spoke limited English.  They carved figures, animals, etc from caribou antler, bone, and narwhal tusk.  Sarah and Matt bought a few nice things and I got a kayaker trying to spear a narwhal.

After that we split up and Matt and I walked back out to the “boardwalk” trail at the edge of town to look at the giant icebergs that calve from the Jakobshavn.  We had all been the night before, but it was starting to snow then and we did not see that much.  Easter Sunday, though, was beautiful though and we were treated to an up close and personal look at these monsters.  We even got a “lecture” from a “very knowledgeable” Frenchman about why we did not need to worry about climate change because it is all part of “natural cycles” like sun-spot activity and the tilt of the earth.  That was right after he expounded for a while about how much the Jakobshavn was retreating.  Hmmmm….

This is the walk out to the view point of the huge bergs.  All that ice in the ocean is ice bergs. 

This is the main lookout point.  The Jakobshavn Glacier is to the left way up the fjord.  These bergs probably calved off last summer and drifted out here where they got stuck on a shallow spot where the fjord meets Disko Bay. 

It is hard to appreciate scale here, but that is a tourist boat in front of the berg.  It holds about 25 people. And the photo below is the right hand side of the same ice berg.  And 90% of the berg is under water.  Massive!

I discovered that I could take a photo with my iPhone through my small spotting scope.

In the panorama above this berg is just to right of center, so the phone/scope trick works pretty well.  I looked at this one a lot.  To me this is sort of the quintessential ice berg. 

Matt and I could have stayed all day to look at the ice bergs but we had to meet up with everyone else for dinner.  On the way back to town we passed by the large area where most of the town’s dogs are kept.  These dogs are all for running sleds. In the foreground of the photo below are all the dog “sheds.”  The dogs are all tied up outside in pairs.  They spend the night out curled up in a ball.  They all appeared quite happy in the cold, lounging on the snow.

Its not quite @dogsinblankets but this guy was really cute.  He seemed to be a stray pup and he looked like he was looking for handouts but was too skittish to come close.  I wanted to take him home and name him Disko!  

On the way through town I spotted this: laundry on the racks and fish (middle) on the racks.  

After our hike, Matt and I met up with the rest of the gang at the Hotel Ice Fjord for an Easter dinner of local salmon and caribou (reindeer).  When we asked the waiter what the “game of the day” was, he said in broken English-“you know the animal on the front of the Santa Claus sled?”  (Caribou and Reindeer are the same animal but called by different names-Caribou in N. America and Reindeer in Eurasia.)

When dinner was over we made our way down through town to the kayak club of Ilulissat by the water.

Sarah said that in summer they sometimes have kayaking competitions here.  There is style of kayaking called Greenland style that derives from the techniques developed by the Greenlandic people, who for have historically used kayaks to hunt seals and whales and to travel from place to place.

Carl and Sam and all my peeps at Osprey Sea Kayak Adventures, these are for you! 

Because we are so far north, the sun sets late and these last photos were at about 9:30.  After that it was back to the hotel to pack for our day out on Disko (see earlier posts).

Tomorrow we should be able to head up to our first Nussuaq site.  As I finish writing the sun is shining in the window of the hotel (at 9:10!) so we are hopeful that the weather has broken enough to fly tomorrow.  We are hoping to hit two sites on Nussuaq in the next two days, but Ashley and I have to fly back to Ilulissat with Peter and the A-Star tomorrow.  A new pilot comes in on Friday and will return to Qaarsut to fly Matt, Sarah, Laura, and Ben up for the last day of field work.  In our original logistics plan Ashley and I were going to fly back to Ilulissat on an Air Greenland flight because the A-Star can only take 4 passengers.  We still have to do a version of that but we are going back with Peter and the other 4 are staying because we lost a couple days to weather.  We will all hopefully get back to Kanger by Friday or Saturday to fly home on Monday.

An hour later, a spectacular helicopter flight over Disko Bay and the eastern part of Disko Island put us on the ice cap on top of Disko.  We overflew the site once and then Peter, our Danish pilot, gingerly put the A-star down on the snow.  Landing on snow, he told us, can be delicate because the helicopter can sink into deep snow.  The snow here was firm though and we touched down without a problem.  Just to be sure Peter packed the snow with the ski skids by gently “bouncing” the helicopter on the snow surface.

