Switchyard Report #1, May 5, 2008

Phone call from Andy Heiberg
The weather is not good today. There will be no flying. Yesterday the weather was good and everyone was able to fly and 4 more stations were done. Mike Steele is very happy with how things are going and the group from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is doing well. Everyone still expects to be able to return home on time.

Email from Roger Andersen
Alert 2008-5-3 Saturday

The Switchyard science party from Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Washington arrived at Alert on Saturday 26 April, joining Andy Heiberg who had arrived several days earlier from Barneo, and began flying on science missions the following day.

The Switchyard Mooring was deployed successfully on Thursday 1 May at 83° 43.7' North 065° 10.8' West in 274 meters of water. Jason Gobat and Jim Johnson headed south on the Canadian C-130 the following morning, and should be home or getting close.

Mike Steele, Wendy Ermold, and Roger Andersen, using a ski Twin Otter this year, have eight surface casts in the Switchyard area so far, and are preparing to drop AXCTDs. Dale Chayes, Richard Perry, and Anthony Dachille from Lamont have two stations complete with all 12 bottles tripped at T2 (85°N) and T3 (86°N), with the chemistry samples prepared by Bill Smethie and Bob Williams at Alert.

The weather so far has been much better than during 2007, which is to say only half the available days have been non-flyable this year.

NPEO Report #15

Phone call from Jamie Morison at 11:45am
Jamie, Miles and Dean have returned to Longyearbyen with the rest of the equipment. All are doing well and happy to be back on land and to have not showers.
Yesterday, while still on the ice they were able to test the ROV and get good pictures from it. Jamie was very pleased and thinks that it will work well next year.
Jamie will wrap things up in Longyearbyen and head for home on Sunday, April 27th and Dean will head home around the same time.

Phone call from Jim Johnson at 2:15pm
Jim called from a Starbucks outside of Newark, NJ where he was getting a fix of caffeine before continuing his drive from Newark airport to Schenectady, NY. Jim flew from Longyearbyen to Newark to meet up with the Switchyard crew who are all overnighting in Schenectady. They will all fly tomorrow morning to Greenland with the 109th Air National Guard and then on to Alert, Canada. The Switchyard team includes Mike Steele, Wendy Ermold, Roger Andersen, Bill Smethie, Dale Chayes, Richard Perry, Bob Williams, Anthony Dachille and Jason Gobat. Andy Heiberg will meet them in Alert.

NPEO Report #13, Monday, April 21, 2008

Phone call from Jamie Morison at 11:10am
Weather is a little bit windy with blowing snow.
The CTD operation is done. They were able to finish up the last 2 stations yesterday. Matthew Alkire was able to fly back to Longyearbyen yesterday. He took some of his samples with him and the other went to Alert with Andy Heiberg. Jamie, Miles and Dean are the last ones of the group left and Borneo and they plan on returning to Longyearbyen on Wednesday, April 23rd.

The ABPR work has had mixed results. ABPR 1 at the North Pole did not respond to interrogation (requesting data transfer) but they were able to get a response from the release. This means that they will retrieve the ABPR next year and get the data from it then. On Saturday they successfully interrogated 2 ABPRs. There has been an ongoing problem with a drift in the data from some of the deployed ABPRs and ABPR 2 which they had planned on deploying was showing signs of this same problem. They decided to bring it back home to try and find the problem to avoid future data drifting.

Today Jamie, Miles and Dean are practicing with the ROV (remotely operated vehicle) which will be used in next year's research.

NPEO Report #12, Friday, April 18, 2008

Phone call from Andy Heiberg, 10:00am
Yesterday was a long one for Jamie and Cecilia. They spent 4 hours each at two of the ABPR sites and successfully downloaded data. Tomorrow, when they leave the mooring camp and stop near the North Pole and download data from a 3rd ABPR. Miles is out doing a CTD cast. He has 2 more days of CTD casts, then he will head to Resolute on Monday, weather permitting. An Antov airplane will come in from Longyerben and all mooring guys & Cecilia and the equipment will return to Longyerben. Jim J & Jim Osse will stay in Longyearbyen until Tuesday when Jim J will head out to meet up with the Switchyard crew and Jim O will head for home. Paul, Sam and Cecilia will head home on Sunday, April 20th.

Left in camp Andy, Dean, Jamie, Matthew Alkire & Miles McPhee. All but Andy will go back to longyerben on 1st available plane after Monday. Andy will meet up with the Switchyard group next week in Alert.

