The Longest Day of the Year?

Happy Summer Solstice! Back home in NH this meant the longest day of the year with sunset not until ~9pm. Here at Summit, however, there's nothing remarkable about the solstice. Afterall, you can't make a 24-hour day any longer. What it probably does mean though is that the sun is a bit higher in the sky at night than usual. This would be difficult to measure though without burning out my retinas. Still, for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere that are not above the Arctic Circle, enjoy the extra sunlight!

Speaking of 24 hour daylight, here's a picture I took at 11pm during Saturday's overnight sampling:


The Arctic sure is pretty!

I do have some sad news today: two of my geese-y friends were found dead at camp today. This bums me out; I really thought they'd make it! RIP geese, RIP. Maybe the one that wasn't found did find it's way to the coast. Here's hopin'.

On a lighter, more positive note, I went for my first Summit run today. Conditions were perfect by Summit standards (~18C (~0F), sunny, no wind) and I had some time before dinner so I figured why not? This was the first run I've done since my time in Kanger when I picked up the sled dog puppy so I planned to go slow. And slow I went, though it sure didn't feel like it; thanks to the altitude (just above 10,000ft here) and the snow, it felt like I was running a race! I did expect running to be harder up here but I thought the ~5 miles I've been walking a day would've helped. Maybe the next run will be easier. One bonus of today's hard run though is that I'm sure I'll sleep well tonight, even if the sun's a little higher in the Arctic sky!

Snow Geese

One of the nice things about Summit is the lack of wildlife. Not that I don't enjoy all the sights and sounds a forest or field has to offer, but not having to worry about bugs, killer animals, or poisonous plants sure is nice. Especially since I'm sleeping outside every night.

While there are no native species to Summit, we will, on occasion, get animal visitors. Most of these visitors are of the avian variety, though there has been rumor of an Arctic fox or two that wandered on to camp in the past. These animals' Summit vacations are never intentional since Summit is so far from any food source; to get here, they had to either got lost or, in the case of the birds, were blown in from the more animal-friendly coast. Sadly, since Summit is so far from the coast (~500mi), without food and with such low temperatures, Summit will probably be the resting place for these animals. Some exceptions exist, however. For instance, because of their size, larger birds, have a good chance to make it back to the coast. Us human Summit dwellers have also tried to help out. Earlier this week some Summit folks caught a small bird, boxed it, and brought it with them to Kanger on the C-130 that was here to take a bunch of passages out of camp.

There have been a few little birds at camp since I arrived which is both lovely and heartbreaking. It is nice to hear their little chirps and see them flitter about after a week listening and looking at a silent and lifeless landscape. But knowing they have days to live is depressing; I feel guilty enjoying their music but not doing anything to help them. The past couple days, however, I've enjoyed the company of some big bird visitors guilt-free; snow geese (native to Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia; they do migrate south in the winter though) have stopped at our field site for the past two days. It's likely these birds will make it out of Summit (though I suppose it's always possible they won't) so I've decided to enjoy their companionship while it lasts. Here's a few pictures.

From yesterday:

Hunkering down, trying to stay warm in yesterday's 20+ knot (~25mph) winds.

From today:


Hanging out by one of the instruments. Apparently, snow geese love science just like me!

We're in the middle of a 24 hr sampling period where we're sampling for the albedo project every 2hrs until tomorrow at 11am. The picture above is actually at the site we're doing the sampling. Fortunately, I only have to take one snow sample (different kind than the OC/EC) every 2hrs so it'll be a pretty easy day. It will be a late one though; hope I can keep my eyes open!

The Routine: Snow OC/EC

So when I said I would be busy, I had no idea just how busy. Turns out I'm really busy; mostly in the morning but also on and off during the day.

Fortunately I have fallen into a routine which makes getting through the day a little easier. Writing out the entire routine would probably make for one lengthy post (not that my posts are brief), so I figured I break up my daily tasks into different posts.

With each project requiring daily (sometimes more frequent) snow samples, nearly 80% of my daily tasks involve digging in the snow. What keeps it interesting (and also potentially confusing!) is that the snow samples differ quite a bit. Each of the four snow sample sets have a different purpose and thus come with different sampling procedures and materials.

