After a very early start on Friday 21 March, leaving the Netherlands at 04:30, I made it to Svalbard by 14:00.
Beautiful Svalbard. (S. Hendricks, AWI)
I met Stefan Hendricks from AWI and Sten Schmidl Sobjaerg from DTU Space at Oslo airport and after a quick stop in Tromsø to check passports, we arrived in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, where we were met by good weather and stunning views.
Polar-5 in Svalbard ready to take part in the SMOS-ice campaign. (S. Hendricks, AWI)
AWI’s Polar 5 aircraft was on the runway. Sten started mounting the EMIRAD instrument on the plane. He wanted to make sure that everything was in place, so that we are ready to go as soon as we get the green light.
Installing the Emirad instrument on the Polar-5 aircraft in Svalbard. (S. Hendricks, AWI)
Using inputs from Matthias Drusch, who is at sea on the RV Lance, Stefan computed the first flight track that we are flying on Monday. This was also done with the help of Lars Kaleschke at the University of Hamburg. Lars is the Principal Investigator for the SMOS-ice campaign, and closely monitors the sea-ice forecasts from his office and sends instructions to Matthias and Marius on RV Lance.
ESA’s Tania Casal braving the cold for the SMOS-ice campaign. (S. Hendricks, AWI)
This flight will be partially simultaneously with the helicopter, which carries the EM-bird, from Lance. It will be partially simultaneous because the helicopter can only fly for two hours, whereas we plan to fly the Polar-5 for about five hours. The coincident flights with the helicopter are scheduled to take place on Monday and Tuesday since the weather forecast from Wednesday on, looks grim.
Up north! (S. Hendricks, AWI)
More to come and in the meantime, we keep an eye out for polar bears!
Constantly on the look out for polar bears. (S. Hendricks, AWI)
Post from Tania Casal (ESA), from Svalbard, 23 March 2014.
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