Greenland Snow Studies Journals

We have a few days in Kangerlussuaq to explore and decided to hike all day around the Lake Ferguson area. Most of the team that worked with the ice cores went trekking for the day. The layers of schist with the garnets were a goal of the hike. But along the way was incredible evidence of glaciology from the numerous ponds and lakes to the smoothed surface of the metamorphic rocks showing the striations etched into the rock as the former ice scoured the valley. To me, every rock was a keeper! Goodness, it was hard not to bring home large samples. So, I took pictures instead. notice glacial striations on metamorphic rock garnets But that wasn’t my only treat. We saw musk ox and caribou and walked on the spongy tundra. Musk Ox have been an animal that I have read about and...

I have been dressing in multiple layers from head to toe to keep warm. But on Saturday, June 2, the wind was low (not enough to turn the windmill), the sky was almost cloudless, and air pressure was rising. Our temperature reached 14F...a heat wave! Midmorning I went to my tent to shed clothing and wore jeans with one layer of long underwear and even a t-shirt! Now, if I was at home in Idaho, 14F wouldn't seem like a heat wave. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Greenland. And with the high pressure, I found myself walking without heaving breathing. Then to add another component, was the fresh snow that had fallen during the night. Hard to imagine that it could get much better . Check out the temperature graph that I have attached. Jo Dodds    

It has been a quick three weeks and now it is time to get ready to leave here.  The Hercules LC130 will be here tomorrow to pick up the science cargo, personal gear and those who are leaving camp.  Others will be coming to take our place.   Today was a packing up and moving day.  At the core drilling and processing site there was the need to bring back equipment and cores, take down the temporary wind breaks, clean out the tents, and dig out the tents from accumulated drifted snow. Then another group came out to help move the three tents for the next group that is going to be working in a nearby study site.   It was great to be back at the site and there were notable differences, especially the drifted snow that formed big ridges.   Our group will be in Kangerlussuag for the next few days...

Luke Ziemba graduated with BS in chemistry, working with organic compounds in soil and water. Now, at UNH he measures aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are liquids or solids suspended in gas. Some aerosols can scatter light and produce a cooling effect (white house effect). Other aerosols can absorb light, such as black carbon. Luke attaching the filter   At UNH, Luke uses the AMS (aerosol mass spectrometer) to analyze ambient aerosol samples. He likes using this instrument because it gives both physical particle size as well as chemical composition of the particles. But here at Summit, his experiment is looking for total organic carbon and total elemental black carbon. He uses filters to sample air for 48 hours. The flow meter keeps 60 Liters/minute flowing past the...

Luke Ziemba graduated with BS in chemistry, working with organic compounds in soil and water. Now, at UNH he measures aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are liquids or solids suspended in gas. Some aerosols can scatter light and produce a cooling effect (white house effect). Other aerosols can absorb light, such as black carbon. Luke attaching the filter   At UNH, Luke uses the AMS (aerosol mass spectrometer) to analyze ambient aerosol samples. He likes using this instrument because it gives both physical particle size as well as chemical composition of the particles. But here at Summit, his experiment is looking for total organic carbon and total elemental black carbon. He uses filters to sample air for 48 hours. The flow meter keeps 60 Liters/minute flowing past the...

Bonnie Reichardt, a undergraduate student from Georgia Tech, collects data on nitrogen oxides at Summit. Her work includes taking samples from a homemade Nitrogen Oxide (NO) sampler complete with four flow controllers, two pumps, an ozonizer, a photomultiplier tube (PMT), and cooler. Basically, ozone is made from oxygen gas in the ozonizer and combined with ambient air; the reaction produces oxygen, nitrogen dioxide, and light which is detected in the PMT. The amount of light produced is directly related to the amount of NO in the ambient air. Of course, determining the actual amount of NO in the air requires additional calibration, backgrounding, and analysis. Bonnie pulls the data off of the computer everyday and then uses a data analysis program to run through all the necessary...

