Summit Greenland - Summer 2007

Group is back at Summit for 2008

2008-06-18T09:22:00.002-04:00

Here is the 2008 Phase 1 Snow Photochemistry crew. We are still looking at the impact of Bromine on Summit radical chemistry. Major focus of this year is to fine the source of the Br and to get all the necessary measurements to run an integrated snowpack-atmosphere photochemistry model.

The news and information for the 2008 campaign can be found at the following websites:

http://greenland-2008.blogspot.com
http://www.polartrec.com/greenland-atmospheric-studies
http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/atmosphere.html

Bike Trip to the Russell Glacier

2007-06-20T20:13:00.000-04:00

Today Pieter Beckman and I rode Mtn. bikes up to the edge of the Russell Glacier. It is about 18 miles one way. Doesn't sound that bad, but the road is a bit up and down and the last part is all on soft glacier till, not fun to ride on. This is about 5 miles into the trip near where the US Military has a bombing practice range. The sign warns you to stay on the road as there might still be some un-exploded ordinance in this area. I doubt there is any unexploded bombs left because the muskox certainly must have accidentally walked over all this area over the past 40 years, but I will not be testing my muskox theory any time soon. I am much happier after this photo was taken as I asked Pieter (a former bike mechanic) to take a look at my bike. I told him I felt like I was riding with the brakes on and indeed both the front and back brakes were way too tight. While there were still many hills to go I felt better after this, and Pieter pointed out I had a good excuse were why I was so tired (and lagging behind Pieter) the rest of the trip.

Here is a neat ice halo a couple of miles later. To learn more about ice halos check out this website on atmospheric optics. Seems to me like this is probably mostly due to high cirrus clouds.

Here is the glacial till part of the ride with the Russell Glacier in the background.

A good view of the glacier river draining the glacier.

Lots of evidence of recent collapses of big chunks of ice from the icesheet edge. That and occasional thunder like nosies caused by nearby collapses made us wary of getting too close.

Looking down the east side.

Rocks recently uncovered by the retreating glacier.

Pieter walking near the ice edge.

Interesting region with blue ice. Note sure why or how this is different.

Packing Up and fun

2007-06-19T13:53:00.000-04:00

After yesterday we finished packing all the instruments up and hauling them (using electric snow mobile and the electric "Bad Boy" 4WD golf cart) back from SAT Camp to the main base. Some of the instruments are DNF (Do Not Freeze) so we stored them in the Maintenance Shop to keep them warm. We completely build 2 full-sized Air Force pallets (84 inches wide x 86 inches high x 94 inches high) with our instrumentation. We still had a smaller pallet for personal luggage, sleeping bags, and the GaTech Tool Chest which was too heavy and too big to fit anywhere else.

After the packing was done we played another game of soccer between the Old Pirates (over-35) and the Snow Bunnies (under-35). It was a very close game that the Pirates won 1-0. The Pirates did have a more players which was not exactly fair. After everyone recovered from soccer, Jack lead a 9 hole round of golf on the 2007 Summit Summer 9-hole Golf course. The game was almost called after we lost 5 balls on the 5 hole, but we played better the last few holes and manged to finish the round before our hands were completely frozen.

This morning we packed up two pallets of Ice Core boxes. Some of the firn cores from the Albert/Severinghouse Project but most were from the Cole-Dai firn core drilling that is still going on. After landing in Kanger this afternoon we transfered all the core to the large freezer facility in Kanger.

More Diamond Dust

2007-06-15T20:01:00.001-04:00

It has been snowing on and off today. Now looks like diamond dust falling but a fog may be rolling in. Here a photo from late last night, right now there is another snowdog out there.

The heat wave has abated a bit, with slightly colder temperatures each night. Still pretty easy to sleep with nighttime temps warmer than -20 deg C.

Pressure has been dropping over the past few days and finally stabilized over the last few hours. Forecast calls for partly cloudy skies and 30% chance of snow for next 3 days. So looks like more of the same while we are packing up and for our flight back to Kanger.

The BrO levels have been really low for the past 4 days. Here is a composite map of SCIAMACHY total column BrO for 12-14th of June. This shows lower BrO levels than we saw last week near coast of Greenland. Perhaps this fits in with our observations. Hard to say as we are still not sure of the source of the BrO at Summit.

Ice Crystals in Summit Sky

2007-06-14T19:38:00.000-04:00

Lots of ice crystals in the air tonight. It is difficult to capture in a photo but lots of sparkling dots floating right now.

The ice crystals up creating this Sun Pillar. See Katrine's blog (greenland-2007.blogspot.com) for more info on how Sun Pillars form.

Study of Volcanic events in Greenland Ice Cores

2007-06-14T14:04:00.000-04:00

A group of scientists from three different institutions: Jihong Cole-Dai (South Dakota State University), Mark Thiemens (UC-San Diego), and Joel Savarino (LGGE-Grenoble) are collecting 4 ice cores (two 80 m cores, two 150 m cores). Joel has a blog *in french* about his travels at: http://badbrain-missionspolaires.blogspot.com/. Above is a photo of the drill site that is about 5 km southwest of Summit Camp. Here is Mike Pasternik when he visited the drill camp a couple of days ago.

Here is Alyson Lanciki a graduate student from SD State. She is baging up a section of the core to take back to the lab for analysis.

Here is a close up photo of the drill bore hole. The cores will be retrograded to Kangerlussuaq for storage at -15C until they can be flown to Scotia, NY via C-130 and sent via refrigerated truck to NICL (the National Ice Core Lab) in Denver, CO.

Update from Sallie's Fen

2007-06-13T19:14:00.000-04:00

Here are more shots of the new baby girl with her mom Veronica at Sallie's Fen.

Right now her name has been narrowed down to either Venus or Victoria. Thanks Nicola for the new photos.

New Birth and a Birthday

2007-06-13T14:15:00.001-04:00

Jack Dibb and Nicola Blake of Sallie's Fen Alpacas are proud to announce the birth of a new baby girl alpaca. The as yet unnamed cria is standing next to her mom, Veronica in her new Barrington, NH pasture.

David Lew (NOAA - Air Resources Lab - Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division) celebrated his birthday by grooming the trail to sat camp in the electric snowmobile. We are preparing to pack up the instruments in a few days and want to get the trail firm enough to support the electric "Bad Boy" buggy. The Bad Boy is an electric golf cart on steroids that can we are hoping will help us haul our instruments back to the main camp.

