bringing the beard back home

Apr. 19th
Washington

Back in D.C. for a few days ... and then off for a Mediterranean cruise.  I know, I know.  Kind of a ridiculous month.  Just a few photos for closure.

Last night of photography on ice.  What is that in the sky?

Air Greenland, I love you just for your beverages.

Sea ice near Iceland

The Copenhagian cappuccino was not as good as I remembered -- it was even better.

sweet, sweet D.C. spring.

And finally, a beard in the office.  For a few days anyway.

field trip

Apr. 15
Kangerlussuaq

Lowest temperature of trip:  -22 F
Lowest high of trip:  1 F
Highest temp of trip:  18 F

Auroras seen:  5

      are you all clicking on the photos?  at least when it moves you?  because this one, for example, looks even better when you can see those stars.

This has been one of the hardest few weeks of my life, which makes me wonder how honest this blog has been.  Did that come through?  Should I have written something that was more raw, that didn't care if a the haters got access to it?  A couple google searches doesn't bring it up.  Unless I search for 'aquateer' in which case it comes in at #7.  I guess that's what you get when you use a made-up word.

This is my last post from Greenland, but I hope to keep this going.  My first concept of an aquateer blog or website was something concerning water, a topic I profess at least to care deeply about.  I thought I could alternate between informative calls to action on privatization of water rights, aesthetically stirring pictures of water in all its forms, and quirky or humorous water-related topics.  Not too preachy, not too frivolous.  But then here I was flying over the second-largest piece of frozen water on Earth, and I thought, well, why not start now, whether I know what I'm doing or not.

Speaking of that ice cap, I got to actually stand on it yesterday.  It's maybe a 90-minute drive from town (or I hear more when the snow melts to reveal a rutted, washboarded road.) And on the way we saw a fantastic mr. arctic fox posing like a wolf (I wish I'd raised a fist in respect) and on the way back we saw a reindeer.  I could show you the photos, but the reindeer is like 19 pixels big, and the Arctic fox photo needs that Hollywood "enhance" plug-in they're always using in the movies but I haven't bought yet.  I did see a hippo though:

 It was pretty darn cool hiking around on the ice sheet.  It was still covered by snow, which made it easier.  And then we went to the Russell Glacier calving front and could actually hear it popping and creaking.  And we could walk over and pick up glassy cubes of ice that had recently fallen off, ranging in size from a mango to a breadbox to an acme safe.

Russell Glacier terminus

I was kind of hoping this would calve while we were there.  And by kind of, I meant, bring it on!  I'm ready to make a dash for safety!

The last couple days, Kathryn and I chose not to fly, for a variety of reasons.  I think it was a good call; we didn't miss much in terms of scenery, and with the much-appreciated help of our peeps back at Goddard, we did get another video out.  (it was on the NASA website too, but I like to get those youtube hits up.)

And despite a sleep deficit, I got out one more time to snap some auroras.  I could do this every night for ever and ever.  There was supposed to be a significant storm, and as you can see above, they were quite pretty for a while, but by midnight or so they'd faded.  But I still had fun out there with the cosmos.  Billions of snowflakes around, billions of stars above.  It was not easy, and I was far from perfect, but I'm very glad I went to Greenland.

SE Mop-up

Apr. 11
Kanger

Auroras seen:  4
Flight hours:  24
Days left in Greenland:  3

Someday I'll be ready to tell the story of today's flight.  Just not today.

For now, a few pictures.

Last night's aurora over the KISS building where we stay, and a half moon.

It's getting noticeably lighter here.  This was taken around 10:30 -- still a little blue in the sky.

Almost everything white you see in this picture is not snow on the ground or clouds, but snow whipped up by the wind.

Some gnarly peaks.

Notice the haziness of the glacier ice just below us in this photo -- that's due to the exhaust trail of the engine.  Just one of the challenges while shooting on the P-3.

