After being at Summit on top of the ice sheet in Greenland where snow accumulates at a rate of 60-65 cm per year, I still wanted to see the edge of the ice sheet. The Russell Glacier is about 17 km from Kangerlussuaq. Some people hike the stretch, some ride bikes, but a few of us signed up with a tour bus and went out for the afternoon. The 15-passenger van was hiked up and had 4-wheel drive…thank heavens. The road was an adventure by itself and when we hit the glacial till, I thought we would sink down and get stuck. But our driver and guide had traveled this road many times and did an excellent job negotiating the path out to the glacier.
ice bobbing down the glacier melted stream
These chunks of ice were bobbing down the stream of glacial melt
Once there we could explore within...
After being at Summit on top of the ice sheet in Greenland where snow accumulates at a rate of 60-65 cm per year, I still wanted to see the edge of the ice sheet. The Russell Glacier is about 17 km from Kangerlussuaq. Some people hike the stretch, some ride bikes, but a few of us signed up with a tour bus and went out for the afternoon. The 15-passenger van was hiked up and had 4-wheel drive…thank heavens. The road was an adventure by itself and when we hit the glacial till, I thought we would sink down and get stuck. But our driver and guide had traveled this road many times and did an excellent job negotiating the path out to the glacier.
ice bobbing down the glacier melted stream
These chunks of ice were bobbing down the stream of glacial melt
Once there we could explore within...
We have a few days in Kangerlussuaq to explore and decided to hike all day around the Lake Ferguson area. Most of the team that worked with the ice cores went trekking for the day. The layers of schist with the garnets were a goal of the hike. But along the way was incredible evidence of glaciology from the numerous ponds and lakes to the smoothed surface of the metamorphic rocks showing the striations etched into the rock as the former ice scoured the valley. To me, every rock was a keeper! Goodness, it was hard not to bring home large samples. So, I took pictures instead.
notice glacial striations on metamorphic rock
glacial striations
garnets
<div class="standalone-image" style="width: 232px"><img src="/files/resize/u35/garnets640-232x175.jpg" alt="garnets in schist...
We have a few days in Kangerlussuaq to explore and decided to hike all day around the Lake Ferguson area. Most of the team that worked with the ice cores went trekking for the day. The layers of schist with the garnets were a goal of the hike. But along the way was incredible evidence of glaciology from the numerous ponds and lakes to the smoothed surface of the metamorphic rocks showing the striations etched into the rock as the former ice scoured the valley. To me, every rock was a keeper! Goodness, it was hard not to bring home large samples. So, I took pictures instead.
notice glacial striations on metamorphic rock
glacial striations
garnets
<div class="standalone-image" style="width: 232px"><img src="/files/resize/u35/garnets640-232x175.jpg" alt="garnets in schist...
It has been a quick three weeks and now it is time to get ready to leave here. The Hercules LC130 will be here tomorrow to pick up the science cargo, personal gear and those who are leaving camp. Others will be coming to take our place.
packing up the drill
Today was a packing up and moving day. At the core drilling and processing site there was the need to bring back equipment and cores, take down the temporary wind breaks, clean out the tents, and dig out the tents from accumulated drifted snow. Then another group came out to help move the three tents for the next group that is going to be working in a nearby study site.
one last core box
It was great to be back at the site and there were notable differences, especially the drifted snow that formed big ridges.
moving...
I have been taking my GPS where ever I go and Summit is no exception. I really do like to see where I am, especially when flying on airplanes. Only once did I have a flight within the US where I could access a GPS unit in the seat in front of me and that was awesome. So I just carry my own GPS with me.
I am going to give waypoints for Summit camp buildings and pictures of those structures in this journal for anyone who would like to use them. Some structures are temporary and I have not included them. Assume that the coordinates are given as lat/long in decimal degrees.
My tent: 72.57950; -38.46229
Jo's tent in tent city
Recreation port: 72.57957; -38.46149
recreation port
Outhouse: 72.57938; -38.4614
one of the outhouses
New food freezer: 72.57929; -38.46071
new food...