Perhaps the least technical of the snow samples are a set for the albedo project which is examining the influence of black (or elemental) carbon on snow albedo. Albedo describes how much incoming solar radiation is reflected back to space. A value of 1 then means that all the radiation that reached Earth's surface is reflected back which a value of 0 indicates all that incoming radiation is absorbed. Pure, white snow has a very high albedo in the visible wavelength range (the light we see) which means it reflects much of the light that hits it. Oppositely, dark surfaces, like pavement or the ocean, have a very low albedo. As you may guess, this reflection/absorption of light is closely linked temperature; those absorbing surfaces with low albedo tend to cause warming of the surface while bright, reflective surfaces with high albedos tend to cool. A good way to think about this is t-shirt color. On a hot summer day, you will be hotter wearing a black shirt than a white one. Of course, there are other factors that determine just how warm a surface gets that are independent of albedo (e.g., specific heat) but there is certainly a very strong correlation between albedo and temperature.

Recent observations have shown that the Arctic is warming at a faster rate than any other place on the globe (a cool animation showing this can be found here: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003800/a003817/2010updatewithdates_30fps.m4v ... Warmer colors indicate the listed year was warmer than the 1951-1980 average for a given region, cooler colors were cooler years). Why this is happening, however, remains unclear. One thought is that the influx and deposition of dark particles such as black carbon (a.k.a., soot) to the Arctic from the populated regions to the Arctic's south is decreasing the albedo. Since the Arctic is naturally so bright, even the slightest decrease would increase the amount of heat trapped at the surface which in turn would increase warming. The albedo project aims to understand this phenomenon.

Considering the importance of the snow (and the soot potentially deposited on it), it is no surprise that the albedo project requires a number of snow samples. It is also not surprising that one of the snow sample sets is for OC/EC (organic and elemental (black) carbon) given the interest in the influence of black carbon on snow. What is surprising is how simple these measurements are.

As many of you know, my primary area of research is atmospheric chemistry. For some of you this conjures up an image of me running around like a maniac with a jar in hand, trying to "catch" air so I can study it. While this isn't quite the case for my atmospheric work (though it's not far off!), it is 100% true for these OC/EC samples. Every day, I shove 10 glass jars into the snow to collect possibly the most important component of the albedo project. Here are some action shots of me doing just that (photos courtesy of Nina).



What are those things are your arms, Chelsea? Why those are insemination gloves! I wear them for the OC/EC samples (as well as for most of the other albedo snow samples) to avoid contaminating the samples. Humans, after all, are high in OC!

After collection, the ten jars chock full of snow are reduced to this (thanks Nina for these photos too!):


A quartz fiber filter. As the OC/EC instrument uses this type of filter to quantify OC and EC, filtering the samples through it is the only way to measure these species. Samples are filtered using this contraption:


Sample is poured in the top and sucked through the filter (sitting on top of the black rubber stopper) using a pump (not in picture; it's on the floor). One filter is used for all ten samples to ensure there is a detectable amount of both OC and EC. This makes me (and perhaps you) feel a bit better about the color of the above filter; in order to be that brown, several liters of water had to be filters. Still though, the filter color does suggest Greenland snow may not be as clean as you'd think! It also means we may get some interesting results with respect to black carbon and snow albedo after all; always the goal in science!

Greenland: Year Two

And she's back! I arrived in Greenland on Tuesday and Summit on Thursday via a C-130 for another 3-week Arctic science stint. It's been a bit hectic (hence why this is my first post!) between sightseeing in Kanger, some pretty rough altitude sickness, and learning all the things I will have to do to keep this year's two projects going but hopefully I'll find a routine soon. Considering I only have 18 more days up here, I better get a hang of things ASAP!

Unlike last year, this time around I had a full day in Kangerlussuaq (the town we fly into) which meant more time for exploring. My first adventure followed a surprisingly delicious dinner from a local Thai food place (surprising considering we were rather far from Thailand... or people in general for that matter). It was just a short stroll to a look out point with Nina, a Rhode Island physics teacher who's helping out on one of our project this year, but the result was amazing. I forgot how stunning Kanger was. How many places are there where a five minute walk get you this view?:

The town itself isn't that easy on the eyes (see picture below) but the surrounding landscape is incredible.
The beauty of coastal Greenland was taken to a whole new level with a trip to the ice edge (literally the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, the river you see above is actually outflow from the ice sheet)on Wednesday afternoon. Myself and eight other scientists from all over crammed in to a rented pick up truck and trekked the 20 miles out to quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever seen. It was a long and bumpy ride along a dirt road but totally worth it. Unfortunately, I have no pictures to show. While I did take some, I don't have the camera's cord to put them on my computer (the other pictures were taken on a memory card). How cruel of me to talk about this gorgeoous place and offer no visual! I'll promise to post some when I get back because wow... just wow.

