August 31, 2006

We are at 79°N and 126°E. We are moving East and there is no ice. Last night when we were at almost 82°N we had our second ice station and it was my first time on the ice. We were lucky with the good weather - it was warm enough with plenty of light and we could walk around and look at all activities on ice. It was morning local time. But I would like to tell you about my feelings during the third ice station when we walked around with the scientists to see what they are doing on August 30 in the evening. It is impossible to describe my feelings in words. It was only snow and sky, nothing else for many kilometers around and thousands of meters of water underneath. Clouds above, white and grey - it was snowing and everything was disappearing behind the snow. It was only us there, a small boat in the ice and tiny people around it. Even those close to me looked disproportionately small on the infinite white snow and ice background. The view was hypnotizing to me. Problems of our everyday life, which I thought were difficult, seem no longer too important to me. Human life is short when you think of the eternity of the Arctic. I thought it would be scary to think about it but I wasn’t. Time has stopped for me and it’s a very different world.

~ Natasha Petrosyan (St. Petersburg School #612, St. Petersburg, Russia)

Bruce drilling to install an ice buoy (DAMOCLES).

August 31, 2006: 81°30’N 133°50’E at 19:00 GMT

And again we were working all night long. It took us about 8 hours to set the instruments and the buoy at the second ice station (81°57’N 140°25’E). Day or night - it’s indefinite here. You just don’t feel the time while you are not falling asleep. At 19:00 GMT today we finished the 3rd ice station. We completed it quickly in only 4 hours. Now the engines are starting and the huge icebreaker is jiggling. We are moving SW. The I/B Kapitan Dranitsyn is operating now under the DAMOCLES/Tara project. The Tara equipment is still in Tiksi but we hope to meet the equipment yacht in 2 days.

Weather today is: cloudy, -5 to -7°C with snow, the wind is westerly at 5-7 m/s, atmospheric pressure is decreasing at 1002 mb. The ice cover is 100%. To tell the truth, the weather is outside - inside it’s warm and comfortable.

We’re finding laziness in all the muscles - people are moving slowly and rarely. Everyone is attending lectures, doing computer-work, reading books and taking coffee-breaks. But when we stop, everyone wants to go on the ice! Jump, dance, walk, to do anything to be outside. These are happy moments for some and the “ice age” for those who stay on the ice for the whole time. Hot tea and a sauna after being in the cold wind and you feel safe and renewed. The American teachers organized the “Arctic ping-pong competition” onboard - the results will be published soon!

~ Elena Maksimovich (Moscow School #1541, Moscow, Russia)

August 30, 2006: Tiksi, Russia

Due to the late equipment delivery to Vladivostok and a lot of time spent for customs clearance we moved the start date for our cruise from August 10th to August 30th. Today we will go by air charter from Vladivostok to Tiksi. Tomorrow, we will load our equipment onboard the vessel ‘BT-0012’ for our work in the Lena Delta-Laptev Sea system.

This will be the first time that we are working on linking marine and terrestrial measurements of methane and carbon dioxide to study their fluxes across the air-water interfaces. We will also study the transport and fate of terrestrial organic carbon (dissolved and particulate carbon) from rivers and eroded coastal ice complexes. Those data are essential to establish a model for carbon cycling in the Arctic land-shelf system.

We expect our field research will continue until late September. Instead of doing marine and riverine (Lena delta) measurements we will be conducting a helicopter survey to measure air methane concentrations above the Siberian shelf with a focus on fault zones, where we expect to see the decay of sub sea-gas hydrates and the release of methane from gas hydrates into the atmosphere. This data will be used to test the geological model of the Laptev Sea.