Once we had unpacked and moved our gear pile a respectable distance from the chopper, Peter fired it up again and lifted off to go back for the rest of the team, leaving Ben, Laura, and me on the southern Disko Island ice cap, a site we had named “Disko South” (last week we had decided not to visit Disko North because Ben’s recent analysis of satellite imagery was that it was too heavily crevassed).

Honestly, that was pretty cool-to be alone on top of the island.  Just the three of us with no one around for miles.

But it was time to work so we set to it!  Laura got to work on the first GPS station.  To install the GPS, we drill a hole with a power drill and insert a bamboo pole in the hole.  A UFO shaped GPS antenna is then placed on top.  Once connected to the battery and GPS unit, which are inside a big Pelican case, this set up will record the position of the pole at the millimeter scale.  By leaving it running for 20-30 minutes, or longer, Ben can get an idea of how fast the glacier is moving.  (Laura uses similar units for another project on the Greenland Ice Sheet melt-water lakes-her units are left out for a year and are powered by solar panels.  She will be going to collect them this summer. )

While Laura worked on the GPS, Ben got his radar systems set up, and I probed the area with an avalanche probe to look for hidden crevasses.  We were pretty sure that the ice cap was crevasse free, but we needed to do our due diligence.  I also laid out the climbing rope such that Ben and Laura could tie in at each end with me in the middle.  When Ben was finished we set off with him towing the ground penetrating radar (GPR) which gets good imagery of the shallow snow layers, me towing the ice penetrating radar (IPR) which can measure ice thickness all the way to the bed, and Laura towing a sled with another GPS in its big Pelican case, bamboo, and the drill.

 That is Ben working in the front with the orange ground penetrating radar. 

And Laura in the back with the mountains of Disko Island behind. 

 For the next 1-2 hours we walked a big grid around our gear pile, finishing shortly after Sarah, Matt, and Ashley arrived with Peter.  It was fun to watch the helo come over, bank around, and touch down in a cloud of snowy rotor-wash.

After a break in the helicopter, I did a little coring with Matt and Sarah and then Laura and I helped Ashley finish digging out the snow pit.  This pit went down to 1.6 m before we hit a hard ice melt layer.  The snow above the ice layer, with the exception of the windblown slab on the surface was largely recrystallized into large ice crystals, the texture of very coarse sugar.  Shoveling it was relatively easy, but if you threw it too high behind the pit the wind would blow it right back on to you!

By this time Ben was ready to head out for more geophysics work so we roped up again and then worked steadily for about the next ~4  hours doing more grid lines up and down the ice cap.  The cap here has a gentle slope and Ben wanted to go up and down the ice flow lines.  Even though it was just a gentle slope up, it was hard work especially because the snow surface was variable-sometimes hard, sometimes soft.  We were frequently breaking through the snow 4-5 inches which made for something of a slog.  By the time we were done the other team had left on the first chopper ride down to Qaarsut.  We had about ½ hr to regroup while we waited for our pick up.  We were pretty beat from 5+ hours of trudging through the snow pulling sleds.  So while we didn’t run a marathon on Marathon Monday, it felt like it by the end of the day! The physical labor and the odd combination of both relentless cold and sun really takes it out of you.  We did take a moment to pose for #GlobalSelfie, an Earth Day project by NASA.  We posted it today on @goodnesglacier, Laura’s Twitter.  NASA’s IceBridge data was instrumental in helping Ben pick the specific coordinates for our field sites as well as the radar survey lines.  Before we departed “Disko South” we flew about 1 km up the ice the retrieve one of the GPS set-ups.  It is pretty cool how quickly the A-Star can start up, fly some place, and shut down again.  Had we all had a little more helicopter experience, Peter said he would have just kept the rotors turning while one of us jumped out and retrieved the GPS.

Cold air makes your breath instantly freeze to your hood, and your mustache.

