Arctic spring expedition in 2023 to capture the melt onset over Arctic sea ice

    Sunny days after the storm & crossing 80N :) On Thursday (25 May) eve, the sun peaked through the clouds at the end of the storm (see photo below). The following three days have been sunny and relatively warm (around -4 degrees C) and quite calm conditions with almost no wind (see photo below). We started moving on Friday (26 May) morning and took a course towards northeast because we wanted to go around a large ice floe and then head north. We were back at the marginal ice zone (at the ice edge) on Saturday (27 May) and we could see Svalbard on the horison in the evening (see photo below). On Saturday eve, we also had our fancy mid-time dinner - already half-way in the expedition?! This means we have three weeks behind us and three weeks to go. Some of us celebrated the sunny weather after the dinner with dancing outside on the helideck, others standing with a drink on the helideck and enjoying the view of seeing the mountaineous Svalbard in the horison. Saturday eve had als

  This post is again separated in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2   On the transit from the last ice station towards the next The ice camp was left behind on Sunday (21 May) evening, aiming to head up north. However, the ice conditions were unfortunately not on our side and our attempt to go north failed: we were heading towards too thick icefloes so that the risk of getting stuck permamently in between them was too high. But we are not losing hope - the sea ice is really dynamic and continuously changes its shape, two icefloes can drift apart from each other forming cracks or larger leads (openings) in the sea ice or form rigdes when two icefloes collide. As we are going towards melt, the sea ice this much south should start melting soon - or become thinner and more mobile and vulnerable for storms and winds. So we still have hope to get over 80N, we just have not found the right path through the ice yet. On Wednesday (24 May) we started to head back southeast to follow a lead of a

Continuing the post "Polarbear family visit, flying operations from Oden and hit by a second storm - Part 1"   Helikite and Helipod - flying operations   Helikite & Aerosols So we had a few calm days before the storm, which allowed for a few flying operations. On Tuesday (23 May), Oden was stationary so that the Helikite could be operated for 6 hours until dinner. The Helikite is a 45-cubic-meter large helium-filled tethered-balloon with a (red) kite below. An electric winch and 800 m of dyneema rope are used to deploy the Helikite in the air and bring it back to ground (see left photo below). The Helikite is operated on top of a container on the aft deck (back of the ship; see right photo below) and used for vertical profiling of the lower atmosphere (to a maximum of 800 m above ground level if no wind). Underneath the Helikite a payload is attached (white box on the photo below) where different instruments are installed, measuring various aerosol p

First ice camp: Tuesday May 16 - Sunday May 21 This posting will be divided into 3 parts: Part 1.0 (this one), Part 1.5 and Part 2. Until Tuesday May 16, Oden had only shortly stopped for measuring ocean water column characteristics with the CTD from the aft of the ship. We had a few ice stations where the scientists were brought to the ice edge by helicopter while Oden was still moving. These ice stations were short, lasted from a few hours to 5 hours. Some scientists are only able to conduct their science if we stay stationary at an ice floe for several days. As our attempt to move further north failed due to thicker ice, we desided to do our first longer ice station - or ice camp - slighly south of 80N. This way, all scientists were able to do their work for the coming daya: via instruments on Oden and/or via instruments or samples collected on the ice , of the snow, at the sea ice edge or from the upper ocean layer.   On Tuesday morning, Oden was

(continuing the icecamp 16 - 21 May blog-posting " First ice camp and polarbear visits - Part 1.0 ") On Tuesday (May 16) afternoon, our working group headed to the coming met-alley, located around 450m from Oden. For the transport of most of our equipments and instruments, we utilized the snomobiles (but only if the wind direction was not towards the ship as then the pollutions of the snowmobiles could have disturbed the particle observations conducted on Oden). Dragging car batteries was also a daily thing for us: the batteries (8 of them!) had to be changed daily and data from our instruments needed to be collected. Going out on the ice daily to drag car battries in a sled (if we did not use snowmobiles) and walking in a thick snowlayer was like a gym session :D In the first photo (in "" First ice camp and polarbear visits - Part 1.0 ") you can see us heading back to Oden and dragging sleds with some empty boxes. In the photo below (

(continuing the icecamp 16 - 21 May blog-posting " First ice camp and polarbear visits - Part 1 ") Remotely operated (underwater) vehicle ROV As mentioned, different working groups were interested in going on the ice. Close to Oden, an area of 100 m * 100m was marked with red flags with a hole through the ice that should not be walked by other people. This area was saved for operating a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) underneath the ice. Philipp Anhaus from AWI is the work package leader for operating this ROV to study the spatial variability of physical and biophysical properties of the ocean exaclty underneath the ice and for example measure how much solar light can penetrate through the snow layer and sea ice. This ROV (see photo to the left with Philipp standing at the ice hole with the ROV, taken by Jeff Walker) has several sensors built onto it to measure these diverse parameters close to the ice-ocean surface - it also has both upward and forward

One week has passed but it feels like weeks as so much has already happened: leaving from Svalbard on Monday eve, reaching the sea ice edge the next day, got caught up by a storm on Saturday, drifted by the ice floe south during the attempt of going north, trying to find a way through the thick ice to get further north, preparation work for ice camp, instrument maintenance, helicopter ice stations, captain invited dinner, Eurovision...  You might wonder how we could have Eurovision on Oden with no internet connection. Well, it is possible!  We were quite many participating in Oden Eurovision - the bar on Oden was packed from scientists and crew members. One scientist on board had downloaded the videos from almost all the 26 finalists and these videos were then shown to us in the correct order as they were performed for in the rest of the world. We were given voting sheets where we could individually judge the costumes, performance, lyrics, melody and other characteristics of each f

Friday May 12 - heading north We are still heading north and finally crossed the 80N! Lets hope the ice conditions allow us for reaching the target latitude of 82N. The weather is still nice and sunny with temperatures below -10 degrees, however, with lower windspeed (4.5m/s) it actually feels quite warm. Yesterday, in same temperatures but winds above 10 m/s felt like -20degrees! Launching the weather balloon today morning was quite pleasant in the sun, surrounded by ice, snow and ocean. This is just amazing-a scenery you could watch hours of hours and never get bored! Today afternoon we stopped for another ocean vertical profile & water samples with CTD (see photo) and another long (4h) helicopter ice station happened during the day. The target of the scientists was mainly to get to the sea ice edge or leads to get some nice water samples and vertical profiles in the upper ocean below sea ice.   Ian Brooks was one of the lucky ones that got to see the cute polar bear that

We departed Svalbard late on Monday in calm conditions (see photo). Many of us were gathered on the bridge (6th deck) to enjoy the breathtaking scenery. Outside Longyearbyen in Isfjorden some of us got to see a whale swimming up to the surface five times before dissappearing under the water. From the excitement, it was hard for any of us to go to bed - and the constant daylight is also not helping the body to signal it is time for bed. As many observations are globally operated at UTC time, we switched to UTC time (-2h) at 2:00 in the night. This gave us more time to enjoy the scenery and experience midnight twice that day. :D From now on, we will live in UTC time on Oden. Tuesday May 9 - first ice floes! Next morning (Tuesday May 9), heading north, we had our first morning meeting after breakfast at 8:15. During this meeting, we will always hear a short weather briefing of the weather for the coming days, as well as the plan of the day. The weather had changed quite remarkab