  Jochen Stutz, a professor at UCLA, has brought his telescope to Summit to analyze gases. In a simplistic way it first looks like a Newtonian telescope with a primary mirror at the end and a secondary mirror near the eyepiece. But then you look closer and it has a Xenon arc lamp that sends a parallel light beam 2 km and 5 km to a corner cube reflector made of quartz glass. When that beam of light is reflected back to the telescope, it is picked up by a quartz fiber which transfers the light to a spectrometer with a diffraction grating.   Notice the bright pinpoint light. That is the reflector.   The spectrometer is measuring wavelengths from 250-550 nanometers (nm), which is the range going from the UV (invisible) to visible green wavelengths. The instrument is...

Katrine Gorham, a graduate student at UC Irvine, is at Summit, Greenland for six weeks conducting air sampling from a height of 1.5 meters above the surface. She samples the air every four hours (6 times a day), filling 2L canisters. There are 24 stainless steel canisters in a box and they look like they are all ‘snaked’ together. Can you figure out how many canisters Katrine will be taking back to Irvine?     Once back in Irvine, gas chromatography will be used to analyze 70 gases that were collected. The gases are determined by using a standard concentration of the gas that will be analyzed. Then the standard is compared to the sample to determine the concentration of the gas. The seventy hydrocarbons will be plotted as ratios and concentrations over time. From this you...

Katrine Gorham, a graduate student from University of California at Irvine, has a busy day today.  The winds are blowing approx 20 kts this morning (9 m/s) and her snow chamber experiment is set up outside.  She has collected 1300 ml of surface snow in a quartz cylinder and attached that container to a tank with a mixture of hydrocarbons (butanes and butenes). The quartz cylinder is covered with foil to block out light. The hydrocarbons will flow through the snow filling the pores for 20 minutes at a rate of 200ml/minute.     Then Katrine went back out in the blowing snow to uncover the quartz and expose it to light (‘bake’) for the next 30 minutes. This baking time allows for chemical reactions to occur between the hydrocarbons and the gases in the snow. During this baking...

Yesterday, before starting the Snowbird experiment, all five fiber optics needed to be calibrated. Learning how to calibrate the fiber optics made me realize that I need to be more aware of my own lab equipment, even our triple beam balances. The calibration stand allowed for several light sources to be used to calibrate the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Both the software and the calibration equipment were designed by scientists on this project. One of the light sources was a mercury vapor lamp from which three separate wavelengths are emitted is used to calibrate the color (wavelength) of light being measured.             Each fiber optic casing is a different length to be inserted into the snow: 9.1 cm, 11.2 cm, 16.1 cm, 21.2 cm, 36.4 cm....

Yesterday, before starting the Snowbird experiment, all five fiber optics needed to be calibrated. Learning how to calibrate the fiber optics made me realize that I need to be more aware of my own lab equipment, even our triple beam balances. The calibration stand allowed for several light sources to be used to calibrate the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Both the software and the calibration equipment were designed by scientists on this project. One of the light sources was a mercury vapor lamp from which three separate wavelengths are emitted is used to calibrate the color (wavelength) of light being measured.             Each fiber optic casing is a different length to be inserted into the snow: 9.1 cm, 11.2 cm, 16.1 cm, 21.2 cm, 36.4 cm....

As we arrived on May 15 at Summit, Greenland, one of the activities going on was a big deep snow pit being dug near the Big House. Blocks of snow would be thrown up and out, caught by another person, who threw it to someone else who then stacked the blocks. Well, the process was even more interesting when I found out that the crew was building a new food freezer for camp. The old freezer was built in 2003 but was no longer structurally sound. Day by day the pit was enlarged, then the outside doorway and stairs were added. The pit was covered up so no one would fall into it but work continued inside. Shelves were added for the frozen food and the roof was supported. Snow will come and cover over the roof and all that will be seen is the outside stair enclosure.     So...