Sweet sweet sea ice

head clearing slightly. clouds, not so much.

Apr. 9th
Kanger

Morning windchill:  -31 F
Flight hours:  18.2
Number of kleenex used:  honestly, a new PR.  It was unreal.
Sonicare:  down to one bar
Beard status: Actual!  (I even had to do some maintenance today.  That's when it's official.)


I decided not to fly this morning.  I'm desperately trying to beat a savage cold, for one thing, and a flight where they just go to a magnetically-benign part of the ocean and fly around to test instruments sounded boring.  But I'll let Operation IceBridge Project Scientist Michael Studinger tell you what I missed:

"This morning we woke up to the good news that a government shutdown has been averted and we began our usual aircraft warm-up routine at 5:15 am LT. The forecast was hopeless for all science missions from Kangerlussuaq and we decided to do a radar calibration and magnetic compensation flight which we cannot combine with a normal survey flight because of the extreme roll maneuvers. After flying on straight lines with a 15º limit on bank angles (almost) everyone enjoyed the 60 and 90º roll maneuvers at FL190 over water to determine the radiation pattern of the MCoRDS antenna array. During these maneuvers “the ship” rapidly loses altitude and drops down like a rock with 1G. The view from the cockpit is priceless.

The weather forecast for tomorrow looks poor and the airfield is closed on Sundays in Kangerlussuaq. Thus, tomorrow will be a hard down day for crew rest."

In other business, it was brought to my attention today that I haven't even described what Operation IceBridge is in any of my posts.  (One would think I might have started with that.)  Soon, I'll give it my best shot, but for now I'll just say they fly around in aircraft measuring land and sea ice with a bunch of lasers and things

But if you want to read what a real professional blogger has to say on IceBridge, check out Kathryn's excellent entries on the official OIB blog.  We've got some of our timelapses there too.

So before I get some sleep, here are some shots of yesterday's absolutely stunning flight.  The first shot is from Dr. Studinger himself, who can often be found shooting through the only window on the plane with 'optical glass,' meaning it's not quite as smudged and scratched as the rest of them.

That's a hard shot to follow, so I'll cleanse the palate with this minimalistic selection:

And move out to sea with these two:

And finally, to bed.

smooth skies ... but shutdown looms

Apr. 7
Kanger

Flight hours:  10
Latitude achieved:  76 degrees North (new PR!)
Favorite words on my milk carton:  'assigiiaaqqissaarneqarsimasuuvoq' and 'ullullu'
(Which might mean: 'homogenized' and 'use')


Had a great flight today.  Just fabulous.  After skipping yesterday's makeup flight to Jakobshaven (I know, I know) in order to finish a video and try and avert a total shutdown of my nasal passages, I got on board a much more scenic flight today where we transected a bunch of glaciers over and over.  Like this:

 A view from the cockpit:

And another:

And one more:

Felt pretty good all flight and was congratulating myself on skipping the less interesting one yesterday in order to gain strength for today's, but then arrived back at the base and just crashed.  Head stuffy, nose in pain, wits dulled, keep feeling like I'm falling, or in a plane that hit a low pressure zone.  Bought a vial of inky brown medicine the kid behind the counter said was for colds.  "Are you cold or [sniff sniff]?" he asked.  I took a swig on the way out the door and it was so nasty I literally wasn't sure for a few minutes it was meant for internal use. 

Feeling slightly better now, but weighing my physiological shutdown against the potential that tomorrow's flight could be the last if the government shuts down.  All civil servants and closely-affiliated crew are to cease work and head home if that happens.  Given the amount of time, planning, and money, not to mention scientific-data-set hopes and dreams, that went into getting the 28 of us all up here, it's a disheartening possibility.  They attempted to have us declared 'essential personnel' but in vain.  Our project lead though had encouraging words, to the effect that the mission will resume when the government gets back in gear, and the scope of our mission always fluctuates due to factors out of our control.  If we only get 80% of our goal this year, we'll get 120% the next.

