Journal

Back in the Air

We flew a fantastic mission to the East Coast of Greenland today. That area has some of the most scenic coastline you'll ever see - ice or no ice. And some of the most predicable turbulence. We had modest turbulence for much of our time over there, enough to spill coffee creamer all over the back of the plane and temporarily knock offline one of our ATM's (lasers).

East coast
The transition from sea to mountains is often abrupt on the east coast. This row of mountains looked like a saw blade extending into the distance.

Flying along the coast we saw lots of polar bear tracks again. Our pilot actually spotted one but nobody else was quick enough to set eyes on it much less snap a photo. Too bad! I sat atop the engine covers looking out the window, following polar bear tracks as we flew along and hoping to spot an actual bear. But it was not to be. At one point, the set of tracks I was following left the sea ice, headed up and over a mountain I'd guess to be about 1500' tall, and then came right back down. Maybe it wanted to get a good view of all the seal breathing holes in the area? Who knows, but surely it couldn't have expected to find food up there.

Glacial erosion
Who says glaciers can't fall apart in winter. I'm not sure what happened here but it appears that an iceberg broke off from this glacier and simply disintegrated.

Large bergs
Sometimes icebergs simply look like small glaciers themselves. These two icebergs have retained their integrity despite the heavy crevassing present. Once the sea ice melts they will fall apart quickly. The closer one is roughly 100' high by 1000' long.

The mountains in this part of Greenland seem to go on forever in carbon copy fashion - they all look so similar to one another, layered with sedimentary deposits stacked several rows high. Tucked into one corner here is Greenland's highest mountain, Gunnbjørn Fjeld, at 12,139 feet. We flew right past it.

Valley glacier
I took this photo because I like how even with the new snow you could see the lateral moraine deposits from tributary glaciers (the snow covered ridges). The white thing at the bottom is not part of the plane but a snow covered mountain we are skimming over.

NASA Videos Worth Watching

This year NASA's OIB team has been travelling with a professional photographer/videographer who has been working alongside everyone else to produce short clips about what we're doing here. And I am going to shamelessly exploit this opportunity.

All of the videos below are courtesy of NASA and have been shot, edited, and produced by Michael Starobin. Besides doing a fantastic job on these videos - way better than anything I could produce - Michael partnered with me to make yesterday's apple crisps. We work well together. Without further ado...

This first video provides a brief glimpse of what a typical day looks like for our team. I've given a more detailed, hour by hour description here. But his video provides a better idea of how the parts fit together.

http://youtu.be/TpeKyWQaxQA

This next video details the Airborne Topographic Mapper - our green laser. We actually have two of these on board, one narrow angle and one wide angle. Michael interviews Jim Yungel, the most senior scientist on the team. Jim has been running lasers since before some of the team's scientists were born.

http://

Finally, this last video titled "Over Ice" discusses the P3 in a bit more detail. Again, I have done some of that already here, but Michael has nice interviews with both one of our pilots and some of our engineers/ground crew.

http://

The weather doesn't look good for flying tomorrow. We'll see...

Details
Author
Russell Hood
Date
Expedition
Airborne Survey of Polar Ice 2014
Weather Summary
Clear
Temperature
17

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Comments

Fri, 04/25/2014 - 16:08

Guest

On thursday, there no sub just a free day ,yahooooo!!!!!everyone were expecting you coming back(exciting) and start the chapter test(T_T not really).
There is no sub on this thursday there is nothing to do but chill for the entire class time.
One question Did you guys just in the plane the whole time or land sometime and do some experiments?
And where did you camp like keep flying and land then camp(where you stop) or have to come back to base and stay there?

Fri, 04/25/2014 - 16:08

Guest

On thursday, there no sub just a free day ,yahooooo!!!!!everyone were expecting you coming back(exciting) and start the chapter test(T_T not really).
There is no sub on this thursday there is nothing to do but chill for the entire class time.
One question Did you guys just in the plane the whole time or land sometime and do some experiments?
And where did you camp like keep flying and land then camp(where you stop) or have to come back to base and stay there?

Sat, 04/26/2014 - 13:41

Russell Hood

Reagan-The Greenlanders we interacted with know enough English that it wasn't much of an issue.  But there was no wayI was going to be able to communicate in Danish or the native language.  Fortunately English is taught almost everywhere and it wasn't much of an issue.-Mr. Hood

Sat, 04/26/2014 - 13:56

Russell Hood

Brayton-I've mentioned this a few times now so I won't go into long details (but you could find it in my journals).  The local food is based upon local resources: caribou, arctic hare, musk ox, seals, and a variety of sea food.  Vegetables and fruit are can be found in the store (there is only one) but are rare and expensive.  I suspect that a lot of locals eat canned/frozen food a bit as well.  See my post from 4/13 for more interesting foods.-Mr. Hood

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 12:02

Guest

What are moraine deposits?