From Disko to Qaarsut was about 45 minutes and it was probably the most amazing flying experience of my life.  On this trip alone we have flown a C-17, a Twin Otter which we landed on the ice sheet and landed on a runway with a ski that would not come up, a King Air, and now the A-Star.  I have flown in a small fixed wing and a helicopter through the mountains of New Zealand and I have flown in a helicopter through the Swiss Alps.  Those were both amazing but this flight was over the top.

First we flew over the northern part of Disko Island and then out over the ocean towards the Nussuaq Peninsula, crossing varied sea ice and a few ice bergs.  Nussuaq is much more dissected by glaciation compared to Disko and the mountains were craggy and beautiful, with horizontal volcanic layers making it look like the peaks of the Canadian Rockies

Leaving Disko to cross the fjord to Nussuaq

Nussuaq

Cloud layer rolling up the fjord from the west. The prow shaped mountain crag in the middle is in the next photo as well. 

Glaciers of Nussuaq

Every time we crossed over a mountain pass we were treated to yet another spectacular valley often with a glacier spilling down into a valley.  The A-Star is slow compared to most other aircraft and it flies low; couple that with a wide windscreen and you get a unique ride through spectacular wilderness terrain.  It was unbelievable.  And just when we through it couldn’t get better, we swooped down to the Qaarsut airport which sits on the northern edge of the peninsula looking out across a wide fjord to massive fortress-like, cliff-faced islands on the other side. Very dramatic!

Coming in to the Qaarsut airport

We were told ahead of time that we would be staying at a small place (maybe a hotel, maybe a place that puts up pilots) near the airport; it turns out to be a wonderful little hotel run by Ip Larsen with private rooms and bathrooms and a great common room with a view out over the ocean.  It was so nice to end a very long day with a hot shower, an excellent home cooked meal, and a nice warm bed!  After downloading photos and writing part of this blog, I clicked this last photo right before bed, at 10:15 pm!

The Easter Bunny found us in Ilulissat!  We were all sleep deprived but most of us were awoken by the first Easter service of the morning at the church down the street.  Sometime between 7-8 am they rang the church bell to signal either the start or the end of the service.  That sets off the sled dogs in town.  So there was an interesting wake up call of church bells with a background chorus of dog howling!

Happy Easter and good luck to all the runners tomorrow!  Hope you have a nice day.

Well the last few days have been exciting and busy.  If you have been reading, you know that Thursday it was also snowing and we were pinned down in Ilulissat.  Friday we had planned to head up to our second ice sheet site around 1-2 pm, but the weather was clearing faster and the pilots told us to pack up ASAP, so we scrambled a little faster than we anticipated and got over to the airport.  As you can see in my Instagram photos (click the camera icon to the right), going to the airport is a little different.  We just drove right up to the plane and loaded our gear.  We had about an hour flight up to site number 2 and the further inland we flew, the better the weather got.  With the recent weather there was a little more moisture in the air and we could see our plane shadow on the ice sheet with a long straight shadow line stretched out behind-our contrail.Like last time, we landed on the ice and got to work.  Friday’s work was just like the last field day, but much warmer, minus 25 C instead of minus 32!  Still cold but it felt a lot warmer, at least at first.  Ben and Laura set off to do the geo-physics (GPS measurements and radar surveys), Ashley and I started the snow pit (but when they were done putting the “pajamas” on the Otter engines, the pilots went to town on the pit and dug a full 2m pit), and Sarah and Matt E (and yours truly a little) worked on the core.  By the end of the day we had sampled the whole pit (plus a few extra samples for my students at home), drilled 9 meters of core, and walked 6km of radar transects.

As you can see in the photos the moisture in the air made a very cool sun halo that I had fun playing with with the camera.  We left the ice about 7:30 pm and about 30 minutes into the flight back to Ilulisaat, the pilots told us that we would have to divert to Kangerlussuaq because one of the skis would not retract.  We would have to land on two wheels and one ski, which they assured us was not a big deal, but did require a longer runway.  The Ilulissat runway is quite short-only suitable for small prop planes-while the Kanger runway is long.  So we flew south to Kanger, and, sure enough, the landing was uneventful other than some sparks from the ski on the pavement.  The airport fire crew and the police had turned out though and, when we taxied to the tarmac, they all gathered round to have a look at the ski.

