The last few days have been rather busy. After reaching 80N and 150W we headed south to 78N and then east. It was light ice conditions on our steam east (mostly this winters ice) until we hit the multi-year pack at roughly 76.5N 137W. It is fascinating to watch the formation of the new ice pack in the central Beaufort. A vast sheet of ice has forms, that is cracked open with leads running north-west for many miles. The leads made travel east into the heavier ice pack relatively easy. In the last 3 days we had two ice stations, where we made ice thickness and snow transects and took many cores to study the physical and chemical properties of the ice. After that we started on our return south. Right now we are at 75N, 140W. A storm is forecast, so the next few days could be rather active for the ice. Though we will probably not be active on the ice!

~Jenny Hutchings

We reached the northern most point on our journey, 80N and 155W. Here we were in continuous ice, though only about 2/10 of the ice had survived this summer. We were able to get off the ship and sample some of the multi-year ice, as WHOI were recovering and deploying an ice tethered profiler.

~Jenny Hutchings

The pictures are of
1) the ice floe we worked on, taken from the helicopter as we approached the site
2) Alice Orlich and Christina Brown running the corer
3) The WHOI group (led by Rick Krishfield, who is holding the cable) and helicopter pilot recovering an ice tethered pofiler.

Yesterday we traversed the ‘monkey tail’ just clipping it’s end, heading north from Barrow up 150W. Along the way we experienced a full portfolio of freeze up conditions. On the 27th, steaming westward along the multi-year ice edge there was a swell and pancake ice formation. When we return to the ice edge yesterday it was flat calm and sheets of ice were forming. We entered the tail, to find low coverage of multi-year ice, and plenty of nilas, young grey ice and thin first year ice. The hotch-potch of young ice types telling the story of several days of freezing conditions. We exited the monkey tail, and the wind had kicked up a little, causing pancake formation at the ice edge. I hope these photos convey how beautiful the ice pack was during our traverse.

Right now there is no ice in sight. We are in a hole where first year ice has completely melted out this summer. So time for me to catch up with data entry (yawn!).

Incidentally, can anyone can identify the bird that blew into our ship during the winds two days ago?

~Jenny Hutchings

We are heading into the ice pack in the South-Eastern Beaufort, into a part of the pack that my assistant Alice Orlich has affectionately named ‘The Monkey Tail’. Alice got to join an ice reconnaissance helicopter flight today. It is pretty interesting ice, with small floes of thick (>1.5m) multi-year and thin (~50cm) first year ice. The floes are very uniform in size. From the 2000m altitude you can almost imagine one is looking at a giant unmade jigsaw puzzle. It is really obvious that one could imagine modelling the sea ice around us right now as a granular material. It looks quite different from the central ice pack. Winter has begun, 10cm ice formed over night between the older ice floes, and a sprinkling of snow earlier this morning.

~Jenny Hutchings

SUCCESFUL recovery of the CABOS mooring today!!

Visit the NABOS/CABOS website: http://nabos.iarc.uaf.edu

We left Kugluktuk early this morning, and are now heading to the Beaufort Sea. No ice encountered yet, so I have time to write a little. However there is also not much to report! We had, thankfully, an uneventful trip to reach the ship, and we are settling in to the new ship routine. We found all our gear, and every thing is in working order. So now all we have to do is await the ice.

We did not have enough time in Kugluktuk to visit the village. We did spend a few minutes picking lingonberries by the airport. They were rather good, having had a touch of frost already. The fall colours are magnificent, though perhaps you can not see this from the distant view in the photograph of Kugluktuk I took from the ship. If you want to follow what life is like on the Louis S. St. Laurent and the variety of activities happening on the ship check out the WHOI blog at http://www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/dispatch2009/index2009.html . I will try to keep you informed of the ice conditions we encounter on our journey. If you have any questions about this, please do send them my way via the IARC web-master. (webmaster@iarc.uaf.edu)

~Jenny Hutchings

Alice and I are off to the Beaufort Sea again. We leave Fairbanks tonight, and should be on the Louis S. St. Laurent by Thursday. 2 days of travel just to meet the boat. I am looking forward to the cruise. It is a month later than previous years, so we will be in the Beaufort at the time when the minimum ice extent is reached and the ocean starts to freeze up again. As you can see from the planned cruise track, we are hoping to get quite far north. I wonder how our progress with be.

The Cryosphere Today website (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/) gives some insight into what the current ice conditions are like. Looking at the satellite passive microwave map of ice concentration from yesterday, we see the ice extent in the Beaufort right now is similar to the record lows of the previous two years. One difference from these last two years is that the edge is quite diffuse, due to wind forced divergence of the ice pack during August. So we expect to see more areas with unconsolidated ice this year compared to previous years.

This should be a packed cruise. We only have 4 weeks, of which about 2 will probably be in the ice pack. We will be collecting visual and in-situ measurements at ice stations to validate passive microwave ice concentration products. I will try to keep you posted on what the ice conditions are like during the cruise. I am also interested in how the distribution of ice types has changed in the Beaufort Sea since the 1990s. We have found that ice moves into the Northern Beaufort from the Chukchi Sea during most winters. Since the turn of the centary the Chukchi Sea has become a seasonal ice zone, so this ice entering the Beaufort is first year ice. This has dramatic impacts on the ice recirculation in the Beaufort Gyre. Essentially this ice is becoming younger. Our observations will be compared against buoy drift models of ice age . Is the Beaufort Sea going to recover it’s old ice pack? Based on what we see from the buoy and satellite data this year, it looks like this has not started to happen yet.

~Jenny Hutchings

The NABOS 2009 cruise concluded on September 8 in Kirkenes, Norway. Check out the map on the previous post to see their path. Re-deployment of CABOS moorings is still to come.

More information about the NABOS/CABOS projects is available at: http://nabos.iarc.uaf.edu

photo by A.Talanov

View NABOS 2009 in a larger map

Day 24
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Final meeting and social gathering

Today we saw the first signs of civilization with a ship on the horizon around 6:45 PM tonight. I also spotted lots of orange jellyfish type creatures in the water as I wandered around on deck earlier in the day. I’ll have to look up what they actually are when I reconnect with the world again in a couple of days.

We had our final meeting to go over all that was accomplished during the expedition including the most CTD casts ever, 2 ITP mooring deployments, about 5 normal mooring deployments including the first ever in the St. Anna trench. After dinner the crew on the bridge spotted a pack of dolphins swimming off the starboard side of the ship so we all ran outside to enjoy the show. That was pretty amazing! I didn’t even know that dolphins were found this far north.

Our last gathering was held shortly after the dolphin spotting. We all gathered to laugh about stories from the past 3 weeks at sea, dance, and even listen to some Russian music on the guitar performed by a crew member. It has been an amazing expedition with connections and friendships made from all over the world.

~Becki Legatt