Dr Keith Jackson's scientific reports from the Arctic

27th September

Last installment.....
 
Today we have been working with the hot water ice-drill to make lots of holes through ridged flows such that a good picture of ice thickness can be obtained. We have also managed to fly far enough to deploy the last IMB at a point where it will last some time before falling into the sea. The weather got bad towards the end of the day and so a rapid exit from the floe that we were working on was necessary because the swell was starting to break it up. The heave from the swell also broke the ships mooring lines twice. We are in transit back to Svalbard to return home.and in the business of washing and packing up equipment.
 
The trip has been a great success and hopefully interpretation of the data will yield some useful science. The crew of the Arctic Sunrise could not have been more professional, friendlier and helpful and deserve great thanks. Also, thanks must go to Greenpeace for having supported this work by providing the ship and it's facilities at their own expense.

24th September

We are sat in the ice about 40 miles north of Svalbard. We started today by firing up the hot-water drill which is designed for making holes in the ice very fast and efficiently. It's basically a pump and a central heating boiler which emits super heated steam from a wand and has a certain dangerous about-to-explode feel about it.

We were then to take it north using numerous helicopter shuttling trips but yet again the weather got too bad to fly. We will try again tomorrow but otherwise not much to do today.

 23rd September

We are presently about 82 deg north of Svalbard in seach of ice but none is to be found at the moment. When I was here last year we could barely move for the amount of ice here.

When we do find some we are going to use a hot water drill to make detailed measurements of ice ridge thicknesses. The volume in ice ridges is a very significant proportion of the total amount of sea-ice but it tends to melt faster. The reason for the fast melting and its characterisation is in need of investigation so we will attempt to measure the melt by installing an IMB on a ridge which we have carefully measured and then monitor the changes in thickness as the floe drifts to its demise in the Fram Straight over the next year or so.

Yesterday saw some changes in personnel and a quick trip to shore for a leg stretch in a rather battered looking Greenpeace RIB. It looked like it might have been rammed on sereval occasions....

21st September

Today we are sailing back to Svalbard to swap some personnel before heading back out to the ice. Last night was very rough at sea and nobody got much sleep.

We have now completed three deployments of IMB's as well as a lot of CDT work over the Molloy deep and across the interface of the polar waters and Altantic waters.

Work on ocean acidicification continues and involves catching pteropods and acidifying the water to see the effects - essentially observing how their calcified bits dissolve!

Also, work on mapping snow surfaces using a laser scanner has been busy. This is to assess the effect of the surface topography on radar altimetery from space. The patterns on the surface are likely to cause scattering it is hoped this work will help to assess effect the perfromance of the shortly to be launced Cryosat satellite which will attempt to measure ice thickness from very accurate altimetry measurements.

18th September

Today we have completed two CDT traverses of the Molloy Deep in the Fram Straight which took much longer than expected due to difficult ice conditions. The eddy system here was last examined in the 80's by Peter Wadhams who is leading this expedition.

It would seem that the same structures are still present after an initial examination of the data as well as the presence of some "staircase structures" in the deeper water which Peter is a bit excited about. Now steaming north to reenter the ice to deploy some more ice mass balance devices.

17 September 2009

I am aboard the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise in the Fram straight. We have just left heavy ice after a noisy night of ice-breaking.

We have deployed an ice-mass balance buoy (IMB) on a floe about 30 miles into to the ice but an attempt to reach fast ice by helicopter to deploy another failed due to poor weather.

We are now in open water performing CDT casts to examine an eddy system over the Molloy Deep in the middle of Fram Straight.