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 12:03

Guest

This is Grace Burgess ^ Hope you're having fun!

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 12:29

Guest

Andrew Arsenault- what was the best part about your trip?

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 12:29

Guest

Andrew Arsenault- what was the best part about your trip?

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 12:30

Guest

How likely, as well as how costly, are accidents/mistakes on your mission?

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 14:45

Guest

Under what conditions does the weather have to be in order for you and the crew to fly and collect the most prominent data or even just take pictures to make inferences on iceberg activity, for example?
- Amiel Pineda

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 15:58

Regina Brinker

HI, Russell,
Your photography is beautiful! The landscape is stunning.

Happy Earth Day!

Regina

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 20:52

Guest

Hey Bro,
We have been enjoying your reporting and footage. Very fascinating!

I was curious if you have had a chance to ask any of the long-timers there in Greenland (OIB or residents) if they have seen any changes attributable to climate change? Can they tell that the glaciers are wasting and/or cycling ice through faster? Do modern storms seem different? Is the snow consistency different? Any visible changes in vegetation or animal behavior?

I'd be curious to know if those who with significant traditional experiential knowledge are registering changes.

Thanks and give a call when you get back home.

Cheers,

Kevin

Tue, 04/22/2014 - 21:44

Guest

How was the weather there ?What is the height of the tallest mountain you saw so far ?
By Tou Her

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 10:41

Russell Hood

Tou-The weather here has been mostly clear, but we've also had about 3-4 days of being grounded due to weather.  The temperatures have been cold, between -15F and +15F most of the time.  The highest mountain we've seen is the highest in the country at 12,139.  Its name is Gunnbjørn Fjeld.  We have also seen thousands of mountains that range between 5000-8000' in height.  The scenery is simply breathless.-Mr. Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 10:41

Russell Hood

Thanks.  The landscape certainly makes it easy.  Sometimes I wonder why I'm shooting my photos in color, though.  It might be interesting to take my best shots and turn them into black and whites just for fun.Russell

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 10:56

Russell Hood

Amiel-Obviously clear weather is best and this time of year the weather is normally quite clear most days.  But we've had an unusually stormy and cold spring up here which has made out data collecting a little more difficult.  The radars are not really affected by the weather, after all if they can penetrate lots of ice clouds should be no issue, right?  But the digital photography and the laser altimeters are greatly affected by cloud cover.  If there are clouds in the area we are flying we'll still do the route as long it is safe to do so.  But the data may or may not be usable.  They have clever post-production techniques that can make the data more useful if it was gathered under adverse conditions, but better data = better results, always.-Mr. Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 11:11

Russell Hood

Matt-Great question!  Mistakes can be very costly for a variety of reasons: the aircraft is expensive to operate and the equipment on board is incredibly expensive.  Having said that, NASA sets the standard for avoiding costly mistakes.  There are so many layers of safety, redundancies, and oversight that it would take a perfect storm of events to really have something bad go wrong here.  This is why there were able to get people to the moon and back.  Just a simple case in point: The equipment on the plane is mounted on a "stack" - a steel framed box securely bolted to the floor of the plane.  Once each stack was built it was tested to determine how the weight was distributed throughout the stack.  This allows an engineer to calculate the stack's "moment," or rotational inertia, how likely it is to move when the plane bounces.  Then they use this data to mount the stack securely enough to withstand 9 g's of turbulence.  That amount of turbulence would probably rip the plane apart first - but the stack would be okay.  Incredible!  (In other words, they don't just load stuff on the plane, bolt it down, and call it good.  Not NASA!)-Mr. Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 11:11

Russell Hood

Andrew-Tough call.  I haven't really had time to reflect on that yet so I think I'd rather wait to answer that once I'm home.  But one likely answer is this: To witness how this entire Operation Ice Bridge team functions.  The blending of so many amazing instruments and personalities is incredible.  On their team there men, women, and people from Spain, Bolivia, China, and Russia.  It's a pretty diverse crew but collectively they have a boatload of education and experience.  Stay tuned...I may yet change my answer.-Mr. Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 11:26