So the plan is to fly tomorrow, use Saturday as a packing day, take advantage of the fact that Sunday the airport is closed, and if they still haven't reached a consensus back in the District by Monday, twenty-four members of the crew pile into the available seats on the P-3 and fly back to Virginia, while the remaining four of us are left to return home on our commercial flights (for me next Thursday), or rebook them, or see if the New York Air National Guard 109th Airlift Wing will squeeze us on a flight back to Schenectady.  Stay tuned.

Ok, four random crew shots to cheer us up:

up in the air ... but not for long

Apr. 5
Kangerlussuaq

Temperature:  -4 F
Auroras seen:  3
Flight hours:  2
BeardCon:  Delta

So the day of our first flight was finally here.  After a sobering safety lecture from a seasoned member of the flight crew, I took a rear seat next to one of the Airborne Topographic Mapper specialists, put in my earplugs, and strapped in to the safety harness.

Our takeoff was assertive and smooth and within minutes we were over the second-largest ice sheet in the world.  You can't see it here, but my favorite moment might have been when the snow-and-rocky terrain gave way to a creamy crusty tongue of slowly flowing ice cap.

But not long after, the ATM guy turned his head and over the drone of the aircraft said he didn't think things were going according to plan.  "Yeah," he said.  "Usually the pilots don't come back and check out the engines like that themselves.  I'll ask what's up in a little bit."  He was told through his headphones that we'd lost one of our four engines, probably due to the unusually cold night the plane had had to sit through on the runway.

But I really didn't need to be concerned, he said.  We would probably just lose some fuel and go back to land.  Which is what we did, and you can see our flight path varied a bit from the plan I posted yesterday.

We were eventually allowed to get up, walk around the cabin and take pictures.  It was a disappointing moment, because after just ferrying the plane back to Virginia for repairs the other day, the team was very excited to get back to the science mission.

So I guess the moral of the story is be careful what you complain about.  Maybe boring flights are not so bad after all.  Now, I have to say that I am actually going to be less nervous getting back on that aircraft than I was the first time when I had a few pre-flight jitters.  I have such respect for the flight crew, who unlike most commercial pilots, know this plane intimately.  They fly it and maintain it all year long.  And the same seasoned crew member who gave the safety lecture also said he'd rather fly in this model of aircraft, in this particular aircraft, and with this particular crew than any other on earth.  And that's the way I'm feeling too.

I'm also feeling scruffier than I have in a long time.  And loving it!

so very close

Apr. 4Kanger

So tomorrow is our first flight!  The plane arrived back from Wallops and we're ready to head out.  And we're heading to the most famousest of all Greenland glaciers, the mighty, the swiftly-retreating, and the well-visualized Jakobshaven Glacier!  [Insert Kermit voice here -- yaaayayay!]  I'm so excited.

And then I find out, we won't be doing a flight like this over the actual outlet glacier itself:

(actually this is the Rink Glacier, but one gets the idea)

Instead we'll be spending 8.4 hours flying over the catchment of the glacier -- that large, and I'm imagining, featureless and flat, expanse of ice that one day will drain out of the glacier.  We're not going to take the 15 minute detour to complete one of the most stunning flightpaths on Earth.  (or so I imagine.)  Yay science.

Anyway, here's the flight plan for tomorrow:

And here is what I understand to be the composite flight plan for all five potential flights in this region, together with a Rignot velocity map underneath.  I imagine the green areas are ice that's slowly slinking its way toward the coast, while the blue areas are in freefall.  [note to self: keep learning about ice.]

So I am excited to finally get to fly tomorrow, and maybe it will be best if we ease into it a bit.  Save the pretty stuff for when I figure out how to shoot out of the airplane.  With correct exposure, decent image stability, and without throwing up.  Hmph.  I forgot about that last part.

we don't need no stinking intervalometer

Apr. 2

Kanger

Operation IceBeard status:  Scruffy Level Alpha

I've heard complaint of too much yapping, too few aurora pics.  So let's get right into the visuals.