I DO however, have pictures of another fun happening from Thursday. Prior to the ice edge trip, I decided to take a little run down to the sled dog kennels. There was talk of puppies and, as many of you know, I drop everything for puppies. I also did want to run so, why not kill two birds with one stone? So I get down there and there are dogs everywhere. I mean everywhere. I nearly died I was so excited! Unfortunately, most of them were fenced and/or tied up so I couldn't get to most of them. The picture below is just one of several kennels.

Not all dogs were kenneled though. When I first arrived at the kennel, I was greeted by an extremely friendly white dog. She was the cutest! Just as I was about to turn around to head back to town, I saw another furry ball of adorable come bolting at me. This one though, was a puppy. She. Was. So. Cute. I just wanted to take her home! Well, she must have thought the same. As I turned to leave (despite really not wanting to; I probably could have stayed there for my entire Greenland trip), she followed me! The muffin ran with me the entire 1+ back to town. As much as I loved it (and how could I not!?), it was a bit awkward; I had no idea how to get her back. No one else seemed to know either. I must've asked atleast 3 locals as well as several people at the building we were staying and no one had any suggestions. One actually suggested I take her back to the states! If only that weren't frowned upon and illegal. Eventually a local girl came by and recognized the pup (her name: Fiona) as her neighbor's and took her back to her proper owner. While I was happy to have the whole dilemma settled, I was sad to see my new Kanger friend go. Here's a couple pictures of Fiona. Maybe I'll stop down and see here again on my way south!


I left Fiona and the sites of Kanger for Summit on Thursday. Summit hasn't changed much; still flat and white as far as the eye can see, which means it's still bizarre but in that really cool way. I had a bit of a rough time with the altitude yesterday but felt much better today. Hopefully it only get's better from here! After today's lengthy overview of my daily Summit tasks this year, sounds like I'll be busy busy busy. As I mentioned before, I'm helping out with two projects this year which has atleast doubled my workload. Fortunately, I do like being busy so I'm not dreading the next 3ish weeks too much. Another added bonus: I'll have my hands in even more rockin' science! The one downfall is that I may not be able to blog as often as I (and perhaps you) would like but I'll do my best!

Well it's about time for me to retire to my Arctic Oven tent. Hopefully I'll sleep a bit better having already spent one night in the light, cold, and at altitude!

Flying High

One week. One WHOLE week since my last post. I can't believe you, my faithful readers, have allowed such a thing to occur!

A busy week is to blame for my e-absence. In the past seven days, we did our last 48-hr sample, our last snow pit, another mist chamber calibration, shut down the instruments, and packed up the tomato and Bally building. That's right: packed up. We're done! Our last sample was taken Monday evening. It's a bit bittersweet, though, I will admit, more sweet than bitter. This has been an amazing experience and I've met some great people in my 3-week stint on two miles of ice but I'm ready to see a night sky, greenery, and some warmer temps. Oh and I suppose family and friends as well.

Tomorrow marks my last day on the ice sheet. Well, hopefully. There's always a high probability that the plane won't come due to bad weather, which, let's face it, is not uncommon up here in the Arctic. If the plane does come (finger tightly crossed!), myself and six others will be delivered back down to sea-level, to Kangerlussuaq. The flight to Kanger is only an hour and half which is great. What's not great is that our flight tomorrow is what they refer to as a cold deck. As we will be traveling with the snow samples my colleagues and I collected as well as all the ice cores (35 boxes of ~6 1 meter cores), they have to keep the flight deck cold. To do this, they use the outside air, which at altitude, will be a chilly minus twenty-something celsius (below zero fahrenheit). Layers will be key! I also plan to bring my sleeping bag with me.

Once again, my time in Kanger will be limited; my flight back to the states is the following morning likely at 8 or 9. I'm not terribly dissapointed to breeze through Kanger though it would be nice to have some time to buy some gifts and/or head to the ice edge. Perhaps one or the other will be possible once we get in. IF we get in. Always have to keep that in mind!

While I may be leaving science will continue. Just yesterday, we had a batch of 12 new people arrive to Summit ready to either start projects or to take over projects already in action. Two projects that will continue long after I leave Summit are the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) project and Radiosonde launches. Unlike the other ground-based projects I've talked about here, these two are airborne.