Will finish earlier than scheduled

NPEO Report #11, Thursday, April 17, 2008

Phone call from Jim Johnson at 9:15PST
The mooring team finish their work on the ice today. They had many hurdles but in the end they were able to retrieve the mooring that has been down for the past 2 years and deploy a new one.

Phone call from Andy Heiberg at 9:30PST
The weather has been rough the past couple of days with warm temperatures and poor visibility. It was up to about 26ºF for a day or two and things were melting and dripping. The floor of the huts at Borneo are tarps that sit on the snow but with the warm temperatures the snow was melting and it was like walking on a water bed. The temperatures is back down to about 3ºF and things have refrozen.

Jamie, Cecilia and Dean have been out in the helicopter doing ABPR work. They went to ABPR site 1 to retrieve data but Andy was not sure if this was successful. Today they are headed to ABPR site 3 to deploy an ABPR. They will then fly to the mooring camp where Jim J, Jim O, Paul and Sam have been. Jamie, Cecilia and Dean will stay at the camp for a day or two with Jim J, while Jim O, Paul and Sam head back to Borneo.

WIth the poor visibility the Twin Otter has not been able to fly for the past 4 days. Andy is hopeful that the weather will be improved enough to fly in the very near future. All in all the work is going well and it looks like they will be wrapping the work up on time.

NPEO Report #10: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Phone call from Jamie Morison
12:20 PST, April 15, 2008
9:20 PM Borneo time
N 88 deg 28.5 min & E 12 deg, 38 min (We’re a little farther south than the 89 deg typical in past years)
Temp: - 8 C

I’m sitting in our 10-person tent with Dean and Cecilia. We’re surrounded by the ABPR and by other equipment.  We’ve been putting together the ABPR last night and today.

Generally we are pretty happy with conditions this year, and with what we’ve accomplished.  Great weather.  But it’s a little murky with low clouds and blowing snow yesterday and today.  This is expected to continue through the 19 or 20th.  Miles is taking over the hydro surveys.  Cecilia will assist with some of them.   We’ll try to do 3 stations per flight to help conserve on fuel.  The bad weather has kept us from doing hydro surveys for the past 2 days due to bad weather.  Miles did a station at Borneo; and we had to repair the winch. 28 hydro stations have been done by twin otter. Most of our buoys are in and reporting.

I went out to mooring camp and helped with pulling the mooring free from an under-ice pressure ridge.  The mooring camp is on 1.8 m thick first year ice, and surrounded by mainly first year ice.  Unfortunately, the mooring, when released from the anchor, came up under the only old ice chunk around, & the floats got hung up in a pressure ridge making it impossible to pull free and complete the recovery.  But the mooring team took the line they had recovered, tied a big weight on the line, and let the weight pull the mooring down from the ice, thus making it possible to bring the rest of the mooring in. Today they are preparing the new mooring for deployment tomorrow. Jim Osse, Sam Sublett, Paul Aguilar, and Jim Johnson are at the mooring camp

The mooring camp has drifted so far south that trips back and forth to Borneo have taken more fuel than planned.

We expect to deploy one of our ABPRs at the mooring camp day after tomorrow (April 17).  Cecilia will upload data from a previously deployed ABPR that is at the mooring camp & one other ABPR location. 

Our current Borneo team includes: Dean, Cecilia, Andy, Miles, Jamie, Matt Alkire; and our air crew:
Jim Haffey, lead pilot
Jackie Bremner, co-pilot
Fraiser McDonald, aircraft mechanic

Cecila Peralta Ferriz, graduate student working with Jamie Morison on the ABPR reports:  My first trip to the Arctic has been wonderful.  It is cold, white, but beautiful.  I arrived at Borneo on my birthday.  It was the best birthday ever!  It ‘s been about -20 C most days, except today it’s a warmer -8 C.  It is really cold and cool here.  Everyone smiles. I have managed to be healthy.  I’m excited to be preparing the ABPR for deployment, & to talk to the other ABPRs that were previously deployed. I did a CTD cast with Miles and that was fun.  We have light 24 hours a day.  It’s bright all the time.  