~ Dr. Igor Semiletov and Dr. Natalia Shakovich (IARC)

August 29, 2006: 80°44’N 140°22’E at 19:00 GMT

We are on the way to our second ice station. We should arrive at approximately at 1:00 am GMT on August 30th. The first one ended successfully, but took more time than expected. The coordinates for the first ice station were: 80°2’N and 140°3’E. The whole research team was working on the ice. We deployed the DAMOCLES buoy, the European IPY effort lead by Jean-Claude Gascard. Many teachers were helping on the ice - taking snow samples, helping with fixing the instruments, while the others were watching for polar bears from the bridge of the ‘Kapitan Dranitsyn’. Fortunately, no bears were sighted. It was early morning here (local time) when we stopped and the sun was rising slowly. The ice surface was very bright and shining like a northern ice desert. It was pretty windy and –4°C.

Now it is cloudy with the atmospheric pressure decreasing fast (1009 mb at 19:00 GMT), as was forecasted yesterday. The temperature is -5°C with a southerly wind speed of 8 m/s. We are moving northward. According to the forecast it will be colder soon. The ice cover is 100 %.

Onboard everything is fine. We had tasty pizza for dinner. Fruits, vegetables, milk products, meat – all of our meals are perfect! Lectures, seminars and discussions continue for the K-12 Teachers.

~ Elena Maksimovich (Moscow School #1541, Moscow, Russia)

Aerial photo of melting first year ice,
taken on August 21st, at approximatly 75°N 152°W.

August 29, 2006: 76°N 150°W

This morning we had expected to be very busy all day. We had reached the region of the planned deployment of Woods Hole’s first ice tethered profiler buoy. Rick Krishfield scouted out the ice ahead of us by helicopter, to see if the large ice floes we saw in RADARSAT imagery would be suitable for an ice station. We have found that the floe was rotton through, riddled with thaw holes. Not at all suitable for walking on, and not a piece of ice we would bet on surviving the winter. We are hoping to deploy three batches of buoys on the ice. Each deployment site needs to have a reasonably good chance of surviving the winter. So we are looking for pieces of ice that are older multi-year floes, intact, with some ridging and not rotten from melt. Having reassessed the ice conditions, and compared to the RADARSAT Synthetic Aperture RADAR images, we have determined that we will not see suitable ice until nearer 78°N.

We are continuing along the 150°W line, and will proceed with mooring recovery and deployments, and CTD stations as planned. Ice stations are postponed for a day or so.

This melt is rather intriguing. We are in a region of mostly first year ice, that is only 10 to 50 centimetres thick. In the south-west of this region, we have observed the melting out of the ice. It looks like the ice at 76°N is not much longer for this world either! It is surprising to not find any older ice floes this far north. It appears any old ice left the area last winter.

~ Dr. Jennifer Hutchings (IARC)

August 29, 2006: 76°10’N 150°W

Good Morning!
It is just before breakfast on August 29th. Today is an exciting day, we are finally entering the multi-year pack ice. This is the ice in the Northern reaches of the Beaufort Sea that has survived many summers and remains intact as pack ice. We are still in first year ice, but RADARSAT images provided to the ship by the Canadian Ice Service show that we are homing in on some multi-year. Today we should have our first ice station. Rick, Kris and Will from WHOI will be deploying an Ice Tethered Profiler buoy. The IARC group will be surveying ice surface conditions and ice thickness in the vicinity. Then we move into an intense 4 days of mooring recoveries, mooring deployments and ice stations. We expect to deploy our buoys in 2-3 days.

~ Dr. Jennifer Hutchings (IARC)

August 28, 2006: 80°50’N 139°54’E at 18 GMT

Today we successfully redeployed a mooring. We started at 15 GMT, on August 27th. It took us about 7 hours to catch the buoys and lift it the mooring onboard. The wind was very strong, and it was cold and snowing with lots of ice. After the instruments were changed, the mooring was redeployed. CTD/Rosette measurements were carried out during this time as well.

At the K-12 school, Volodya Alexeev is teaching us GrADS. The Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS) is an interactive desktop tool that is used for easy access, manipulation, and visualization of earth science data. Peter and Erica have shown us their meteorological equipment.

Today it is cloudy with occasional snow, the temperature is –6°C. The wind is changing, but is mainly southern at 10 m/s. The atmospheric pressure was constant at about 1016 mb. According to the weather forecast a polar cyclone is moving towards us. We expect stronger wind gusts and more snow. Sea ice concentration is about 60-80%.