We have drilled and processed about 44 meters of firn so far while at Summit. The goal is for 120 meters, so we are about one third of the way there. The pore close off between firn and ice is approximately 80 meters. Dr. Jeff Severinghaus and Vas Petrenko continue to sample firn air about every 10 meters. Every time a core sample comes out of the drill barrel it is really fun…and exciting. Sometimes there are differences you can see, such as the large ice crystals that have been found at the same depth in various drilling locations at Summit indicating a melting and refreezing of the snow. This occurred approximately 30 years ago.     While the drilling team was working to bring up new core samples, and the core processing team was preparing the core samples, Zoe Courville...

Starting in 1989 the drilling project to go through the ice to bedrock at Summit began. On July 1, 1993 the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) successfully drilled through 3053.44 meters down to bedrock. Snow doesn’t melt here since the average temperature is -31C which makes it an ideal area to study the ice cores and its preserved paleoclimate evidence.     Today, at Summit Camp, we had a webinar involving teachers and students from all over the country learning about physical properties of firn and gases within the pore spaces. Many scientists come to Summit to study and collect data, some even collect data year round. At dinner tonight, the cooks created a cake that looks like the Big House at Summit for the anniversary.     After dinner, Jack Dibb and...

Five birds were spotted in camp in the morning. They were definitely not where they needed to be. There were trying to get warm but were also skiterish when people came by, so I have yet to get a picture. After talking with Kathy, our camp manager, there have been a variety of species in past years that have found their way to Summit, such as sea gulls, a flock of geese, gyrefalcon, and even an arctic fox. None of them can make a ‘living’ here. They are definitely out of their element. Sara Boaz, one of the camp employees, is taking care of the only one red poll that has so far survived. She hopes that it will survive until the next Hercules comes to load up gear and people…and bird and take it to Kangerlussuag. Here is an image of a redpoll, but not one of the ones which landed at...

  Every Saturday has a safety training component that keeps everyone at camp alert to potential problems and what to do when it does happen.  Today’s simulation involved volunteer Lance.  He was not breathing.  Everyone either carries a radio or is near a radio to be in communication at all times wherever they may be working.  So the word went out about Lance.  It didn’t take long before he got medical attention.  One of the assigned duties is Safety.  The Safety looks for things that could be hazardous to the team and the person needing attention.  There were electrical cords around, but it was assessed that this was not the problem.  The Lead Medical Rescue, Nick, and the Medical Responder took care of Lance.  The Communications duty person may have to line up a Twin Otter for...

The wind picked up today and the snow was drifting. It felt colder as the wind attacked naked skin. And what fun activity can you do with wind? Flying kites, of course. Lou and Mike and Zoe went out to fly a couple of larger kites. I thought for sure they would be picked up and fly through the air. I guess some of that actually did happen when I wasn’t watching!     At the same time, there was a beautiful sun dog. Sun dogs are created by the refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus clouds. It was a beautiful scene and the pictures won’t do it justice as the rainbow of colors didn’t come through very well. See if you can spot the kites being flown.    

Yesterday we went out to our study site about 5 km from the main camp. There are flags on bamboo poles that mark the way to go and the way not to go. You certainly wouldn’t want to foul up atmospheric data with snow machine exhaust. There are clean areas set aside around camp for studies being conducted now and for the future. Our area has been marked off for foot traffic, snow machine use, and no traffic at all.   The drillers, Lou, Jay, and Mike, started putting their drill together today that will be used to drill through snow, firn, and and a bit of ice. Researcher, Dr. Mary Albert, from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, is studying firn and Dr. Jeff Severinghaus, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is studying the trapped air in polar ice. Both have...

Since coming home from the Orientation in Fairbanks at the end of March, there has been an ever-growing list of things to do to get ready for Summit, Greenland.  At the top of the list were the medical and dental check ups.  I have never had the need for so many tests, but everyone was wonderful and very interested in my up-coming polar experience.  I really like my doctor and dentist, but the test that was the most interesting, probably because I had never had one, was the treadmill test.  I loved watching the results of my test being graphed in real time from all of the sensors that were hooked up to my body. I use the treadmill at the gym, but I have never used an extreme incline that I was using during the test!  I think I need to reassess my workout.   My personal gear has been...