Today we received all the NILU Atmospheric Backward Transport Analysis Products by Andreas Stohl. This analysis helps us to interpret transport processes and how they influenced recent measurements taken at the Summit, Greenland, station. It attempts to replace trajectory calculations -- the major tool used so far for that purpose -- with quantitative dispersion model runs including full turbulence and convection parameterizations. The plots from backward model runs using the FLEXPART model. A description of the various products derived from the backward runs can be found here.

Snowy day at Summit

2007-06-12T22:43:00.001-04:00

Today at Summit it has been snowing on and off all day. But total accumulation has been only about 3 cm.

Here is a photo of the snowbird making measurements of solar UV at different depths in the snow. It is hard to tell the snow from the sky.

The BrO was low today, we are not exactly sure why. And now we are getting Northerly winds, which means we are getting polluted by the camp generators. We are looking forward to a Summit with more wind generators and solar panels.

Tonight the Sun is finally back in view. Here is Pieter Beckman (UNH) on his way out to make a skype phone call home. This is the beauty of having wireless Internet throughout Summit Camp. The only problem is that with 34 people all using it at the same time, it is often frustratingly slow. Katrine is now working the night shift and gets to appreciate the fast network when we are all asleep.

BrO at Summit

2007-06-11T18:14:00.001-04:00

Last night the GaTech CIMS group (Greg Huey, David Tanner, etc) measured relatively high levels of BrO (bromine monoxide) during a high wind event (windspeeds greater than 14 m/s). This is one of the things that we were looking for this summer. In 2003/4 we saw unusually high OH radical during blowing snow events and our hypothesis was that Br chemistry may be occurring. The OH was not that elevated last night, but the OH/HO2 ratio was. In addition, there was a peak in the reactive gaseous Hg. While this is not conclusive, it is all very encouraging. Interestingly, Jack Dibb and Pieter Beckman's soluble Br- was not elevated. So we have much to figure out. A related question is: Where is the Br coming from. As you can see from the top figure (from University of Cologne), there was a high pressure system over southern Greenland. This was giving us strong westerly winds.

Above is a Hysplit model calculation (from NOAA-ARL) of where the air we sampled last night came from. This is a 2 day back trajectory which suggests that this airmass stayed on icesheet for the past 2 days, but started off near the coast, not too far from Kangerlussuaq.

Here is the SCIAMACHY Satellite measurement of total column BrO for 04-06 June 2007, the data for 07-09 June would be better, but it is not available yet. In anycase, you can see that hotspots for BrO west of Hudson Bay and around the North Pole. Also significant BrO over all of Greenland. Some of this BrO is probably high above our heads, but perhaps some comes in from the Coast during this storms, or maybe mixes down from above. This is still a mystery. See http://www.oma.be/BIRA-IASB/Molecules/BrO/level3.php for more SCIA BrO data.

This figure shows where open water is and where sea ice is melting. This is the average plot for the month of May, but shows significant open water southwest of Greenland. Theory is that you have to have open leads in the ice with Br- in the ice reacting with ozone to make BrO.
See that National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives/index.html) for more sea ice extent data.

Snowbird in blowing snow

2007-06-10T19:49:00.000-04:00

Today was forecasted to be clear and sunny with a high of -5 deg C. It was a beautiful morning, but it quickly degraded and has been snowing and windy all day. The Snowbird has been working well today. You can see a mini-snow drift around the snowbird.

Katrine Gorham (UC-Irvine) usually collects a whole air sample every 4 hours, but today with the high winds she is collecting samples every 2 hours. Every time she collects air, sh also measures the snow temperature (at 22:00 LT the snow was -15 deg C) and records the other meteorological variables (wind speed = 13 m/s, air temp = - 7 deg C, etc). This is the warmest temperature of the summer so far.

The Satellite camp has grown in the last week. We have neighbors from the University of Washington measuring isotopes of Nitrogen and Oxygen in snow and air. And a group from the Netherlands (in the black tent) that are looking at the Atmospheric Energy Budget above the snow. They are measuring the incoming solar radiation, the reflected solar, as well as the outgoing IR. The dutch scientists are also launching a weather balloon each day at 1200. This is really useful data for our work because it tells us the height of the mixed layer above the snow.

In this photo you can see the snow drift in front of the Bally building where Jack is measuring water soluble gases (nitric acid, nitrous acid, HOBr, etc.). He has two inlet, one just above (or in) the snow, and another about 1.5 m above the snow. By comparing the levels of trace gases from these two inlets, he can determine if the gases are coming out of (or depositing to) the snow pack.

Brad's Trip to Thule

2007-06-09T17:58:00.000-04:00

An Air Greenland Twin Otter made an emergency flight to Summit this morning at 0600.

The Otter came to transport a scientist with a tooth infection from Summit to Thule, Greenland for urgent medical care. The scientist recently had his wisdom teeth removed and unfortunately his healing jaw became infected and started to swell. He is now doing fine in Thule.

Mr. Brad Johnson (guy with yellow and orange hat) volunteered to accompany the patient to Thule. Brad is one of our heavy equipment operators with many years experience in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. He is taking advantage of this opportunity to explore the possibility of a over land traverse from Thule to Greenland as an alterative way of getting fuel and equipment to Summit. Tomorrow Brad is going to explore the ramp the coast up onto the icesheet near Thule. On the flight from Summit to Thule, Brad was hoping to take some photos of the route.

Above is the Twin Otter taking off from Summit in poor visibility. These experienced pilots are quite good and have done many flights to Summit.

Sara Wheeler, famous author visiting Summit

2007-06-08T12:56:00.000-04:00

Sara Wheeler arrived Summit Camp on Wednesday and has been touring around visiting all the sites and asking lots of good questions about our research. Sara lives in London and has traveled all around the world. So it has been great fun talking to her about her adventures. I am still not sure what aspect of Greenland she is interested in writing about we are all looking forward to reading her next book.

For those interested in Sara's other writings, check out the books listed below.

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Photos and text below from www.randomhouse.com

Cherry
A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Apsley Cherry-Garrard was one of the youngest members of Robert Falcon Scott’s legendary expedition to Antarctica, the last man sent out to meet Captain Scott and his men in February 1912, when they were expected to return victorious any day from the South Pole. He embarked on his own epic journey into the Antarctic winter to collect eggs of the Emperor penguin. It was dark all the time, his teeth shattered, and the tent blew away in the cold. “But we kept our tempers,” he wrote, “even with God.”

After serving in the First World War, with zealous encouragement from his neighbor George Bernard Shaw, Cherry wrote the undisputed masterpiece of polar literature, The Worst Journey in the World. But as the years progressed, he faced a terrible struggle against depression and despair. Sara Wheeler’s Cherry is the first biography of this great hero of Antarctic exploration, written with unrestricted access to his papers and with the full cooperation of his family.
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Terra Incognita
Travels in Antarctica

It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world.