Today the first ice landing is planned. We had a general meeting where we discussed safety on the ice and the activities planned. All of the teachers were divided into groups so they will have a chance to help the researchers on ice. Tatiana Alexeeva (Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, Russia), Bruce Elder (DAMOCLES) and Martin Doble (DAMOCLES) are responsible for these on Ice investigations.

~ Elena Maksimovich (Moscow School #1541, Moscow, Russia)

Ekaterina taking water samples

August 27, 2006: 81°08’N 132°54’E at 16:00 GMT

Right now, 16 GMT, we are starting the redeployment of a mooring near the Lomonosov Ridge, sponsored by Laval University. During the day we made 6 stations: one CTD/Rosette measurement and 5 XCTD records. Hopefully on Tuesday we’ll carry out Tara field operations. Today our researchers gave a presentation on the approximate schedule of their work for teachers. The teachers will begin to be involved in all scientific activity. These are: Ice measurements and observations, collecting the meteorological data and its further analysis, water sampling, biochemical analysis, numerical modeling and even self video projects!

We have also entered the ice area. There is about 20-40% ice concentration. The temperature is -1-4°C, Wind direction is N, 10 m/s. We are expecting wind speed increase and snow after midnight.

Today we took measurements at 4 oceanographic stations. At 1 am GMT we came to the mooring station and successfully deployed the mooring and carried out CTD/Rosette measurements. We did not manage to recover the instruments from the previous mooring (Alfred-Wegener Institute Mooring #2) however. The acoustic release was responding and we had received a signal for the mooring releasing but the mooring did not appear on the sea surface. The mooring line may have been broken and instruments taken by an iceberg. At 1, 5, 14 and 21 GMT CTD/Rosette measurements were taken and also 5 XCTD measurements were taken along the way.

Lectures for teachers were all day long.

There are low clouds and it is warm outside.

~ Elena Maksimovich (Moscow School #1541 Moscow, Russia)

See more photos at: http://www.naturalsciences.org./education/arctic/index.html

Erica with meteorological equipment (left); Erica assembling equipment (right)

Mooring deployment

August 26, 2006

We reached the first mooring station this morning shortly after 6 am. We are situated at about 80°N 142°E, so we have 24 hours of daylight. Since we are actually east of Moscow time, which is ship operating time, we watch the sun come up before we go to sleep. Temperatures are within a few degrees of 0° Celsius, but it’s not that cold on deck unless the wind is blowing, which is most of the time. The sea was calm this morning but it was extremely foggy, so sighting the buoys would be very difficult.

Once we arrived at the mooring station, communications with the transponder on the mooring allowed the scientific team to locate its position. The next step is to trigger the acoustic release, which sits just above the anchor, to allow the mooring floats to bring it to the surface. All participants were encouraged to be on the deck at this point to help sight the floats. We searched for over an hour, with expedition team members scattered throughout the decks of the icebreaker, but the fog was thick and visibility was less than 100 meters. It seemed that finding it would be one part chance and three parts diligence.

Rosette

In the meantime the CTD/rosette was launched (photo left). This sampling equipment measures conductivity (a measure of salinity), temperature and depth, while collecting 5-liter water samples at various depths. After searching for the mooring buoys for well over an hour, the team concluded that it was not retrievable and probably had not surfaced. Disappointed, the scientific team decided to deploy the new mooring and continue to the next station. The new mooring was launched (see photo above right) and Icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn was again underway. Later in the day, routine water samples were taken with the CTD/rosette as we sailed to the next station, scheduled for early Sunday.

The final Research Team Meeting was held in the morning, and the K-12 expedition team continued with lectures in the afternoon. These meetings, which have occurred daily since departing Kirkenes, have given the scientific team the opportunity to report their objectives for NABOS Cruise 2006, along with prior years cruise results and background information pertaining to their work. They have provided educational opportunities for the K-12 Expedition members, who are experiencing field oceanography studies for the first time.

~ Katie Turner (Anchorage East High School – Alaska)