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Month: April 2008

More Helicopter Adventures

More Helicopter Adventures

Here’s another batch of photos of our helicopter exploits. We’re doing much the same kind of thing every day – still every landing site is different! Unlike doing CTDs from a ship.

It was a couple of degrees cooler today and a little bit more windy too, which made it feel a lot cooler. I am using bare hands when collecting water samples to try to avoid contaminating them, so they get pretty cold if it’s windy – have to be very careful to keep my gloves dry too. I have 3 pairs though and just move on to the next ones when one pair gets damp. We were collecting samples for the biologists today too, better not to get too much fluff from our gloves in those – takes them ages to work out what it is under the microscope šŸ˜‰

The photo below shows some cloud/fog over open leads in the ice. Heat flux in action! The ice insulates the warm ocean from the atmosphere, but where there are leads and the sea water is exposed it steams in huge clouds. If there is no wind, it’s incredible, the clouds are almost frightening, they are so black and have almost vertical sides around the edges of the leads – don’t really have a good photo of that yet.

When we got back to the ship today we found that the big (1km by 1km) multi-year ice floe it was moored to had broken in two. Not very good news for the sea ice scientists who want to study it! Tonight we’re on the move again looking for another big one that will be tough enough to last a few days while it is studied. ie: lots of breaking through really thick ice.

Right, well I should probably either do some more data processing or sleep. Or possibly eat waffles. There’s a waffle-iron and a big pot of batter put out in the mess every Wednesday night – nice idea eh? I didn’t have any last week, so I might go and make up for it tonight!

Misty Norwich

Misty Norwich

Hello!

I’ve been in Norwich for a week now, quite nice to be back and spend time with friends!

The things you do for a free breakfast… today if you cycled to university you got a free breakfast, but supply was limited and they started giving them out at 7:45. We were so keen that we actually got there at 7:45!! I don’t think I’ve ever been at uni that early šŸ˜‰ It was nice though, a beautiful morning, we ate our breakfast outside. We saw a hot air balloon coming over the university as well…

I’ve been working very hard – sometimes I’m at uni for over 12 hours which is very unlike me šŸ˜‰ But I am nearing the end of my funding faster than the end of my research… I’m trying to work as hard as I can so I can finish as soon as possible. I’m so ready to find a “real” job sometimes, I even went to an open day about becoming a primary school teacher. Scary stuff…

Anyway, when I finally left university today, I noticed that there was a very spectacular case of ground fog. This type of fog is called radiation fog occurring on very clear, still days at sunset. The layer of fog was really thin, less than a metre in places! I tried to take some photos, I had to use my backpack as a tripod so I was a bit limited but I am still happy with the result! You can see people in some of the photos, they are taken near the student accommodation and I was not the only one fascinated by the fog.

Paul also sent me more photos and stories from the Arctic. The internet connection on the ship is very slow, so I’ll put those online for him. Coming soon!

Update from the Arctic

Update from the Arctic

They finally dished out computer passwords! It is very slow though, and hard to get to the computer in the evenings. All is well in the ice and everything on board is quite relaxed, so I think it is going to be a nice cruise. The journey over here was horrible though! The ship has no keel and rolls to about 40 degrees!

A couple of photos of the midnight sun…

We are now in thick ice with big pressure ridges, and the ship pretty much can’t get any further, so they are going to moor to a big ice floe and start the 5-day drift station.

I saw my first Polar bear! :- ). Quite a long way away – but managed to get some photographic evidence of it. I think there are quite a few around, as I also saw some foot-prints in an iceflow that the ship broke throught. I wish I got a photo of that!

Today I got in the helicopter at about 9.30 and don’t think we landed back on the ship until about 19:30. Lots of flying around to find leads for the ship through the ice, and also two landings for CTD’s.

We had to spend some time following polar bear foot prints in one area to check the bear was not hiding near! Then we actually landed on his trail, so I got to put my boot in one of his footprints – very yeti like! :-). There’s millions of the beasties, but don’t worry – I’m fairly sure I’m not the slowest runner in the group!…

These pictures are from mooring the ship to an ice flow this evening.

I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow, so that’s all my news for now!