This is a book about the call of the wild and the response of the spirit to a country that exists perhaps most vividly in the mind. Sara Wheeler spent seven months in Antarctica, living with its scientists and dreamers. No book is more true to the spirit of that continent--beguiling, enchanted and vast beyond the furthest reaches of our imagination. Chosen by Beryl Bainbridge and John Major as one of the best books of the year, recommended by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune, one of the Seattle Times's top ten travel books of the year, Terra Incognita is a classic of polar literature.
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Too Close to the Sun
The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch

Denys Finch Hatton was adored by women and idolized by men. A champion of Africa, legendary for his good looks, his charm, and his prowess as a soldier, lover, and hunter, Finch Hatton inspired Karen Blixen to write the unforgettable stories in Out of Africa. Now esteemed British biographer Sara Wheeler tells the truth about this extraordinarily charismatic adventurer.

Born to an old aristocratic family that had gambled away most of its fortune, Finch Hatton grew up in a world of effortless elegance and boundless power. Tall and graceful, with the soul of a poet and an athlete’s relaxed masculinity, he became a hero without trying at Eton and Oxford. In 1910, searching for novelty and danger, Finch Hatton arrived in British East Africa and fell in love–with a continent, with a landscape, with a way of life that was about to change forever.

Wheeler brilliantly conjures the mystical beauty of Kenya at a time when teeming herds of wild animals roamed unmolested across pristine savannah. No one was more deeply attuned to this beauty than Finch Hatton–and no one more bitterly mourned its passing when the outbreak of World War I engulfed the region in a protracted, bloody guerrilla conflict. Finch Hatton was serving as a captain in the Allied forces when he met Karen Blixen in Nairobi and embarked on one of the great love affairs of the twentieth century.

With delicacy and grace, Wheeler teases out truth from fiction in the liaison that Blixen herself immortalized in Out of Africa. Intellectual equals, bound by their love for the continent and their inimitable sense of style, Finch Hatton and Blixen were genuine pioneers in a land that was quickly being transformed by violence, greed, and bigotry.
Ever restless, Finch Hatton wandered into a career as a big-game hunter and became an expert bush pilot; his passion that led to his affair with the notoriously unconventional aviatrix Beryl Markham. But Markham was no more able to hold him than Blixen had been. Mesmerized all his life by the allure of freedom and danger, Finch Hatton was, writes Wheeler, “the open road made flesh.”

In painting a portrait of an irresistible man, Sara Wheeler has beautifully captured the heady glamour of the vanished paradise of colonial East Africa. In Too Close to the Sun she has crafted a book that is as ravishing as its subject.
---

Travels in a Thin Country
A Journey Through Chile

Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Eloquent, astute, nimble with history and deftly amusing, Travels in a Thin Country established Sara Wheeler as one of the very best travel writers in the world.

The Voyaging Teacher

2007-06-08T09:44:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Summit Camp, Greenland.

My name is Mike Pastirik. I am a high school science teacher from Atlanta, Georgia. Over the last two years, I have been working with Atmospheric Scientists conducting research in Greenland and Antarctica. I want to invite you to keep up with my blog from Greenland, www.thevoyagingteacher.blogspot.com. If you would like to visit my Antarctica website (2005), access it at http://pbl.cc.gatech.edu/step/93, or visit Dr. Barry Lefer's Antarctica blog at antci.blogspot.com. I hope to read your comments, and respond to your questions.

Mike Pastirik; Summit, Greenland

Electric Snowmobile

2007-06-06T19:31:00.000-04:00

On Monday's flight the electric snowmobile finally arrived at Summit after much anticipation. Tracy Dahl has been driving it all around town putting it through it's paces. He even hauled a bunch of empty cylinders from Sat Camp back to the cargo berm, saving us a good bit of work at the end of the experiment.

The neat thing about the snowmobile was that NSF sponsored a competition for University students to build electric and low emission snowmobile. This year McGill University won the electric competition and this is the vehicle pictured above.

I like the fact that the electric plug to recharge the batteries is where the gas cap used to be. Since the Sat Camp is officially an emissions free zone, the only way we were able to haul equipment out here is by pulling it ourselves. Now with the electric snowmobile we can haul our equipment back to camp without polluting the air and snow we are trying to study. Future plans for Summit Camp include more wind mills, solar panels, and electric vehicles. It is neat to think that the electric vehicles will be charged by solar and wind energy.

Speaking of contaminating our air and snow. Unfortunately, when the C-130 arrived today, the winds had just switched around to the North, so the whole time the plane was here it was contaminating our measurements.

This C-130 took away number of our good friends. On the left is Luke Ziemba smiling because he is on his way home. His replacement Pieter Beckman on the right is not nearly as happy. We call them the New Hampshire brothers because of their similar attire.

Unfortunately, it took the Herc three attempts to take off, causing even more pollution. Adding insult to injury, on the 2nd take off attempt the C-130 fired it's Assisted Take Off (ATO) rockets, producing the pollution cloud above. The cloud drifted right over the Sat Camp. In addition to the usual suspects (NO and CO) the ATO included elevated levels of Chlorine and potentially contaminated the snow around our measurement site.

Snowing again

2007-06-05T20:05:00.001-04:00

It is snowing again. Actually, seems like it has been snowing almost constantly for the past few days. All the powder on the surface makes it a bit harder to walk around. David Tanner took this great photo lastnight of snowflakes on his coat.

We have 15 more Summiters leaving on the next flight. Flight is supposed to come up tomorrow (Wednesday), but we have some conflicting weather forecasts. So no one really knows what is going to happen, but we have 15 people watching the weather quite closely. Odds are that the plane will come, as they can land in most kinds of weather. We are going to miss the carpentry crew, and the wind energy team, and the members of our SHOX team (David Tanner, Luke Ziemba, and Jochen Stutz). Above is a photo david took a couple of nights ago when it was still snowing.

People.

2007-06-05T13:53:00.000-04:00

Things at summit seem to be moving along well enough. As we're starting to get to the warmer temps, we're getting the seasonal staff change-out this week. Lots of the VECO staff (the carpenters, electricians, and general assembly people) are leaving tomorrow (maybe), and with these planes we have more sciency sorts coming in. Some of the sciency are here only for a few days (leaving Thursday) while others are here for another 6 weeks. With all the additional people, the camp feels a bit crowded again. As of Thursday, camp should be back down in the 30s (as far as the # of people here).

For the month of June we have 3 birthdays: Justin (left, departed yesterday), Nick the medic (middle, leaving tomorrow... maybe), and me (right, here for 2 more weeks). The cooks decided we should have one grandiose celebration, viewed here at lunch the other day.

