Tag Archives: Greenland

IceSAR campaign heads north

From Klaus Scipal (ESA), Greenland, 7 June

As part of the IceSAR 2012 campaign, Jørgen Dall and Anders Kusk from DTU and I headed up north yesterday to fly the Polaris system over the K-transect on Russell Glacier in southwest Greenland. This is near Kangerlussuaq, 67° N, just inside the Arctic Circle.

Assembling and installing Polaris

Assembling and installing Polaris

The campaign supports the evaluation of the Biomass candidate Earth Explorer mission. It may sound a little strange that a mission designed to measure forests properties in the Tropics will also be used to map glaciers and ice sheets.

This is thanks to the unique Biomass instrument and mission concept, which is based on using a very long wavelength (P-band) quad pol SAR, designed to acquire interferometric measurements of Earth’s surface.

Heading north to Akureyri

IceSAR 2012 will provide, for the first time, evidence that these observations can provide precious information on ice velocity and ice subsurface characteristics. We are going to do this by taking measurements with the airborne Polaris P-band system, which is configured in such a way that it is similar to the Biomass concept.

This trip is particularly special because we are not only flying over Greenland, but also decided to stopover in Iceland to join forces with our colleagues from NASA to map parts of the Hofjökull and Langjökull ice caps with the Polaris system.

Getting to Iceland is easy. From Amsterdam, it takes three hours by plane to Reykjavik. In Reykjavik, we changed plane to travel on to Akureyri on the north coast. Akureyri is the second largest city in Iceland and the base of Norland Air, which provides the planes for most of our campaigns far north.

Cloudy conditions in Iceland for this week

In Iceland, we coordinate our flights with the NASA UAVSAR team, who are carrying out a larger campaign to map the Hofjökull and Langjökull ice caps. The UAVSAR team will map the entire Hofjökull and Langjökull ice caps multiple times in the 12-day campaign. Since we only have one day in Iceland and a swath width 4–6 times smaller than that of the UAVSAR, our Polaris system can only cover a very small part of the ice caps. However, the P-band data acquired by Polaris will be an invaluable dataset to better understand features seen in the UAVSAR data.

A day in Iceland

A day in Iceland

Mark Simons from NASA expects a higher sensitivity to changes of the dielectric constants with P-band. This data together with UAVSARs L-band data could provide a better understanding of a recently observed change in the dielectric properties of the ice sheets during the melt season. Mark is also interested in Polaris sounder data for comparison.

Today, we are spending  all our time to assemble the instruments and install them on the plane. As we have to start at 04:00  on 8June everything has to be ready and tested this afternoon. The tight schedule and just one day in Iceland does not allow time for any problems. We will also meet with the pilots and discuss the flight schedules.

Just two days ago, Mark told us of  an unusual surface mudflow over one of the glaciers that indicates that there is a pulse of water coming up to the surface from the bed. Apparently, nobody has seen anything like this before. It could mean that the ice is particularly thin there. Having Polaris sounding measurements over this spot could be fascinating so we’ll try to adapt our flight lines accordingly.

Over the Greenland ice cap to Alert

Malcolm (ESA), Alert, 2 April

On Friday I was picked-up by the DTU team at Qaanaaq airport with their workhorse Twin Otter plane. It was a beautiful sunny day and we put it to good use. Instead of flying to Alert along the coasts of Greenland and Canada, we headed directly up onto the Greenland ice cap then turned north and flew along a CryoSat track acquired on the previous day.

The transition from the glacier and onto the Greenland ice cap (left part of the photo). The plane is flying at about 300 m.

The transition from sea level to the ice cap itself is spectacular, often consisting of a succession of deeply crevassed glacier fronts. The ice cap itself is much less so, especially after a few hours of flying since, apart from some patterns owing to snow drift, it is mostly featureless.

Still, it inspires awe in terms of its sheer size and extent, and it is easy to get a mental picture of the mind-boggling amount of water locked up in the ice below.

The Canadian military base Alert at the northern trip of Ellesmere island.

We finally made it to the military base of Alert, Canada on Friday evening where the teams have now spent two days analysing the data acquired so far and making plans for today (Monday).

Rene Forsberg from DTU making a GPS position measurement beneath a corner reflector placed at the end of the runway on Sunday.

Three, or maybe four, planes filled with scientific sensors to measure ice conditions below will head to a meeting point slightly to the east of the Alert base and then collectively head north as CryoSat crosses high above them. Conditions are cold (–27°C) and  clear, which is perfect. More to follow - but the plane is waiting !

The temperature this morning as we prepare for the joint ESA and NASA flights.

New CryoSat ice campaign kicks-off up north

From Malcolm (ESA), Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, 28 March

On-route to the high Arctic

After months of preparation and  hundreds or even maybe even a thousand emails, the 2012 CryoSat Validation Experiment otherwise known as ‘CryoVEx 2012’ finally kicks-off this week across the Arctic.

Together with NASA colleagues and participating scientists from the USA, Canada and Europe, some remarkable airborne flights are planned later this week and early the week after.

One of the highlights could come as early as tomorrow when the CryoSat satellite will pass over the Arctic Ocean from the north at about 7 km per second and pass almost directly over the Canadian military base Alert located at the northern tip of Ellesmere island. This provides an ideal occasion to fly directly under the satellite and collect valuable data from the onboard instruments on the real ice-conditions and ice thickness beneath both plane and satellite.

For the moment, however, I’m in Greenland still travelling to the campaign location. Reaching the isolated Alert base is itself a challenge and typically takes two to three days or more, albeit through some interesting and spectacular landscapes.

Landing in the main port of entry into Greenland – Kangerlussuaq – I was greeted appropriately by a snow storm as you can see in the picture of the ferry plane between Europe and Greenland. If all goes well I’ll be in Alert tonight or tomorrow evening. In the Arctic, however, you never know as weather can change quickly. Let’s see!

NASA IceBridge flies Greenland EGIG line for CryoSat

From Michael (NASA), Greenland, 26 April

Today was our last opportunity to fly a science mission from Kangerlussuaq and the weather was favourable for Geikie 01, our last remaining high priority mission plan.

Geikie Plateau (credits: M. Studinger)

We expected some clouds over the interior of the ice sheet and down in the fjords and had to abort our flight up Nansen Fjord and Christian Gletscher because of a 3000 ft clouds base and 13 000 ft terrain.

Other than that, it was a perfect day. As the photo above shows, the razor sharp flood basalts of the Geikie Plateau are spectacular.

After we had finished the glacier runs around the Geikie Plateau, we went up Daugaard Jensen Glacier and continued on to the interior of the ice sheet back to Kangerlussuaq.

Daugaard Jensen Glacier calving front (credits: M. Studinger)

We flew along the EGIG (l’Expedition Glaciologique Internationale au Groenland) traverse route in support of ESA’s CryoSat campaign.

NASA IceBridge flight plan for 26 April (credits: M. Studinger)

The CryoSat-Validation and Calibration Experiment along the EGIG route is designed to provide ground truth data over the ice sheet for the airborne ASIRAS radar and CryoSat's SIRAL radar.

Geikie Plateau (credits: M. Studinger)

We will use IceBridge radar and laser altimeter measurements to link ground and satellite measurements to better quantify radar penetration issues over the various zones from the edge to the interior of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Post adapted from Michael Studinger's NASA IceBridge flight report (F27/26 April)