I have been dressing in multiple layers from head to toe to keep warm. But on Saturday, June 2, the wind was low (not enough to turn the windmill), the sky was almost cloudless, and air pressure was rising. Our temperature reached 14F...a heat wave! Midmorning I went to my tent to shed clothing and wore jeans with one layer of long underwear and even a t-shirt! Now, if I was at home in Idaho, 14F wouldn't seem like a heat wave. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Greenland. And with the high pressure, I found myself walking without heaving breathing. Then to add another component, was the fresh snow that had fallen during the night. Hard to imagine that it could get much better
Laughing
.
Check out the temperature graph that I have attached.
Jo Dodds
CIMS is an acronym for the Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer. Dave Tanner from Georgia Tech knows this instrument inside out. Ambient air enters the system under a controlled flow, taking samples every 3 seconds. The gases are reacted with Sulfur hexaflorine (SF6-) which form ionized products. These ionized products enter the mass spectrometer and it will detect which compounds are present. The instrument can analyze for size and hence filter for selected compounds. One of the compounds that Dave is hopeful to find is Bromine Oxide, BrO-.
Dave Tanner and a mass spectrometer
Dave Tanner and his mass spectrometer
If you have been reading these journals, you already know that the scientists calibrate their instruments frequently. In this instrument the ambient air is scrubbed...
Luke Ziemba graduated with BS in chemistry, working with organic compounds in soil and water. Now, at UNH he measures aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are liquids or solids suspended in gas. Some aerosols can scatter light and produce a cooling effect (white house effect). Other aerosols can absorb light, such as black carbon.
Luke attaching the filter
Putting aerosol filter in place
At UNH, Luke uses the AMS (aerosol mass spectrometer) to analyze ambient aerosol samples. He likes using this instrument because it gives both physical particle size as well as chemical composition of the particles. But here at Summit, his experiment is looking for total organic carbon and total elemental black carbon. He uses filters to sample air for 48 hours. The flow meter keeps 60 Liters/...
Luke Ziemba graduated with BS in chemistry, working with organic compounds in soil and water. Now, at UNH he measures aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are liquids or solids suspended in gas. Some aerosols can scatter light and produce a cooling effect (white house effect). Other aerosols can absorb light, such as black carbon.
Luke attaching the filter
Putting aerosol filter in place
At UNH, Luke uses the AMS (aerosol mass spectrometer) to analyze ambient aerosol samples. He likes using this instrument because it gives both physical particle size as well as chemical composition of the particles. But here at Summit, his experiment is looking for total organic carbon and total elemental black carbon. He uses filters to sample air for 48 hours. The flow meter keeps 60 Liters/...
Luke Ziemba graduated with BS in chemistry, working with organic compounds in soil and water. Now, at UNH he measures aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are liquids or solids suspended in gas. Some aerosols can scatter light and produce a cooling effect (white house effect). Other aerosols can absorb light, such as black carbon.
Luke attaching the filter
Putting aerosol filter in place
At UNH, Luke uses the AMS (aerosol mass spectrometer) to analyze ambient aerosol samples. He likes using this instrument because it gives both physical particle size as well as chemical composition of the particles. But here at Summit, his experiment is looking for total organic carbon and total elemental black carbon. He uses filters to sample air for 48 hours. The flow meter keeps 60 Liters/...
Camp varies in the number of people who are here. Right now we are a group of 37 but that could swell with the next plane coming in. The cooks certainly need to plan and need to order food way in advance of the fluxes of people. They always need to think ahead. But what else do we always need? Water. Last week, Kathy Young, our camp manager said that we used 1300 gallons of water, approximately 35 gallons per person per week. How much do you use at home? Factoid:5 gallons are flushed through most toilets each time!
Snow is used to make water
Jake Gibbons was loading up snow into the melter today with a front loader. The water gets melted and goes through charcoal and sediment filters. UV filters are also used at various stages before coming out of a water tap. Once the water is...
Bonnie Reichardt, a undergraduate student from Georgia Tech, collects data on nitrogen oxides at Summit. Her work includes taking samples from a homemade Nitrogen Oxide (NO) sampler complete with four flow controllers, two pumps, an ozonizer, a photomultiplier tube (PMT), and cooler. Basically, ozone is made from oxygen gas in the ozonizer and combined with ambient air; the reaction produces oxygen, nitrogen dioxide, and light which is detected in the PMT. The amount of light produced is directly related to the amount of NO in the ambient air. Of course, determining the actual amount of NO in the air requires additional calibration, backgrounding, and analysis. Bonnie pulls the data off of the computer everyday and then uses a data analysis program to run through all the necessary...