The weather, being warmer, is a bit more moist. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit better when it was -40 C vs this -10 C stuff. Too freakin wet. That, and it's snowing. The powder would be wonderful if there were only a ski hill around here, with how light and fluffy it is... Perfect for face shots. However, since our packed down paths are constantly blowing over, we're tracking snow and water into all the buildings. Things are a wee bit messier.

One advantage of the warmer temps though is I can pack up a bit of my heavier clothing, so my tent comprises of a sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and a closed duffel back. [I'm always curious what items we'd find if one of these tents decides to take off and blow away- my duffle wouldn't move).

And speaking of the tents, who came up with these freakin tents anyway? "The Arctic Oven." Sounds great on paper, but let's review, if you will, how these tents actually work:
It's standard double-wall tent, only it has a darker interior which is designed to absorb the solar radiation, and thus, in the 24 hour daylight, heat the tent. However, they seem to have had some slight oversights while pondering this idea.

The tents are huge for 1 person to warm up, so when it's cold in the tent, the lone occupant has no chance of warming the tent, unlike smaller mountaineering tents
When it's sunny outside, the solar radiation is so potent anyway, you don't need this extra warming of the tent.

When the sun is out, these tents are sweltering hot! I can't freaking stay in the thing! When it's cold outside, it's frigid in the tent! The tent is backwards! Who needs a tent to be heated in sunny weather?! I'm sure there is a fraction of the time when these tents are great, but someone certainly didn't think this entire process all the way through.

Anyway, back to warm weather topics:
This also means we can set up a volleyball net and start with the volleyball. The golf clubs will come out pretty soon. I hear someone up here was even wise enough to bring some orange balls... We'll have to wait for the powder to get blown out of here before we decide to lose all the golf balls though. Perhaps we'll set up a course on the ski-way... *that* snow is certainly packed down enough.

And, with the snow and wind, it's anyone's guess as to whether we'll actually get the LC-130 flight in tomorrow or not. If the plane was circling over camp as I write this, they'd head back to Kanger without landing. The visibility is a bigger issue than the wind, though the wind kills the visibility. Tomorrow's wind is predicted to be 25 knots. We'll just have to see.

Time to forage for food.

Greg's Flight to Summit

2007-06-04T22:54:00.000-04:00

A new crew of scientists and veco personnel arrived at Summit today. That means that a few people also got to go home. Greg Huey from GaTech (co-PI on the SHOX project) took some nice photos on the way. The photo above is of a retreating glacier.

Here Greg caught a photo of some Moulins.

A Moulin is a tubular chute that burrows all the way to the bedrock at the bottom of the ice sheet and carries the melt water to the ice edge. The reason they are so important is that the water at the base of the ice sheet acts as a lubricant and can speed up the flow of the glacier to the ocean. Increasing the loss of ice from the Greenland ice sheet.

Here is a diagram of a Moulin from NASA's Earth Observer Magazine (2002).

Greg also took this nice photo of Skier-95 at Summit this afternoon.

Weekend Recreation

2007-06-04T14:57:00.000-04:00

On Saturday evening some of the carpenters, led by Sarah, took a bunch of bubble wrap and constructed some sumo wrestling costumes. A sumo mat set up in the rec port and we are happy to report that no one was hurt. Above is Shannon and Nick modeling the sumo suits in the snow.

On Sunday we had a lot of fun gasping for breath in the soccer game. The under-35 team "The Snow Bunnies played against the over-35 team (Captain Jack and the old Pirates). We changed the rules a bit. Instead of two 45-min halves, we played four 7-min quarters. After about 3 minutes of running around we were all out of breath. The field of play was only 35-meters long, with no out of bounds. You scored by kicking the ball into the barrels. You could score from any angle. No goalies (i.e., no one could use their hands) and no offsides.

Ryan Vachon from Polar Palooza was trying to play and film the game at the same time. This did not work so well for the snow bunnies and he was about to score and then decided to save the camera.

The game was very close. At the end of the first half the Snow Bunnies tied the score 2-2 with 1 second left on the clock. In the 2nd half the Snow Bunnies scored the most goals, but unfortunately for them 3 of their goals were own goals. So the final score was 7-4 in favor of Jack's Pirates.

Heatwave and snow bring on t-shirt weather

2007-06-02T07:53:00.000-04:00

Temperatures rocketed up to -8.8 yesterday here at Summit. Should get even warmer today. For the past 24 hours winds have been very very still.

This plus some clouds and falling snow have made it hot enough that folks are walking around with T-shirts on and it is a bit warm in our sleeping bags, keeping us from over sleeping.

Here is Dave Tanner waking from Bally building to Sat Camp weatherport in the falling snow. This is the first time in my three trips up here I have seen such big snow flakes that have kept falling for such a long time. It have been gradually snowing for the past 12 hours. We have 3-4 cm of fresh power.

This is not a great photo, but there are some amazing snow flakes all over the place sparking like diamonds.

Captain Jack and the Halogen Hunters

2007-06-01T15:51:00.000-04:00

The Polar Palooza team has posted Part 1 of the adventures of "Captain Jack and the Halogen Hunters". Follow this LINK to the polar palooza "Podcasts from the Ice" page. A scroll down menu will have Capt. Jack (Part 1) and other videos of science in Greenland and elsewhere in the Arctic and Antarctic in honor of the International Polar Year (IPY). Capt. Jack Part II is just out. Eventually you may to find these podcasts on the archive page.

This is figure is generating some excitement. It shows that there is some soluble Br in the atmospheric at Summit. A very small amount (about 1 part per trillion (pptv)), but this is enough to do a good bit of chemistry. The red line is taken from sampling air in the snowpack and this suggests that soluble Br (probably HOBr or HBr) is coming from the snow. Other groups (GaTech CIMS and UCLA DOAS) are also seeing strong hints of Br compounds. Stay tuned for more breaking news.

Podscasts from the Ice

2007-06-01T09:27:00.000-04:00

Geoff Haines-Stiles and Ryan Vachon have been working night and day to make multiple pod casts during their 2.5 weeks up here. They have been busy filming all the scientists and crew up here. So far they have 2 Summit Related pod casts on their website:

http://passporttoknowledge.com/polar-palooza/pp06.php

Getting to Greenland: May 21st, 2007
Heading to Summit Station: May 28th, 2007

They also have other podcasts from other Polar research teams, well worth watching. In the next day or so, they should have a podcast about our photochemistry experiment.

email from the "Designer and Builder of the Big House in Greenland"

2007-05-31T20:29:00.000-04:00

Below is a letter and some photos that Jack Dibb received tonight from out of the ether from Dan Scott. It is pretty neat to see these old photos. Thanks Dan for sending these along.