Sketch maps of Ice Station Borneo 2008 by Rick Krishfield ( Woods Hole )

NPEO 2008 Buoy Installation Diagram

ITP (square), AOFB (circle), Wind Generator (cross), IMB (star)
Radiometers (diamond), Weather Station (triangle), Cameras (left triangle)

NPEO Report #9: Friday, April 11, 2008

Phone call from Andy Heiberg, Borneo, April 11, 2008, 10:45 AM
Position 88° 20' North 14° East
Blue sky, temperature -20°C, light wind

Andy flew out to Borneo from Longyearbyen last night along with Miles McPhee, Jim Johnson, Jim Osse, Sam Sublett and Paul Aguilar. Yesterday Sigrid Salo of PMEL, and Richard Krischfield and Kristopher Newhall of WHOI flew home. Salo and Krischfield installed their equipment as planned. We are on schedule as far as people are concerned. When we arrived in Borneo, the helicopters were loaded and ready, and Jim Johnson and the mooring team flew on first helo out to mooring camp, found the mooring and released it. It is now up under the ice and drifting with the ice floe. We used 2 helos this year to keep the loads lighter. After the second helo landed and was unloaded, the mooring team got much needed rest. Tomorrow (Saturday) the mooring team will begin the mooring recovery. On Sunday we hope to fly Dean Stewart to Borneo from Longyearben, and with the rest of our equipment and the new mooring. Then we intend to fly out to the mooring camp with the new mooring and get it installed.

Jamie's Aerial CTD Survey is doing fine. Weather has been cooperative, two stations every day. Right now he is doing the farthest stations because Borneo is drifting south so the distance to the planned CTD stations is getting longer. After today he will have done all of the far stations. Jamie’s work is on schedule. Miles flew his first flight today with Jamie, and will take over the CTD stations when Jamie starts his ABPR work.

The camp is fine. We have new tents, and 7 of us fit quite comfortably in one of them. The runway is in good shape. I was very impressed when we landed at Borneo yesterday. Many people, many hands, and two snowmobiles helped unload our cargo and move it to our tents, and onto the helos for transport to the mooring camp. Excellent service.

NPEO Report #8: Wednesday, April 9, 2008

9:45am phone call from Andy in Longyearbyen
Andy reports that Jamie is having good weather on the ice and he has been able to complete 4 CTD drops so far and he should do another 2 today. Tomorrow Andy, the mooring crew (Jim Johnson, Jim Osse, Paul Aguilar and Sam Sublett), Miles McPhee and Tom Quinn will fly to Borneo. Tom Quinn is doing a roundtrip flight and returning to Longyearbyen but the rest of the group will stay at Borneo. The next flight to Borneo will be on Sunday, Dean Stewart and Cecilia Ferriz will go then.

Andy had nothing but good things to say about the setup in Longyearbyen. The group has been staying in The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) student housing and UNIS had been very helpful in providing essential housing and they have gone out of their way to make the group's stay as comfortable as possible.

When the equipment arrived in Longyearbyen via cargo plane it needed to be unpacked and many instruments needed to be prepared and checked before being taken to Borneo and out on to the ice. The group has been fortunate enough to be able to do all of this prep work at the airport instead of having to move all of the equipment to a secondary location in town. This has saved a lot of time and energy.

Andy said that the weather has been "spectacular." The current conditions in Longyearbyen as I type this are

Temperature : -13.8 degrees C
Wind Chill : -20.4 degrees C
Average Wind Speed : 3.2 m/s
Wind Gust : 4.6 m/s
Wind from : 170 degrees S
Humidity : 64 percent
Pressure : 1023.8 mbar

You can also click here to see the UNIS webcam.

Andy also had very positive things to say about Dimitri. He is a part of the team of Russians that build the Borneo ice camp and assist with logistics. Andy said that if he needs anything he can call Dimitri and it gets done. He and Dimitri had a long talk with folks at Borneo earlier today to make sure that Jamie has what he needs and that the rest of our group will be taken care of when they arrive tomorrow. Andy has confidence that Dimitri and the rest of the Russians will get everything done that we have asked for.

There have been a couple of issues that have come up along the way. The CREL buoy was having some troubles but Andy said that Dean Stewart should be able to fix it and have it ready to put on the ice. The other issue has been getting some additional batteries for the mooring. These are currently being shipped from the US and it is unclear if they will get to Longyearbyen in time to go to the ice. If they don't get there in time Andy thinks the batteries they have will work for another year.

NPEO Report #7: Friday, April 4, 2008

2:45pm phone call from Jamie in Resolute
He is currently working on getting communication between Resolute, Alert and Borneo established to get confirmation of weather and runway conditions. If all goes well Jamie will fly up to Borneo tomorrow. Salo, Krishfield and Newhall will also fly to Borneo tomorrow morning. Borneo is located at 88º 37'N 8ºE, this is further south than it has been in previous years.

Jamie was interviewed by Andy Revikin of the New York times and is mentioned on his blog Dot Earth.

Read updates from Borneo on The Poles and learn about all the other groups that use this ice camp as a base.