The radiosonde (pronounced radio-sond) launches are actually associated with the project examining Arctic cloud structure that I mentioned briefly a while back. The sonde's purpose is to get vertical profiles of temperature and humidity, two variables that are very useful in determining how favorable the atmosphere is for storm, cloud, and fog formation (i.e., atmospheric stability). Radiosondes are launched at the same time, twice a day around the world yielding a synchronous and global look at the atmosphere above.

The radiosonde itself (shown being assembled by Brad below) is a very small box off of which hang temperature and humidity probes. A small water-activated battery powers the instrument.

This tiny box is attached to an extremely large balloon which carries the instrument tens of thousands of kilometers up into the stratosphere. At this point the balloon pops and falls to the surface, landing somewhere in the great white open. Brad was kind enough to allow me to take a video of the radiosonde launch:

If you listen closely (and the sound uploads!) you can here wish the sonde off. While the process wasn't terribly interesting the data that come out of it, are extremely useful.

Though the UAV project doesn't involve balloons, it does call up another type of toy: a model airplane. Ok, it's a REEEEEALLY big model airplane (4 meter-13 feet-wing span) but still, same principle. The planes are built and operated by a group out of Norway. These scientists are interested in surface albedo and what a better way to see how much solar radiation is reflecting off the surface than to measure it from above? On the plane are housed two spectrometers that do just that as shown in the picture below.


Unfortunately, I was too late to the UAV site to catch pictures of the plane in action hence the pictures of the disassembled aircraft. The launch is pretty rad though and takes place on this "catapult" shown below.


I don't know about you, but when I think catapult I think medieval warfare and giant wooden weapon that fling balls of burning hay (or whatever), not so much a sleek metal ramp. But, hey I'm not an engineer. Compressed air pushes the airplane into the air and away it goes; looking at the radiation being reflected on the snowy surface below.

I really hope tomorrow I will be looking at Summit from above. Ok, so it wouldn't be the worse thing to be stranded up here (did I mention the food is outrageously good?) but I'm more than ok with heading South. Here's hopin' for a good flying day!

Core Values

As you probably have realized by now, Summit Camp, despite it's remoteness, is the site of many different types of scientific research. Atmospheric chemistry, surface albedo (reflectance), clouds... all topics that need much work. However, Summit wasn't always home to such diverse research. In it's early years, Summit station was used solely for ice core research.

Every morning, afternoon, and evening, when I'm on my to and from Sat Camp, I pass a standing reminder of Summit's core past: the drill site for the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2).


Ok. So maybe it just looks like an unimpressive rusty pipe covered in tarps. But to a science geek such as myself, it. Is. AWESOME!

Drilling of the GISP2 core took place over a period of 3-4 years, ending in 1993. The end product was a 3,053m long tube of ice who's bottom was over 100,000 years old. In each layer was preserved isotopes and ions that held information about past conditions (for example, core variations in oxygen isotopes can tell us about past variation in temperature) as well as bubbles containing air of the ancient atmosphere. This air allowed for the creation a timeline of the concentration of several atmospheric gases, included greenhouse gases such as CO2, that extended millenia into the past. And to think all this extremely valuable and cool information came from a hole I walk by several times a day. Amazing! FYI: The pipe that's sticking up is actually the "ciba", a fiberglass casing that extends ~90m into the fern (not quite packed (dense) enough to be ice but not loose enough to be snow) that's in place to keep the drilling fluid from leaching out in the looser upper layers of the snow.

Drilling still goes on today and is in fact occurring at Summit while I'm up here. Today I caught some shots of one of the core projects going on. The site is located just 300 ft Southeast of the tomato:

This core will only extend about 90m below surface so it won't include glacial ice. The core is for a scientist at the Desert Research Institute who will be examining the core for all sorts of chemistry: trace metals, black carbon, ions; the gamut of species.

The core is brought up in 1m chunks, measured and bagged. A very simple process if everything is working smoothly and it's not terribly cold out. Today both failed for the drillers today; on top of it being ~-15degC (10degF) with 18kn (~17mph) winds, the drill cable fell off the wheel calling for some quick action so as to not lose the drill. Fortunately by the time I got out there, the drill was fixed, though it was still chilly and windy.

Here's some shots I snagged of the process:

Terry waiting for the drill


Marie grabbing the core

The team pushing out the core

Zach measuring the core in a clean suit.