One day I was wondering what ever happen to the house I built in Greenland. I thought with the annual snow fall of 4 feet a year, I built that house in 1990, that's 16 years ago. Then that would mean that that house would be 54 feet under the snow surface, subtracting the 10 feet it was above the surface. So just out of curiosity I decided to google the house site and see if I would fine anything on it.
I was profoundly surprised to find it was not only not buried in snow, but above the surface and thriving in supporting a growing community of scientific researchers. When I found your web site I was ecstatic to find such an awesome gallery of photos of the big house, as it has been called. I am glad that the summer camp I had thought I built has been winter over also is great news. The winter aurora shots are awesome too.
Well after seeing all the excitement that is going on at the Big House I thought you might like to hear from the guy who designed and built the Big House. I was working for a company in Brattleboro, Vermont, Winter Panel Co. I was the original designer for the company having been there 7 years. The company produces foam core panel homes with and without timber frames. I had just finished a job in Concord, Mass. With This Old House Show, I was in the back ground working on the job, in the show.
I have been a hiker and skier in the mountains of New England all my life, so the idea of going to Greenland excited me greatly. I over saw all prefabricated parts at the factory in Brattleboro, Vt. I personally delivered the tools, doors and windows, to Schenectady, N.Y. Hopped on a C130 with the 109 Air National Guard and in 6 hours was in Sondrestrom, Greenland. Waited a few days while the guys digging World War II planes out of snow to get to work, Then it was our turn to fly up. The US site was snowed in with a herbi, blizzard, so we flew to the European site, where they loaded up sleds with our gear, with me sitting by myself on the back, and went 40 kilometers to the US site. What a ride that was. Talk about getting away from it all. Well we had a great two weeks building the Big House, and the rest of the story is history.
A final note, the next year,1991, I got to design and build 4 summer camp buildings at the South Pole. You can see them there, they are the first buildings to be built above the surface on metal frames. They also are wintered over in.

Dan Scott Designs
Architectual CADD Design
1548 Back Westminster Road
Westminster, Vermont 05158
(802) 463-1961 phone / Fax

Short-timers and Sunday Soccer

2007-05-31T13:48:00.000-04:00

Next week is a flight period and more than half the camp is leaving on the scheduled flights next week. So many Summit residents are offically "short-timers", they have 3 to 5 days to go. They are intently watching the weather forecast, because bad weather (i.e., poor visibility) could prevent the C-130s from landing. Lastnight was foggy (above) but today is bright and sunny with a temperature of -12.9 C. This is the all time high over the past 24 days we have been here.

Along with the fog, we get rime ice. This coats everything in camp, including our sensors. So the night shift has to stay on top of things to keep the rime off our instruments. If you look closely, you can see the bamboo flagpole is coated on the left (south) side from the southerly winds we had last night.

We have been kicking the soccer ball around on our 1/2 mile walks to and from the photochemistry satellite camp. Now that everyone has had a chance to acclimatize to the altitude. Captain Jack's photochemistry crew has challenged the Firn core drilling team to a soccer game on Sunday. The idea was that if any of the short timers over do it, they can hop on the Monday flight back to the coast (i.e., sea level). We will have a mini-draft on Saturday night to divide up the camp staff between the two teams of scientists.

Luke's Photos from Summit Camp

2007-05-30T20:26:00.000-04:00

Here is Luke's portrait entitled "hanging out in the tent". The wind has been kicking up here, causing lots of snow drifting. Good news is that winds warm things up (mixing warm air above with cold air at the surface). Bad news is that Bonnie got trapped in her tent by a drift when snow froze the tent zipper. After a few panicked moments, she warmed up the zipper by breathing on it. In the end she was only trapped for about 15 minutes.

Not the best example, but here is a photo of Tent City before the drifting.

Tent City after the drifting. Luke took this photo yesterday. Today the drifts are even higher.

This is my impersonation of Sir Robert Falcon Scott. Antarctic explorer. Scott is famous for losing the race to the South Pole to Roald Admunsen by a few weeks, and perishing on the way home a few days walk from his ship (photo by L. Ziemba).

This is the U.S. GISP II (Greenland Ice Sheet Project II) bore hole where the 3200 m ice core was drilled between 1989-1993. This ice was provided a high resolution of the past 200,000 years. But the best record goes back 110,000 years. This is one of the reasons we are here. What we learn about the current Arctic atmosphere and snow chemistry may help the glaciologist interpret this long term record. The other thing I recently learned is that Summit Camp was mis-named. We are not really at the Summit of the ice sheet, we are 28 km due West of the highest point. A group of European scientists drilled a complementary ice core at the GRIP (Greenland Icecore Project). Since we are not really at the Summit, Summit Ice Camp is moving a little over a meter per year towards the coast.

Sunny days back at Summit

2007-05-25T22:31:00.000-04:00

Here is a photo of me on the roof of the Balley Building with the rest of the Summit camp in the background. Temperatures have warmed up quite a bit. Just in time for our Memorial Day Barbeque on Sunday Night. Not sure of all the plans yet, but I hear that we good chance that we will play so Greenland Golf (with orange balls), horse shoes, and kick the soccer ball around. Acutally have a long day of snow pit sampling every 4 hours from 0800 to 2400 LT planned for tomorrow, so I will be looking forward to some time off on Sunday night.

Also, wanted to introduce Jo Dodds, a middle school Earth Sciences teacher from Idaho visiting Summit to learn about what we are doing and to teach a couple of Webinars on the PolarTREC website. Her next webinar from Summit Greenland will be on 01 June, and will try to answer the questions: Does snow cause air pollution?

Please check out Jo's online journal at:
http://www.polartrec.org/greenland-ice-studies/journals/jo-dodds

Happy Belated Birthday to Summit Camp

2007-05-25T19:49:00.000-04:00

May 25th. Hard to believe that I will be back in only a month [if all goes according to plan]! I feel like, in so many ways, we just got here. I suppose it's nothing more than my point of reference- in that I'm used to being on trips for much longer times.
I decided I haven't taken enough photos of the place. So, I took the time to wander around last night (about 1am local time) and take some photos along the perimeter of camp. I like how this captures the texture of the snow surface, which is constantly changing. We've had some breezy days, hence the texture of all the waves. There is a bit of a wind layer on the snow as well. When we first got here, the snow was much smoother from the different conditions before our arrival.
It has been a bit warmer lately, particularly in the tents- increased solar radiation. Still, the sauna is an often refreshing past time for some (will take a photo of that particular feature later).