Bonnie Reichardt, a undergraduate student from Georgia Tech, collects data on nitrogen oxides at Summit. Her work includes taking samples from a homemade Nitrogen Oxide (NO) sampler complete with four flow controllers, two pumps, an ozonizer, a photomultiplier tube (PMT), and cooler. Basically, ozone is made from oxygen gas in the ozonizer and combined with ambient air; the reaction produces oxygen, nitrogen dioxide, and light which is detected in the PMT. The amount of light produced is directly related to the amount of NO in the ambient air. Of course, determining the actual amount of NO in the air requires additional calibration, backgrounding, and analysis. Bonnie pulls the data off of the computer everyday and then uses a data analysis program to run through all the necessary...
Jochen Stutz, a professor at UCLA, has brought his telescope to Summit to analyze gases. In a simplistic way it first looks like a Newtonian telescope with a primary mirror at the end and a secondary mirror near the eyepiece. But then you look closer and it has a Xenon arc lamp that sends a parallel light beam 2 km and 5 km to a corner cube reflector made of quartz glass. When that beam of light is reflected back to the telescope, it is picked up by a quartz fiber which transfers the light to a spectrometer with a diffraction grating.
Notice the bright pinpoint light. That is the reflector.
Reflector 2 km away
The spectrometer is measuring wavelengths from 250-550 nanometers (nm), which is the range going from the UV (invisible) to visible green wavelengths. The instrument is...
Jochen Stutz, a professor at UCLA, has brought his telescope to Summit to analyze gases. In a simplistic way it first looks like a Newtonian telescope with a primary mirror at the end and a secondary mirror near the eyepiece. But then you look closer and it has a Xenon arc lamp that sends a parallel light beam 2 km and 5 km to a corner cube reflector made of quartz glass. When that beam of light is reflected back to the telescope, it is picked up by a quartz fiber which transfers the light to a spectrometer with a diffraction grating.
Notice the bright pinpoint light. That is the reflector.
Reflector 2 km away
The spectrometer is measuring wavelengths from 250-550 nanometers (nm), which is the range going from the UV (invisible) to visible green wavelengths. The instrument is...
Katrine Gorham, a graduate student at UC Irvine, is at Summit, Greenland for six weeks conducting air sampling from a height of 1.5 meters above the surface. She samples the air every four hours (6 times a day), filling 2L canisters. There are 24 stainless steel canisters in a box and they look like they are all ‘snaked’ together. Can you figure out how many canisters Katrine will be taking back to Irvine?
all samples need to have data recorded
Snakes of canisters
Once back in Irvine, gas chromatography will be used to analyze 70 gases that were collected. The gases are determined by using a standard concentration of the gas that will be analyzed. Then the standard is compared to the sample to determine the concentration of the gas. The seventy hydrocarbons will be plotted as ratios...
Katrine Gorham, a graduate student at UC Irvine, is at Summit, Greenland for six weeks conducting air sampling from a height of 1.5 meters above the surface. She samples the air every four hours (6 times a day), filling 2L canisters. There are 24 stainless steel canisters in a box and they look like they are all ‘snaked’ together. Can you figure out how many canisters Katrine will be taking back to Irvine?
all samples need to have data recorded
Snakes of canisters
Once back in Irvine, gas chromatography will be used to analyze 70 gases that were collected. The gases are determined by using a standard concentration of the gas that will be analyzed. Then the standard is compared to the sample to determine the concentration of the gas. The seventy hydrocarbons will be plotted as ratios...
Katrine Gorham, a graduate student from University of California at Irvine, has a busy day today. The winds are blowing approx 20 kts this morning (9 m/s) and her snow chamber experiment is set up outside. She has collected 1300 ml of surface snow in a quartz cylinder and attached that container to a tank with a mixture of hydrocarbons (butanes and butenes). The quartz cylinder is covered with foil to block out light. The hydrocarbons will flow through the snow filling the pores for 20 minutes at a rate of 200ml/minute.