For us, this meant that it was now about 9:30, we had not eaten anything in a while, and all we had was our gear for the field because we were now several hundred miles south and an hour plane flight from our hotel.  Fortunately KISS put us up for the night and Jeff from Polar Field Services met us at the airport and shuttled us and our gear back to KISS for the night.

Our Otter pilots, who are from Iceland, were scheduled to be picked up at 8 am to be flown back to Iceland, so they arranged for that plane to shuttle us back up to Ilulissat and then return to Kanger to get our Otter pilots and fly back to Iceland.  So this morning we were up at 6 to pack back up and head to the airport.  We were not sure if all our gear from the Otter would fit in the new aircraft, a Beechcraft KingAir, but it did, and so we flew up to Ilulissat.

We were scheduled to fly to a field site on Disko Island today and had a helo booked, so as soon as we arrived we had to regroup and arrange equipment for that field site.  Unlike the ice sheet, this site is on a smaller ice cap and the terrain is largely unknown, other than to Ben who has poured over high resolution satellite imagery of the ice.  We are pretty confident that there are no crevasses in the area (based on the satellite imagery) but we need to be careful, so we got all our glacier travel equipment ready (harnesses, ropes, anchors, hardware, etc).  We also needed to organize a fresh set of coring and sampling supplies.  By about noon we were ready to fly and Ben, Laura, and I boarded the A-Star helicopter with our Danish pilot, Peter.  We had determined that we would be the most experienced rope team in case of crevasse danger and, because the chopper can only carry three of us at a time, we would go out first and do a quick box grid of the landing area with the radar to be sure it is crevasse free before the coring team arrived on the second flight.  So off we went, flying out over Disko Bay toward Disko Island.

It was a beautiful day . . . but not on the island.  As we got closer and closer, it became clear that the island was mostly shrouded in cloud.  Peter tried to find some holes in the clouds and even took us up to 8000 ft to look over the cloud deck but the ice cap on Disko was socked in and we had to return to Ilulissat.  We did get a nice flight over the ocean with its myriad of different sea ice textures and took a pass past on the massive ice bergs out in the bay on the way back, but we were all bummed to not be out doing our science work.

It is clearly a lot of work to get here and get all the logistics set up so we are eager to do the work we came to do.  At the same time, it has become clear to all of us (Sarah knew this already) that there always has to be a plan B, and C, and occasional D.  As Sarah said today, plan A is always the best one, but you always have to have a backup.

So we were all back in Ilulisaat by about 2:30.  We returned to the hotel and then decided to go for a walk through town and out to the tip of the peninsula that Ilulissat sits on.  From there you can see the huge ice bergs that come out the Jakobshavn fjord.  They get stuck on an old underwater moraine where the fjord meets Disko Bay and there they sit and slowly melt until they are no longer grounded (stuck on the bottom) and can float north on a counterclockwise current around Disko Bay.  When we first arrived, a long flat berg was behind the hospital out on the little point near our hotel.  Two days later it has drifted out in front of us.

Our hike took us out of town past the many dog teams that call the outskirts of town their home.  Most are used for tourist operations, but at one point in time, dog teams were the primary mode of transportation of the Greenlandic people.  There were probably a hundred dogs out there and at one point many of them started howling like a pack of wolves.

We hiked out to the point but by the time we got there it was snowing pretty steadily and the nice sunny day from the morning was gone.  The clouds we ran into early in the helo ride had pushed across the bay and descended on us.  We could still see the huge bergs but they loomed in the gray cloud and snow rather than shimmering in the sun like they had earlier in the day.

Now that it is after dinner, it has probably snowed 4-5 inches of fluffy powder.  Matt, Sarah, Laura, and Ben are playing cards.  Tomorrow the Easter Bunny comes so we have a down day for the holiday.  We plan to head back to Disko on Monday, weather permitting of course! If not, plan B . . . .

 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.

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.

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!

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.

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!