NERC ATSC Fieldwork Training Part 3- ICE!!

Having spent time getting excited by the local flora and fauna came the day I was most looking forward to- the ice! Course tutor Ed had shipped up lots of radar and GPS equipment to Ny Alesund before our arrival so our first job was to work out how to distribute it all among us to carry up to Midrelovenbreen, the glacier we were going to be working on.

Once we were all loaded up we walked out to the glacier and split into teams on of which used GPS to plot out a path up the glacier, then they were followed by the team with the ground penetrating radar. The radar is on a sledge that would normally be pulled by a skidoo but Ed had decided that as he had a handy supply of PhD students he could use us.

Team sledge dog pulling the radar equipment along the glacier (twice as someone forgot to turn it on the first time…)

We were able to attach some show chains to our boots that allowed us to walk on the glacier without falling all over the place. The path up the glacier was marked out initially by piles of rocks by the GPS team, and then spare team members as the surface of the glacier became far less rock covered the further up we got. 20 years of education to get to pretend to be a rock…

 

We stopped at the top of the glacier for lunch and a quick sunbathe.

After lunch at the top of the glacier we were shown a melt river that in some places was completely hidden by a layer of snow and ice over the top- a reminder that even a glacier that feels very safe can have hidden surprises.

 

Once we were back to Ny Alesund a few of us still had some excess energy so decided to go for a hike up towards the atmospheric research laboratory on a hill near to the town. This was our first time out on our own without a course leader so we were hopeful for no bears. Due to the measurements they’re taking  at the lab we couldn’t get too close but we still managed to get high enough to get some excellent views of Ny Alesund even if it was much more of a climb than a hike. The decision to go back down the shale front tested my balancing skills to their maximum, although little did I know that we were being checked up on through the base telescope and probably providing quite a lot of entertainment into the bargain.

A fairy steep and chilly climb up…

But worth it for excellent views of Ny Alseund and this glacier behind the mountain.

Once back at the base we had a chance to look at our biological samples and review Ed’s images from the radar.

Radar image through the glacier, courtesy of Ed King

Looking at all the creepy crawlies living in our sample.

Drying out the samples so that the creatures inside fall to an ethanol induced death ready to be looked at under the microscope.

The next day it was sadly time to head back to Longyearbyen but this was made slightly more bearable through it being via a stunning flight over the ice caps.

Our final meal of the trip provided an opportunity to finally meet a bear, thankfully our rifle training wasn’t necessary.

 

The Arctic in the news- Arctic sea-ice melt prediction using melt ponds

Even though I’ve mostly stuck to Antarctica news so far this bit is important for two reasons. One it’s about melt ponds, which is what I look at but on the other side of the world, and two it’s the group that I’m part of at Reading, go CPOM!

Melt ponds on Arctic sea ice, copyright NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

What’s happened?

The CPOM group at Reading have just released a prediction for the 2014 Arctic sea ice minimum. They did this by using the fact that there is a correlation between the fraction of sea ice covered by melt ponds  (pools of melted ice) in spring and the minimum amount of ice that will then be present at the end of the summer.

The reason for this is to do with the ponds being darker than the surrounding ice, as you can see in the image above. This means that they absorb more energy from the sun, which can lead to warming and further melting.

What does this mean?

These short term predictions are mostly important for predicting shipping routes but the more we know about modelling processes such as the formation of these ponds the better models will be for predicting future extents- one of the greatest uncertainties in predicting future global temperature changes is sea ice level fluctuations.

What’s next?

The prediction has been entered into the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) Sea Ice Prediction Network–  an annual comparison between different scientists’ predictions, but we’ll have to wait until September to see if Reading’s efforts will do well in the rankings!

An infographic produced by University of Reading to go with today’s news.