First ice camp and polarbear visits - Part 1.5


(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 (right photo in front of the mast; taken by Gabin Urbancic on 17 May) you can see almost everyone in our met-team (left to right): Heather Guy, Michael Tjernström, Sonja Murto (me ;) ) and Michail Karalis. Ian Brooks is missing from this photo.


Met-alley - our meteorological ice station



The photos above show the main components of our met-alley: (right photo) the met-mast with eddy covariance instruments on top of the mast from which turbulent fluxes of heat and moisture can be computed, a temperature and humidity instrument close to the top of the mast and an Infrared (IR) sensor directed towards the surface at the bottom of the meast measuring the surface layer temperature. We also have a GPS attached onto the mast. Some of these instruments are heated and thus require lots of power - therefore six carbatteries of 24 and 12V are needed so that the instruements can run and log data for 24h (middle photo). We also measure the vertical temperature profile in the snow and through the upper layer of the ice to measure the heat flux through the ground (ice & snow). Setting up the mast took lot of time: but fortunately the weather was super nice and it was amazing to be out of the ship and wok on the ice! Our radiometer stand (left photo) was setup 100m from the mast. The radiometers mounted in the middle of the tripod are directed both upward and downward to measure upwelling and downwelling shortwave and longwave radiation. At this site, we also have another IR sensor directed towards the surface attached at the side of the tripod and a GPS sensor. Togehter with the one on the mast, the relative movement of the icefloe can be measured - always hard to determine any flows on a moving platform (in this case on the icefloe). The tripod with the instruments was then lifted onto an undisturbed snow-surface layer. By the help of our instruments out on the ice we can compute all components of the energy budget at the surface - one of the main interests for us meteorologists, especially when studying the onset of melt and changes in the surface during melt.


(continues in "First ice camp and polarbear visits - Part 2")

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