Other than that, things, from my perspective, seem to be moving along groovy enough. The whole community here gets along well. No complaints. In fact, one of the hardest parts I forsee in leaving this place is going to be leaving the cooks! Aside from Sunday, they cook every lunch and dinner for us, and it's always fantastic (and extremely diverse)! Here is a photo of the birthday cake (Oh yeah, Summit Camp turned 18 on the 24th of May, so she's now legal and can kick us out). Beside the cake in this photo is one of the infamous cooks I mentioned- Kathy. Whatever she gets paid, she needs a raise! Tina (not photoed) is the other beautiful cook, who also isn't paid enough. The food here is spectacular, and I'm not even that much of a food person.

Whenever we get the next fog, I'm going to look at climbing the 50m tower (usually a warmer place than the ground with the related inversion) and take some photos down on camp, if the opportunity presents itself. Should be neat, though a wee bit chilly. Often, the inversion from 2m to 8m is on the magnitude of 10 C!
And on that note, bis dann.

Calm winds and radiation fog

2007-05-23T20:00:00.000-04:00

You can just barely see the big house in the photo taken a few minutes ago. It as been sunny and warm all day, and now that the winds have died down, the fog as just started to form. The NOAA website say that radation fog "forms at night under clear skies with calm winds when heat absorbed by the earth’s surface during the day is radiated into space. As the Earth’s surface continues to cool... the humidity (can) reach 100% and fog (may) form. Radiation fog varies in depth from 3 feet to 1,000 feet and is always found at ground level and usually remains stationary. This type of fog can reduce visibility to near zero at times .

These are two more photos of the clam conditions tonight, the weather port (above) and the shovel we use to keep the drifting snow away from the door (below).

Finally, David Lew (NOAA) is working on fixing an problem with the mercury instrument. It is an intermittent problem, the most difficult to troubleshoot. He just took the whole instrument back outside, so that makes me think that he has has it working again.

Daily comings and goings

2007-05-21T22:14:00.001-04:00

This is a photo of the ARGO that pulls the water "pig" from the melter to the Big House. Our water source here is melted snow. The melter is a metal box that is attached to the diesel generator, and uses the heat from the generator to melt the snow. The melter box is filled by a small bulldozer. Once the 200 gallon pig is towed to the Big House, an electric pump transfers the water from the pig to the 400 gallon water reservoir in the Big House. This is the water we use for washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, drinking, showering, washing clothes, etc. The Big House goes through about 400 gallons a day. Because it is a bit of a pain to keep refilling the pig, we try to conserve water. We try to limit ourselves to one 2-min shower each week, and try to only wash our clothes only once every 2 weeks, since I think this is about 25 to 30 gallons.
Today was a great day for me, I took a shower, washed my clothes, and cut my hair. I feel like a new man.

This is Ryan, a camera man from Polar-Palooza. They are in the Arctic this summer filming and interview scientists for a 1 hour film and a series of educational podcasts. Check out their website to see what they have been up to: http://passporttoknowledge.com/polar-palooza/
Ryan and Geoff Hains-Stiles are visiting Summit to learn more about the science going on here and what is it like to live here at Summit. Should be exciting to see what they come up with.

Here is Jack Dibb putting away a snow sample. Jack is collecting daily surface snow samples and analysing the major cations and anions dissolved in the snow. I will be collecting some a couple of snow samples each week and send them to Cort Anastasio of UC-Davis. Cort will measure the dissolved organic compounds in the snow and also how much solar UV radiation they absorb. This will help me interpret my measurements of UV sunlight in the snow.

Here is a photo of Jochen Stutz (a professor at UCLA). This was Jochen's turn to be the "House Mouse". The mouse is responsible for doing all the breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes. As well as clean the tables, vacuum the carpet, clean the bathroom/shower, mop the kitchen and galley, restock the breakfast bar (bagels, cereal, muffins, juice), restock salt/pepper/napkins, help the cook, etc. This takes about all day. In my opinion, the best benefit of being the mouse is that you get to choose the music.

Wind brings warmer temperatures to Summit

2007-05-21T21:54:00.000-04:00

It has been windy for the past 3 days and this has kept the nighttime temperatures warmer here. Winds have also reduced visibility and caused some drifting (see above). Notice the UH flag. I am curious to see how long it lasts if the winds keep blowing. Winds have died off a bit for the past 6 hours. Wind direction has also changed, have been getting some Northerly and now Easterly winds.

The NOAA Atmospheric Watch Observatory (AWO) measures the air temperature 2 and 8 meters above the snow. The first 10 days of our project were quite sunny and at night the atmosphere was well stratified. Notice how the 8 m air is much warmer at night while the 2 m air temperatures cool down to below -35C.

Winds were typically 3 to 7 m/s for first 10 days, and have been mostly above 6 m/s for last 3 days. Higher winds at night have done a good job of mixing the air, keeping the surface (2 m) air temperature from getting so cold. This has made it much easier to sleep. During the day the temperatures feel about the same, especially when you consider the windchill factor.

First windy day

2007-05-19T08:27:00.000-04:00

Our first 2 weeks at Summit have been beautiful. Every day has been bright and sunny, with only a few minor high cirrus clouds. The plot above shows UV levels I measured over the past few days. You can see how the it has been very few clouds. Today the winds have gotten up to 20 miles per hour, so we have some blowing snow, which has reduced our visibility.

Here is a photo from the Total Sky Imager (TSI) that is used to calculate the percent cloud cover. You can not see any clouds in this photo, but you may be able to see the halo (or sun dog) around the Sun. This is caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere which are hexagonal in shape. The ice crystals could be in high level cirrus clouds or right at the surface in diamond dust (ice fog). Last night we had diamond dust forming, but since it is so windy today, these ice crystals are from cirrus.

There is a photo of the Big House last night around 0100 as Sun is low on the horizon and diamond dust was forming in an ice fog. It may not seem like much, but we were all excited that weather is changing some. The reactions we are studying are driven by sunlight, and we observed our most interesting results during blowing snow conditions. Now that all the instruments are more or less working we are hoping that the weather cooperates and brings us a few days of high winds and white out conditions over the next 4 weeks.

Summit's First Wind Generator

2007-05-17T15:01:00.000-04:00

On Monday (14th May) the Summit Crew in were ready to raise the first Summit Wind powered electricity generator.

We all helped using the hand winch to raise the wind mill. The winching was a bit difficult at first. Each stroke of the winch pulled in 1 inch of cable, so it took about 45 minutes to get the wind mill all the way up.

