11 July 2011 Hello Svalbard, Good-bye Darkness!

After a long but (thankfully) uneventful trip, we arrived in Longyearbyen around 1:30pm local time. That's about 18 hours after I left my house in Boston yesterday.

We flew from Boston to Newark, then to Oslo, Norway. Then we flew up to Tromso, Norway before heading off to Svalbard. We will be in the town of Longyearbyen until Thursday when we will fly up to Ny Alesund, which is where we will be conducting our science investigations for the next month.

A few thoughts as I begin my latest science adventure.

I am very fortunate to be going with a fantastic group of scientists. The group leaders are geologists Ross Powell from the University of Northern Illinois and Julie Brigham Grette from UMASS Amherst. (My students will remember Julie from her visit to the Heath School back in early May.)

We are also joined by a wonderful group of young undergraduate college students from all over the country.

(I'll be writing more about each of the participants in our group at a later date.)

Last night I bid farewell to the darkness. We had just a couple hours of darkness on the plane ride over from Newark to Oslo. I dozed off around 10 pm as the Sun was setting, and then when I awoke about 3 hours later it was broad daylight.

Around 11:30 this morning we crossed the Arctic Circle! We were on the way North from Oslo to Tromso when it occurred to me that we had probably crossed this invisible yet important line. For anyone out there reading this, who can explain the significance of the Arctic Circle? (Type in your answers in the "Ask the Team" section of this site.) No fair looking it up on the internet – just type in your ideas about why you think it is significant. In the next day or so I'll post the answer.

I noticed how low the Sun was on the horizon as we descended into Tromso – even around 11:30 I estimated the Sun was at not more than about 25 degrees above the horizon. That's interesting – even though the Sun won't be setting up here for several weeks, it never gets very high up in the sky.

Landing in Tromso I was struck by how temperate it appeared. Above the Arctic Circle I would have expected a much more barren landscape. Instead there were lots of trees, including deciduous trees, grass, flowers. This is due to the impact of the Gulf Stream – the warm ocean current in the Atlantic brought up from the Tropics. It's amazing to realize that even this far North, where in the winter there is 24 hours of darkness, it can be warm enough for lots of plants to grow.

After a brief layover in Tromso, we flew on to SpitsbergenSpitsbergen is the largest island in the Norwegian High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. To see a map of Spitsbergen and Svalbard click here., which is the largest island in the Svalbard ArchipelagoA chain of many islands. (an archipelago is a group of islands). We flew to Longyearbyen, which is the largest town on the island. Unfortunately it is completely covered in clouds, so my first glimpse of the island is just clouds!

Descending below the clouds into Longyearbyen, I was able to get my first glimpse of the Arctic. Barren, mountainous and beautiful. Unfortunately it's been pretty cloudy today so I am not able to get the full view of this amazing place.

We spent the afternoon getting settled in Longyearbyen. I'll write more about Longyearbyen after a good night's sleep, but for now you may be interested in knowing that I took money out of the most northerly ATM in the world. And the fact that it's hovering around 40 degrees makes me smile - I have happily left 90+ degree weather behind...