Reaching the sea ice edge

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 remarkably and we could feel that we were in a polar environment: temperatures were around -10 degrees celcius and we were about to be caught in a low-pressure system bringing snow towards us from the south. Some of us felt a bit sea sick from the transit over open ocean, but fortunately the windconditions were quite ok and it did not take us long until we saw the first ice floes floating by, just before lunch at 11 o'clock - some floes even larger than 10m in diameter! We were defenetely close to the sea ice edge now!

We reached the ice edge at 14:00 and drove into the sea ice for another two hours to find a nice spot to stop at and then drift by the sea ice. For many scientists these days before reaching the pack ice include preparations in the lab, testing instruments and participating in "toolbox" talks. Today these talks were to all scientists planning to use flying instruments, such as flying with the helicopter to a spot on the sea ice further away from Oden, or to operate drones or the helipod (helicopter born sonde that has different sensors for meteorological parameters, airparticles, gases, surface properties and radiaiton). For me, this included a talk about the safety when launching weather balloons (sonde with sensors measuring meteorological parameters attached to a balloon) - as launching these four times a day to get a vertical atmospheric profile is one of our team's main tasks. Working on a icebreaker in below freezing, snowy and windy Arctic conditions could can be quite challenging and dangerous. For example, slippery and icy helideck combined with strong winds might get you dragged by the balloon when you try to release it. Thus, bring always a friend to secure you! It is great that the crew on Oden prioritise safety over everything and reminds and presents the scientists about the risks, danger and safety during the expedition.

Our team's first weather balloon was launched at noon - and we managed to release it and get nice in-realtime data that we could send to the forecast centers in order to be assimilated into weather forecasts.

Oden has a very powerful way of breaking sea ice: it basically drives over it and then "jumps" onto it, and this way breaks it. The bow (front) of the ship is quite wide and sometimes large icefloes of several 10m wide can be pushed by the force of Oden. In 2m thick ice, Oden can travel around 80km on a day! That is quite much. On one of the photos taken on the portside you can nicely see how iceblocks broken by Oden tends to jump up on the sides and turn around - these ice blocks can give hint of the living biology under sea ice as well as the thickness of the ice. We found a spot in the ice a bit into the sea ice edge and stopped before dinner at around 79.7N and 4.7E - where we stood stationary for 24h until Wednesday May 10.

Right before we stopped the first POLARBEARS were seen! Unfortunately both of them were so far away from the ship that only beige moving dots could be seen by bare eyes - better with binoculars. But as we are hanging out at the sea ice edges, where polarbears like to be due to the food supplies, we hope to see more closer ones during the expedition.

During this first stop, we had scientists measuring airparcels (i.e. aerosols) in the air, taking vertical profiles of the ocean (2.5 km deep here!) and deep water samples from the aft (back of the ship) using a CTD (conductivity and temperature profiler) and testing the helipod (see photo with the helicopter attaching the wire to the helipod).

Wednesday May 10 - leaving the sea ice edge into pack-ice

The weather changed while being stationary - it was very calm conditions and temperatures increased to slightly below freezing. This weather change was connected to the warm-air front that also brought light snow to Oden. The conditions were quite pleasant for launching balloons - not too windy or too cold. The snow decreased the visibility, occasionally down to 1.5km! In the Arctic, the weahter can be very variable during one day - from sunny and cold conditions to snowy and warm, windy and cold etc. It is good to always be prepaired for sudden changes in the weather!

After departure on Wednesday evening, we had to head our course southwest and search for a better spot to head northwards because of thicker ice that was currently located north of Oden. While moving in the sea ice, it is quite facinating to see how variable the sea becomes: changing ice thickness, ice with different algie concentration, ridges, snow ... And birds! Most of the ice is first year ice (ice that forms in winter but melts away in summer), but also nilas (new formed thin ice) and level ice, as well as some multi-year ice (ice that survives atleast one summer). Distinguishing sea ice thickness from satellites can be quite tricky, as ice layers can be converged towards eachother so that one of them slides beneath the otherone - doubling the thickness! Multi-year ice can be several meters thick, however, today with half the thickness compared to around 50 years ago!

Third polar bear spotted in the midnight!! This one came apparently really close to the ship, so that we had to scare it off using horns. Once I got out, it was unfortunatelt already out sight due to the snowy and foggy conditions. But there will be more opportunities, I hope!

Thursday May 11 - finally heading northwards again, but still slightly below 80N

 

There was a sudden change in the weather in the early hours on Thursday: the wind increased to 10-15 m/s, temperatures dropped to -12 degrees and the sky cleared up. It was beautiful but cold and chilly! The balloon launch at 5:30 got really tricky and almost freezed my fingers off. I guess I will adapt to the cold Arctic winter weather day-by-day. Cold and windy conditions are expected to last for another 2 days - and a storm that we wanted to escape is heading towards us with strong winds and heavy snowfall. Challenging environment indeed!

Today we had two helicopter ice stations, where scientists were brought out on the ice with the helicopter as Oden was moving. This is ok, as long as the helicopter stays within 20 nautical miles away from Oden. During the day, we only stopped shortly for a CTD cast (ocean vertical profile; but it was quite shallow of below 1km depth). Apparently two more polarbears were spotted from the bridge: a mum with a cub! Already 5 polarbears within 3 days in the sea ice - and around 30 days to go!

We hope to be able to move a bit more north during the coming days and then find multi-year ice where we can stay for some days, allowing us to go out working on the ice. If we then would have an atmospheric river hitting us would be a jack-pot. Lets see what happens!