Flush snow with hydrocarbons
Then Katrine went back out in the blowing snow to uncover the quartz and expose it to light (‘bake’) for the next 30 minutes. This baking time allows for chemical reactions to occur between the hydrocarbons and the gases in the snow. During...
The staff always seems to be tackling big projects to improve Summit camp. One of the projects is to dismantle the DISC (deep ice sheet coring) building. Last summer the drill was being tested here at Summit and now it will be going to Antarctica to drill an ice core all the way to bedrock at the WAIS divide (Western Antarctica Ice Sheet). Access the following website for more information on this project: http://waisdivide.unh.edu/. The DISC building has an underground area in the snow that is perfect for storing our boxes of ice cores. I can only imagine all the activity that must have happened while they were testing the drill here.
DISC building still being used
This is also Memorial Day weekend and the staff has two days off. Yeah for the hard working staff! When I came into...
Yesterday, before starting the Snowbird experiment, all five fiber optics needed to be calibrated. Learning how to calibrate the fiber optics made me realize that I need to be more aware of my own lab equipment, even our triple beam balances. The calibration stand allowed for several light sources to be used to calibrate the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Both the software and the calibration equipment were designed by scientists on this project. One of the light sources was a mercury vapor lamp from which three separate wavelengths are emitted is used to calibrate the color (wavelength) of light being measured.
calibration tool
Each fiber optic casing is a different length to be inserted into the snow: 9.1 cm, 11.2 cm, 16.1 cm, 21.2 cm, 36.4 cm. These fiber optics will help...
Yesterday, before starting the Snowbird experiment, all five fiber optics needed to be calibrated. Learning how to calibrate the fiber optics made me realize that I need to be more aware of my own lab equipment, even our triple beam balances. The calibration stand allowed for several light sources to be used to calibrate the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Both the software and the calibration equipment were designed by scientists on this project. One of the light sources was a mercury vapor lamp from which three separate wavelengths are emitted is used to calibrate the color (wavelength) of light being measured.
calibration tool
Each fiber optic casing is a different length to be inserted into the snow: 9.1 cm, 11.2 cm, 16.1 cm, 21.2 cm, 36.4 cm. These fiber optics will help...
Yesterday, before starting the Snowbird experiment, all five fiber optics needed to be calibrated. Learning how to calibrate the fiber optics made me realize that I need to be more aware of my own lab equipment, even our triple beam balances. The calibration stand allowed for several light sources to be used to calibrate the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. Both the software and the calibration equipment were designed by scientists on this project. One of the light sources was a mercury vapor lamp from which three separate wavelengths are emitted is used to calibrate the color (wavelength) of light being measured.
calibration tool
Each fiber optic casing is a different length to be inserted into the snow: 9.1 cm, 11.2 cm, 16.1 cm, 21.2 cm, 36.4 cm. These fiber optics will help...
As we arrived on May 15 at Summit, Greenland, one of the activities going on was a big deep snow pit being dug near the Big House. Blocks of snow would be thrown up and out, caught by another person, who threw it to someone else who then stacked the blocks. Well, the process was even more interesting when I found out that the crew was building a new food freezer for camp. The old freezer was built in 2003 but was no longer structurally sound. Day by day the pit was enlarged, then the outside doorway and stairs were added. The pit was covered up so no one would fall into it but work continued inside. Shelves were added for the frozen food and the roof was supported. Snow will come and cover over the roof and all that will be seen is the outside stair enclosure.
So today was...
As we arrived on May 15 at Summit, Greenland, one of the activities going on was a big deep snow pit being dug near the Big House. Blocks of snow would be thrown up and out, caught by another person, who threw it to someone else who then stacked the blocks. Well, the process was even more interesting when I found out that the crew was building a new food freezer for camp. The old freezer was built in 2003 but was no longer structurally sound. Day by day the pit was enlarged, then the outside doorway and stairs were added. The pit was covered up so no one would fall into it but work continued inside. Shelves were added for the frozen food and the roof was supported. Snow will come and cover over the roof and all that will be seen is the outside stair enclosure.
So today was...