Russell Hood

Fast answer: Rocky material displaced by a glacier and piled up either in front of the glacier terminal moraine) or to the side of the glacier (lateral moraine).  More detail: On the surface, glaciers act like slow moving conveyer belts.  When the ice of a glacier rubs against rock it slowly erodes the rock away (like a belt sander).  If the glacier/rock interface is on the side of the glacier and mound of rocky debris will form that parallels the glacier immediately to the side.  This is called a lateral moraine.  (If the glacier shrinks over time, as so many glaciers are doing, then a remnant lateral moraine is usually left behind.  The Anchorage Hillside is basically a remnant lateral moraine left over when the entire upper Cook Inlet was underneath ice.  Hard to imagine, I know.  If you go to Glen Alps it's really easy to see more recent deposits of lateral moraine from glaciers that once filled the valleys up there.Terminal moraines form when the conveyer belt-like action of the glacier brings rocks and debris downhill and drops them at the toe of the glacier.  Regardless of whether the glacier is advancing, receding, or stagnant, deposits will continue to pile up wherever the toe of the glacier is.  These moraines often dam up the outflow stream and form terminal lakes.  Eklutna Lake is one example of this.  Sometimes a chain of lakes are formed this way - the Williwaw Lakes out of Glen Alps were formed exactly this way.  -Mr. Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 11:33

Guest

How many people fit on the plane? -Laura Becia

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 13:56

Russell Hood

Bro-Difficult questions.  Let me see what I can do here.  First of all, Kanger is not the best place to ask these kinds of questions because there are more Danish Greenlanders here than native ones and those tend to be more itinerant in nature.  Remember that more than anything this town exists because of the airport.  But, there are some dog-mushing, seal hunting locals here, to be sure.  I haven't had a conversation with any of these folks simply because I can't - we don't have a common language to speak.  But you learn a lot by observation, discussion with scientists who've worked here for more than 30 years, and so on.On the whole the ice balance is distinctly negative here: Greenland is losing ice mass at an ever increasing rate.  Having said that, the visible changes are not like what we see in AK.  Very few glaciers are receding very fast even if they are thinning.  If you look around there's a lot of evidence that the deglaciation has been occurring for a long, long time (hundreds of years).  There does not seem to be a notable change in the frequency, duration, or type of storms.  Thule (pronounced Too-lee), up north, has mosquitoes in the summer.  Not long ago (5 years) this wasn't a problem for them, so that's a change.  Every spring Thule hosts a sled dog race with cash prizes.  The mushers come from nearby villages, sledding across the fast ice - the ice that hangs tight along the coast.  They have had fewer and fewer mushers make the race due to poor ice conditions.  They've even cancelled the race recently due to lack of participation.  I'll assume this change in sea ice is also having an effect on seal hunting, but I'm not sure how (harder?).The land mammals are affected most by hunting pressure.  This includes musk ox, caribou, foxes, and hares.  The later two have their own high to low cycling similar to that of lynxes and snowshoe hares in AK.  But all four are preyed upon by locals.  The vegetation here grows very slowly.  There are a handful of trees (spruces) planted near here in the 50's that are scarcely big enough for use as a Xmas tree.  It doesn't seem like woody plants have increased in coverage much.Changes are happening here, to be sure, but there does not seem to be a massive sustained trend toward a radically different future.  Yet.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 13:56

Russell Hood

Laura-The P3 has seats for 22 people.  They could carry more than that if they didn't have to save a lot of room for cargo.  On Saturday they will be filling the plane with lots of cargo and baggage and moving their base of operations north to the town of Thule.  If they didn't have to carry all that cargo they could fit more people on board.-Mr. HOod

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 15:02

Guest

Hi, Mr. Hood
This PolarTREC experience looks like so much fun and it must interesting to be immersed in a different culture- which I see has some similarities to Alaskan culture. You've answered all my questions in your fast answer except for one. Which is probably the most important and interesting question I've had --- did you see any seals? You've mentioned seal-breathing holes so I had to ask.

Thanks.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 15:02

Guest

Hi, Mr. Hood
This PolarTREC experience looks like so much fun and it must interesting to be immersed in a different culture- which I see has some similarities to Alaskan culture. You've answered all my questions in your fast answer except for one. Which is probably the most important and interesting question I've had --- did you see any seals? You've mentioned seal-breathing holes so I had to ask.