Zach looking cool with the packed core

And then they repeat that, 89 times. It may not sound or look like a lot but this core will end up taking them 3-4 days to get. That's a lot of time outside in the cold!

Speaking of cold, it's a balmy 13degF, with 22kn (~20mph) and thus a -7degF windchill right now. It's going to be a noisy and chilly night for sleeping that's for sure!

The Instrument

I can't believe it's been three days since my last post! Time is certainly flying up here; we only have 8ish days left of sampling and I only have 10 1/2 more days at Summit. That means that I have been at Summit for just about 11 days.

I'm not quite sure how I avoided talking about the instrument we're running up for those 11 days but I managed to do so somehow. Let's remedy that tonight. I have mentioned the mist chamber ion chromatograph (MC-IC) in passing but haven't really gone over how it works.

The MC-IC is housed in the Bally building along with a few instruments from Georgia Tech. Here's a view outside and inside. Our MC-IC is the grey box in the bottom left of the inside picture. This grey casing is responsible for the MC-IC (uncreative) nickname: grey box.




The MC-IC is responsible for the collection and analysis of atmospheric samples, more specifically, atmospheric soluble (dissolves easily in water) acidic gases. For this particular project, we're interested in measurement of nitric acid (HNO3) and nitrous acid (HONO) as these species are more closely related to the snow photochemistry we're trying to understand. We're also interested in measuring the halogen, bromine (Br), as we hypothesize it may be a large player in the mismatch between modeled processes (those we determine using equations and formulas we know from theory) in the snow and processes that are measured. Fortunately, the MC-IC measures all three species (as well as a couple of others) simultaneously making it a very useful instrument.

Air is drawn in through the inlet shown below by a vacuum pump housed in the Bally building.



The inlet is capped with a filter (contained in the yellow-ish filter holder at the end of the tube) to keep particles and snow from contaminating our measurements of the gases. The long tub leads into the Bally building where it connects to the instrument. This part of the inlet is heated so that 1) the sample stays warm and 2) substances like HNO3 that like to stick to surfaces, do not.

Once inside both the building and the instrument, the air is sucked into two glass chambers filled with water ultimately creating a mist. Below is a shot of the mist chambers in action.


Capping the mist chambers are two head filters held in place by white filter holders (see photo below). These prevent the mist from entering the vacuum lines (the two black tubes connected to the filter holders) and the pump. These have to be changed daily to avoid leaks in the filters.

Samples are misted for 27 minutes--a much longer sampling time than for a dirty site, such as Houston, TX (where I was with the mist chamber, there, misting was only for 5 minutes). Why? Concentrations of our species of interest are much lower at a clean place like Summit so we have to sample for a longer period of time to get concentrations in a range that is measurable by IC.

Once the 27 minutes is up, samples are drawn from the mist chambers into the syringes in the picture above (glass tubes towards the bottom). From there, the two samples take different paths. Samples on the left take the "traditional" MC-IC route and are injected into the IC. With the help of a carrier solution (called "eluent"), ions are separated by charge and detected in the IC. The product is a curve of signal, shaped like a bell, who's area underneath gives information about concentration of our favorite acidic gases. The other syringe associated with the right mist chamber does not inject sample into the IC but rather into a brown bottle houses at the bottom of the instrument. These are samples that will be examined for the isotopes of oxygen and nitrogen. What is an isotope you may wonder? Think of oxygen (or nitrogen) like ice cream. Just like chocolate and vanilla are different flavors of ice cream, isotopes are different "flavors" of an element. Isotopes can tell us a whole lot about the source of the soluble gases we're interested in and thus are very useful. These samples have yet to be analyzed and won't be until after we get back. This is Dorothy's project. I'm curious to see the results!

And that's pretty much it. When it's behaving, which fortunately it has been (knock on wood!), it's a very easy instrument to run. The biggest production with it is a recalibration every time new eluent is made (~every 5 days) and even that isn't terribly complex. Tedious maybe, but not hard. My kind of instrument!

On a completely different note, Happy Flag Day! I must admit I would have had absolutely no idea that today is flag day were it not for Ken, the Camp Manager, announcing the holiday at the 8am daily meeting. What a horrible American I am. In honor of the day, the camp flags were flyin' high in the front of the big house.


On the left is the Danish flag, on the right, the Greenlandic flag, and the middle, well if you don't know it, you're a worse American than me!