This prototype project was led by Tracy (middle) and assisted by Larry (left) and Joe (right). This particular wind generator has a peak output of 6000 W. If the winds get too strong it pushes back the blades. This particular system is rated for - 60 deg C. If it survives the cold temperatures and stong winds of this winter, we are hopeful that we can have more (and larger) wind mills up here in the future.

The windmill has been working well the past 4 days. We have only had light winds so far but it is already tapped into the Summit grid helping us do our science.

p.s. Thanks to Sandy Starkweather for the photos of the wind generator.

Katrine's Blog

2007-05-16T20:18:00.000-04:00

Katrine Gorham, a graduate student at the University of California - Irvine is here at Summit collecting whole air samples is the air and testing a snow chamber to help get a better understanding of the chemical reactions occurring above and within the snow. Take a look at her blog: http://greenland-2007.blogspot.com

Ozone Cam

2007-05-16T18:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long delay between posts. We all have been busy getting instruments set up. Many things have happened over the last 5 days. The Summit crew has installed their first Wind Turbine, so for the past 2 days, some of our electricity has been generated by the wind. We will do a special blog on this later in the week. Other news is that 14 new scientists, staff, and technicians arrived yesterday and now the total population of Summit Camp is 49 people. Another C-130 arrives tomorrow, and we will be back down to 35 people. As far as the science goes, lots of good news to report. A new power supply arrived on the flight yesterday (Tuesday) and so the Snow Profiling Spectroradiometer (a.k.a. SnowBird) is now collecting data. Also, the GaTech Crew (Dave Tanner, Bonnie, and Justin) fixed the ozone monitor and has 2 or 3 days of OH and HO2 data. Katrine (UC-Irvine) has started her whole air sampling. Every 4 hours she fills a stainless steel can with ambient air. She gets help from Justin for the 0300 and 0700 samples. Katine will post more on this later.

The photo above is a picture of Greenland from 30,000 ft taken on 02 May 2007. Andy Clark is the scientist in charge of the ozonesonde balloon measurements up here and he attached a digital camera to his ozone instrument. And every 30 seconds the camera took a picture. The balloon and attached instruments rose to 32,000 ft until the balloon burst and then the parchute gently floated back down to the ice sheet about 20 km from Summit. Andy lost the on-board GPS signal when the parchute was about 9 km above the snow. Knowing the windspeed, wind direction, and descent rate, Andy calculated when it may have fallen. It took him two attempts, but on Sunday Andy found the ozonesonde and the ozone cam within 2 km of where he calculated it to be.

Below are more photos from this balloon flight:

This photos shows tent city in the lower left, and the track of the C-130 that was having trouble taking off.

Flat Earth

2007-05-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

Since most of my Hg measurements have been behaving, I've been helping out the
staff a bit in their duties. This is Sarah and I, sitting atop the pit 5 of us have been cutting out with chainsaws. It's going to be a food freezer for the next 5 years or so. The sagging ceiling on the current one is making enough people nervous that it's time for a new one.

I helped set up the reflector side of a retro (active long range spectrum-analyzer) in the clean air zone a few days ago, which is an extremely restricted area. As you can see, the place really is this flat. This is a photo of the summit station from 5 km away. The neatest thing is there are snow formations (mainly just waves, hardly even sastrugi), though they are never even 10 cm high. Also there are random patches of harder snow or softer snow, for no obvious reason.

In general the temps have been warming up, though earlier this week we did hit -40 C... Tuesday night I believe. However, with the increasing solar radiation the place seems quite warm. -20 C is a rather average temperature outside, and if I'm doing any manual labor I typically remove my jacket about there. Just adapting I suppose.

Steve Brooks left Summit yesterday. He's now in Kanger, Greenland, slowly making his way back to the states.

We did get an additional 16 ppl at camp yesterday, putting us up to a whopping 48, though 12 or so are leaving tomorrow. Quick visit.

Most things are pretty mellow and cruisy at this point. I did discover that we have a freakin sauna here last night, which is wonderful. Though it was roughly a 170 F difference from inside to outside (roughly 145 F inside when I left, and about -25 F or - 30 F outside).

The 24 hr daylight doesn't seem to be strange any more, more just a fact of life. Walking around camp at 3 am to go to an outhouse with the sun up just seems normal, though it's easy to tell it's still the middle of the morning by the angle. Difficult to take dramatic photos here.

Okay, time to go jump back in the sauna now that all of my daily duties are done.

Electric Powered Vehicles

2007-05-11T20:18:00.000-04:00

Above is a photo from the C-130 while idling at the Summit taxi-way. Notice the black soot on the snow behind the engines. Summit does not have many C-130 flights, averaging about 18 per year. We are very sensitive to local pollution because we travel all this way to study atmospheric and snow chemistry in a remote area, we want to make sure we are not contaminating the air and snow we are trying to study. Other sources of local pollution include the electric power generator, snow mobiles, a bulldozer, and runway groomer. The dominant wind direction is from the South, so to be sure we are sampling clean unpolluted air our measurement site is about 1 km south of the main. To keep our site clean we walk (i.e., do not drive snow mobiles) out to/from Sat Camp and have defined a "clean air sector". The Summit crew avoids driving any tractors or snow mobiles into the clean air sector and the C-130 aircraft are not supposed to fly in this area. In addition the Summit staff refrains from doing major activities (i.e., snow moving, run way grooming) when we occasionally have winds North winds (about 10% of the time). What is amazing is that they minimize activities during North winds all year round, not just when we are here doing an experiment.

The good news is last year NSF purchased an electric 4WD utility vehicle (above towing our scientific equipment) and two electric snow mobiles. The electric snow mobiles did not work so well, but the electric buggy is a hit. It works great around camp, only limitation is that it can only drive on packed snow. In fact the e-buggy sunk into the snow when we drove off the path soon after this photo was taken. It is light weight and we were easily able to pull it back onto the packed snow. In addition, a new and improved snow mobile is arriving here at Summit next week. I'll tell you more about this after it arrives. The other exciting project is that NSF and VECO Polar will be testing out a small (6 kW) wind turbine here at Summit. Next week the last pieces of the windmill will arrive and it will only take a couple of weeks to set up. We hope that in near future Summit Camp will be 100% wind and solar (during the summer) and have diesel generators as an emergency back up.

There is a photo of the high rent side of Summit tent city. Advantages of these sites include a short walk to the outhouse and the Big House. Big House has a shower, kitchen, dining area, and office. The big ball on the roof contains the satellite dish that keeps us in contact with the rest of the world. Summit Camp has wireless internet pretty much everywhere and a voIP phone.