Thanks.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 15:13

Guest

The above comment is me, Alexandra Lacy. Forgot to add that.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 15:13

Guest

The above comment is me, Alexandra Lacy. Forgot to add that.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 15:56

Russell Hood

Alex-The only seal I've seen from the plane was one that was freshly skinned by a hunter on the sea ice.  The blood on the snow rather draws the eye to the scene.  I haven't seen any other seals than that!  Our pilot saw a polar bear the other day but I wasn't fast enough to get it in view before we passed it by.  Bummer!  I'll see you soon.-Mr. Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 20:42

Guest

Hey Mr. Hood! How was the flying experience with all that turbulence you got in? What kind of airplane was it?

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 20:43

Guest

^ That was Jeatrize Pacis right there.

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 21:02

Guest

Hi Mr. Hood!
I was wondering which views you like better, the views you are seeing in Greenland or the views in Alaska?

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 21:03

Guest

The above comment is from Taylor Schoeni

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 22:56

Guest

Hi Mr. Hood,
Thanks for the little plug about my sacrifice for you on your last post. :)

I could ask you this question when you get home but will inevitably forget. You mention that there is an iceberg that is 100' x 1000'. How can you tell that by looking down out of the plane? Do you have some way to give you that scale or is that just one of those shoot from the hip Russell figures you give me - always with great confidence in your voice. I don't suspect you would do that here on your blogs so am curious how you get the figures. You gave examples in previous posts of how you can interpret the ATM data to determine the altitude of the bergs. Is that what you used?

Great videos. But, my favorite is still the Waltz of the Blue Danube. Did you choose that music because of Natalie by the way?

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 22:58

Guest

The last post is from your wife, in case you hadn't figured it out.When posting a comment it asks for your name but then doesn't post it.

Julie Wilson Hood

Wed, 04/23/2014 - 23:08

Guest

I was wondering if you had an idea of how much fuel is spent per day during the flights?-Brandon Adkins

Thu, 04/24/2014 - 02:41

Russell Hood

Julie-Good question about iceberg estimate.  Because we fly so low it's not too hard to look at something nearby and get a rough estimate on its size.  (So yes, this is shooting from the hip here.)  But, every time I have done that and compared my guess to the ATM data, even with something close by, I've been close but always under the value given by the ATM data.  I therefore feel it's fairly safe to say that that berg is likely a little bigger than the numbers I put to it.  Again - when you're close to something it's pretty easy to generate a ballpark figure that is reasonably accurate.  But the higher we fly the harder it is.  Often when we're transiting between flight lines we may go pretty high and then it's nearly impossible to guess.  Another example: When we are flying beneath towering cliffs I can look around and get a good idea how high the cliffs are knowing that we are 1500' above the surface below.  But if we are flying above the cliffs, it's really hard to know and I shy away from guessing any heights then.Because of copyright restrictions we have very few songs to choose from to imbed in our video footage.  I wanted something mellow for that video to go with the slowly unfolding scene out the window.  The Blue Danube fit, and yes, I thought of her while making that choice.  -Russell

Thu, 04/24/2014 - 03:41

Russell Hood

Jeatrize-We were in a P3 Orion aircraft.  We never hit what they would call "bad" turbulence but we did have several bouts of "moderate" turbulence.  Hitting turbulence in this aircraft is way different from a commercial airliner - you get jerked around much more violently in the P3.  This is partly because of how low we have to fly.  Also how slow we are moving relative to a commercial airliner.  I never go good video footage of a turbulent event as they are very difficult to predict.  But suffice to say we had a lot of items tossed about the cabin a few times.-Mr. Hood

Thu, 04/24/2014 - 03:41

Russell Hood

Taylor-Tough call.  It's hard to compare, really.  Greenland is handicapped to me because it is still winter here.  I've seen Alaska so many times when it is green, whether it's the endless tundra of the expansive old growth forests in Southeast.  Up here it's just snow, ice and rock right now.  Having said that, the snow, ice, and rock have put on quite a show for me.  The novelty of sea ice, humungous icebergs, and endless ice caps has been incredible to see.  But I think the diversity of AK's terrain takes the cake for me.-Mr. Hood

Thu, 04/24/2014 - 03:41

Russell Hood

Brandon-I just texted the crew to ask this question.  They said about 50,000 lbs or around 9,000 gallons.  Note that water is roughly 1 gal = 8 lbs but aviation fuel is lower density (do the math!).  I'm not sure what the price of fuel is up here...-Mr. Hood

Thu, 04/24/2014 - 18:41

Guest

This is Reagan Cox- Did you have to converse with the Greenlanders and how did you overcome the language barrier?

Fri, 04/25/2014 - 12:13

Guest

What is the food like in Greenland?

Fri, 04/25/2014 - 12:19

Guest

That last comment was brayton keith