Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 13:55
Forums
Atmospheric Conditions and Arctic Climate

Hello Mr.McMahon!,

I just remembered today which is 7/12 that you were in Greenland! I read all of your adventures so far, but I did have 1 question, didn't the people there have the materials to build the original ice lab sturdier instead of just buildind a new one?

Thanks, Paul Coiron

Wed, 07/13/2011 - 06:47

Kevin McMahon

Hi Paul, it is great to hear from you. I hope you are enjoying your summer. You ask a very good question. Most of the snow lab is made of snow. It is easier to use the materials that are here than to fly them in. And, we have a lot of snow here!
The trickiest part is making the roof. Normally, a plywood roof works well (if there is not much wind or new snow). However, we ran into a problem when a lot of snow blew onto the roof over a short period of time. You can see in my journals how much snow built up in a short period of time. Since we didn't have any other materials up here to make the old snow lab sturdier, the only option we had was to build a new one.
The benefit to building a new one was that we could saw out blocks to build an igloo!
Thanks for your question. See you soon. Mr. McMahon

Wed, 07/13/2011 - 07:03

Kevin McMahon

Hi, again, Paul, the other thing about our snow lab is that it needs to be really, really cold (colder than the air temperature). During the day, it can get up to 23 degrees Fahrenheit but we need to keep our snow samples and the chemicals that we use to preserve the snow samples at an even colder temperature (near - 20 degrees Fahrenheit). That is another reason why we dig a hole for our snow lab. I hope this answers your question. Mr. McMahon.