Right now there are 24 hours of light here at Summit which takes some getting used to. But in my opinion the high altitude is a bigger adjustment. Summit is approximately 10,500 ft above sea level (approximately 3 km) so it is difficult to run to dinner when you are late. The last time the Sun set (was just below the horizon) was the day we arrived 07 May 2007. The next time the Sun will touch the horizonl here at Summit is August 7th, 2007.

Friday

2007-05-11T06:24:00.000-04:00

Good morning all! It's Friday morning, and things seem to be moving along somewhat smoothly I suppose. Looks like most of the equipment is up. The mercury Tekran system Steve and I are running is chugging along fine.

Here's a photo I took of our tents 3 days ago. I noted that most of the photos posted for Summit are either of the plane or individuals here. Yes, the black little buildings are outhouses, though there is a heated bathroom inside the Big House as well.
It was -33C when I went to bed last night, so things are rather cozy and everyone seems to be in their own little groove now.

Mercury Studies at Summit

2007-05-09T16:40:00.000-04:00

Dave Lew (NOAA – mercury studies) on arrival at Summit

Steve Brooks (Above; NOAA ATDD and Canaan Valley Institute) and Dave Lew (NOAA ATDD) have the mercury systems up and running at Summit. Measurements will include oxidized species that have been form by gaseous elemental mercury and halogen species. We are operating a Tekran mercury speciation system, and will monitor total mercury in the surface snow and gaseous elemental mercury fluxes out of the snow pack.

Air National Guard LC-130 ski plane using rocket assist to take-off from the high-altitude Summit site May 8^th.

Begin instrument set up

2007-05-08T21:40:00.000-04:00

We spent most of the day ferrying instruments and cylinders from the main camp out to our satellite camp where we will be making the air and snow chemical measurements. Above is a photo of the Satellite camp Weatherport where some scientists will be working on data, others will be analyzing samples. It is a nice warm place with some snacks and hot water so we can make tea or coffee.

Best thing is that it has wireless internet access so we can keep up with email. Here is Jack Dibb from Univ. of New Hampshire working on email and trying to trouble shoot his mist chamber instrument that he is just set up this afternoon.

I am writing this blog entry from the sat camp weatherport while I am calibrating my solar spectroradiometer. This instrument measures the intensity of sunlight in the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. In other words, I measure solar photons that do photochemistry up here (the photo in photochemistry).

Tonight the temperature has dropped to -29 deg C (-20 deg F) and has gotten quite foggy. The forecast calls for temperatures to continue to get colder over the next few days.

Safe arrival at Summit camp

2007-05-07T21:45:00.000-04:00

This morning we left Kangerlussuaq and flew to Summit Camp! The photo above is the inside of the C-130 showing the cargo and are seating arrangements. Today's flight was only about 2 hours and we had a smooth landing with skis on Summit's ice runway. Immediately after arriving we enjoyed our first Summit meal chicken, pasta, philly cheese steak, salad, pasta salad, fries home baked bread, and brownies all which was very good. Following lunch we were briefed by the camp manager and camp paramedic. A fingertip blood oxygen meter was available so that we could check our percent blood oxygen and pulse. Nobody experienced any altitude problems other than mild headaches. We had blood o2 levels between 85 and 92% saturation, which is pretty good.

During the afternoon we moved the majority of the equipment off the pallets and transported it to the Satellite camp using snow mobiles. The photo above shows the crew preparing to off load the C-130. In the afternoon the weather at Summit was cold but sunny. Currently there is 24 hour sunlight at Summit, but this evening it became overcast and the temperature has dropped to -24*F (-30*F with wind chill).

Tonight will be first night sleeping in arctic oven tents. These tents have double walls and are designed to heat up in the sun. Unfortunately it is overcast, so it could be quite cold tonight. Each person has a personal tent (about 7' by 7') that is equipped with a sleeping mat.

Tomorrow we will continue transporting cargo to the Satellite camp and start to set up the instruments. The is also another flight scheduled to come up from Kangerlussuaq that will be carrying the remainder of our scientific equipment.

Above are Katrine (graduate student from UC-Irvine), Bonnie (undergrad at GaTech), and Luke (graduate student from University of New Hampshire) on their way to dinner in the Big House. The Big House is at Summit is on stilts so they can jack it up as the snow accumulates.

One hour flight delay

2007-05-07T08:54:00.000-04:00

This morning we found out that the weather is good at Summit (2 miles visibility) but foggy on other parts of Greenland. So good for us but other scientists may have trouble getting from Kanger to their research sites today. We also heard that our C-130 is having minor mechanical problems, so will have a 1-hour flight delay. This is fine with us as it gives us some extra time to check email and I can post a couple more photos to the blog. The connection here is good for email, but quite slow to upload photos. Sandy Starkweather (the Veco Science Logisitics Manager) was excited as the delay gives her achance to finish her yoga without rushing.

Photo above is one of the C-130 pallets with a mixture of scientific gear and personal baggage that we packed lastnight after dinner. Our C-130 will be loaded up with 3 to 4 of these pallets (this is the smallest of them) which will have pretty much all of our scientific equipment that we will be setting up over the next few days. I would guess that the total weight of all our scientific equipment is on the order of 20,000 lbs. The pallet above weighed 3,100 lbs.

This photo was taken above 9:00 PM last night. It was a cloudy day, but still plenty of light here at night. It is a view of Kangerlussuaq from the ridge overlooking the town. Kanger is a formerl U.S. Air Base known as Søndre Strømfjord.

This is the a photo of the "big fjord". Kangerlussuaq is the Greenlandic word for "big fjord".

Arrived safely in Kangerlussuaq

2007-05-06T21:14:00.000-04:00

Here is a photo of Luke Ziemba, a graduate student from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and Barry Lefer a professor at the University of Houston (UH). We are part of a team of scientists on our way to Summit, Greenland to study air and snow photochemistry. This blog (gshox.blogspot.com) will be written by several of the scientists involved in this experiment. Over the next 6 weeks we hope give you regular updates about the progress of our research and explain more about how it fits into the bigger framwork of Earth Science and Polar research.

Today we finished the first leg of our trip to Summit. We flew in a in a ski equipped C-130 from Scotia, NY to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. There were 25 passengers on the flight flown by the 109th Air National Guard based out of Stratton Air Base.

We stopped here (in Goose Bay, Labrador) at the half-way point for ice cream, coffee, and to re-fuel the plane. After landing in Kangerlussuaq at 1745 we headed over for a quick dinner before repacking the cargo for tomorrows flight.

Tomorrow at 0930 we fly from Kanger to the Summit Ice Camp. More on this tomorrow. Sincerely, Barry and Luke.