The Arctic Sun in full circle view, by Kathryn

Jfro on a well-frozen lake

The south-side Thai restaurant, convenience store, and bar.

Our block.  We're the red-faced storage bunker.

Bar 57, or Nordlys

And the sign that lets you know it's a bar

 

So a new bar opened up this year and is the buzz of the research community.  And I quite like it.  Local guy rocking the synth in two languages.  Darts.  Regular pool and Danish Five Pin, or Keglebilliard.  (Would love to introduce it to you gamers out there.  Narrowly lost my first game.)  Evidently Nordlys means "the Northern Lights" which is quite fitting because two nights in a row we've walked out and seen something like this:

Now, I came to Greenland thinking that the Canon 7D could shoot timelapses.  It can, but it has no intervalometer.  You have to either have it hooked up to a laptop -- not very handy for -3 Fahrenheit conditions -- or buy an external timelapse module thingy.  I'm thinking of having one shipped.  OR, you can assemble a team of volunteers and take turns snapping 30-sec exposures (at f4, ISO 1600) until the battery dies.  Stay tuned for the whole video ...

so very tired

April 1
Kangerlussuaq, Greenland

The Air Greenland flight was a dream.  Huge overhead bins.  Toblerone.  Video screen.  When conscious, watched this "Taste of Greenland" cooking show where the Aussie host cooked stream-tickled trout with wild thyme -- all locally harvested -- and iceberg lettuce in the very presence of icebergs.  I slept and watched and wondered again why it was necessary to fly to Europe only to return to practically America.

My first look at Greenland was of ice and rock and rock and ice right at eye level through the window.  My second and third and tenth views were much the same.  When we landed in Kangerlussuaq, it looked something like this:

Science writer Kathryn and I, together with Claudio, a journalist from Brazil, rolled our bags about a half mile over the frozen road toward our hotel/NSF support lodge -- someone had evidently forgotten how far the walk was -- until a kind soul picked us up and saved us half the journey.

Spent the rest of the day settling in, getting to know the Operation IceBridge team, buying groceries, eating at the Thai restaurant, and desperately trying to stay awake.  A short nap gave me the energy to venture out to the local bar.  [More on that tomorrow.]  The trip was necessary, as our lodging was critically short of ice of all things, forcing one tenant to resort to drinking two 'snow and whiskeys.'

The climax of the whole day -- seeing my first Greenlandic aurora.  A light green color, pulsing over a good third of the sky.  Worth the trip right there.

[Thanks to all my readers for your kind thoughts!  By 'all my readers' I evidently mean my mom, my wife, and my aunt, which are easily an esteemed enough group to keep me writing.]

the best pictures have hippos in them

March 31st, 2011
Copenhagen, Denmark

Beard Units:  2
Weight:  about the same as when I left
Auroras seen:  shamon, I haven't even seen the sky.

Such a few days of ups and downs.  Of energy and depletion.  If you want to work the numbers just right, I've worked 35 hours in the last few days and slept 10.

But I'm in Copenhagen and I'm not alone.

And despite dank rains that make me think a trip to the cryosphere might not be so bad, I am loving this city.  Bikes everywhere, coffee shops, bakeries, and people who come up and offer assistance just because we look dazed and perplexed.

On the down side, stores close vindictively early.   Stores that sell things critical to one's workflow like backup hard drives and power adapters.  And as I'm desperately trying to take a nap, I can see huge chunks of concrete falling past my hotel window as construction workers yell, "Ja!" and then, when they crash to the ground, "scheisse!" and then laugh as they anticipate their next payload.

Tomorrow off to Greenland.

Goals:

1.  Learn a brand new camera
2.  Don't throw up on aircraft
3.  Try not to eat any pinnipeds