NPEO Report #6: Thursday, April 3, 2008

9AM Phone call with Dean Stewart in Longyearbyen:
Things are moving along. Some NPEO fuel got out to Borneo Wednesday. Drifting Buoy team members Sigrid Salo of PMEL and Richard Krishfield and Kristopher Newhall of Woods Hole are expected to fly out to Borneo Saturday. Jamie Morison and Matt Alkire are in Resolute bay with the hydro station Twin Otter skiplane, and expect to fly to Borneo Friday, via Alert.

NPEO Report #5: Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The IPY Airdrop CTD mission to the Northern Beaufort has been postponed two weeks, in the hope that warmer temperatures will allow open leads to remain open longer. Currently that effort is scheduled for April 13 - 18.

NPEO Report #4:  Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Jamie Morison phoned from Inuvik at 4:30 PDT:
The ice runway at Barneo has begun receiving Antonov An-74 flights from Longyearbyen, and the NPEO fuel supply is scheduled to go out tomorrow.
The Kenn Borek Twin Otter flying the NPEO Aerial CTD Survey got a very well-earned rest day in the hangar at Inuvik, NWT today and heads north tomorrow to Resolute.
The northern Beaufort airdrop CTD mission has been postponed two weeks, hoping for warmer weather that will allow new leads to not freeze over so quickly, and the flights will originate in Deadhorse.

Earlier today, Andy Heiberg phoned from Longyearbyen to check in and report that the Lynden Hercules bringing the the NPEO mooring and buoy equipment from Scotia, NY had arrived at Longyearbyen. Among the cargo are Iridium telephones, which ought to mean more frequent and detailed reporting.

NPEO Report #3:  Sunday, March 30, 2008

Jamie and Matt working from Jim Haffey's ski Twin Otter have been saturating the Beaufort Sea with measurements. They moved to Barrow two days ago to reach positions farther west. Jamie's message today was a blank email with two more CTD data files as attachments. Their current list of 15 (!) CTD/Chemistry stations completed is

• Station 73N_140W 21 March 2008 21:56 500m CTD cast only
  
  
• Station 72_140W 22 March 2008 21:45 at N72° 03.03' W140° 06.71'
  Station 7240_145W 23 March 2008 01:36 at N72° 41.21' W144° 50.42'
  
  
• Station 7340_135W 23 March 2008 20:54 at N73° 35.19' W136° 32.47'
  Station 74_140W 24 March 2008 00:45 at N74° 02.36' W140° 18.67'
  
  
• Station 7440_146W 24 March 2008 20:50 at N74° 38.13' W146° 40.30'
  Station 7420_143W 24 March 2008 23:50 at N74° 18.06' W143° 17.04'
  
  
• Station 75_150W 26 March 2008 20:33 at N74° 58.69' W150° 08.67'
  Station 74_150W 27 March 2008 00:19 at N74° 03.36' W149° 48.62'
  
  
• Station 73_150W 27 March 2008 19:48 at N72° 58.31' W149° 51.87'
  Station 72_150W 27 March 2008 22:59 at N72° 03.74' W150° 05.27'
  
  
• Station 7540_158W 29 March 2008 20:46 at N75° 41.93' W157° 42.87'
  Station 7520_154W 29 March 2008 23:49 at N75° 21.60' W154° 18.32'
  
  
• Station 7620_164W 30 March 2008 20:20 at N76° 19.29' W163° 41.84'
  Station 76_161W 30 March 2008 23:17 at N75° 56.45' W160° 37.11'

On the eastern front, Andy Heiberg and Dean Stewart left for Longyearbyen today, beginning the NPEO Mooring and buoy effort to the Russian Ice Camp Barneo near 89°N 90°E . A website that keeps track of events at Barneo is ThePoles.com .

NPEO Report #2:  Sunday, March 23, 2008

The Jamie emailed late on 3/23 with the following :
We've been going at it pretty hard. Good weather out on the ice and there is plenty of smooth 1st year ice 40-70" thick excuse english units where 36"=1 drill flight. The attached CTD files use station locations for names.

The CTD / Chemistry stations they reached are at

73° 40' North 136° West 74° North 140° West 72° North 140° West 72° 40' North 145° West 73° North 140° West

NPEO Report #1:  Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Jamie called at 3pm on 3/20 with the following update:
He and Matthew Alkire arrived in Dead Horse yesterday around 4:00pm and the Twin Otter arriver around 9:45pm. Today they have been working at the hanger to get their equipment set up and ready to fly. The crew at the hanger has been very nice and helpful. The weather is very cold, currently it is -45 with a breeze.