We've spent the past few days huddled up in the Big House hiding from the storm that ripped through Greenland, with temperatures dipping to -14 F and winds up to 40 knots. Luckily, all of our tents held up and we managed not to lose anything in the wind or under the drifting snow. During Condition 1 weather no one is allowed to travel alone outside, we radio the camp manager each time we're leaving or arriving at a location, and no one can leave the station without a GPS, radio, and emergency beacon.
The Summit Science crew allowed us to use some space inside the Summit Operations Building to prepare our radar sleds and mount various GPS antennas to our snowmobiles. Being allowed to work inside saved us a few days while waiting out the nasty weather. Big thanks to the operations crew!
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| HP mounts the Frequency Modulated Continuous Waveform radar and GPS to his snowmobile |
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| Tate sets up his Multi-Offset radar in the operations building |
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| HP launches a weather balloon to monitor the temperature, humidity, and wind speed near Summit |
Once the weather cleared, we spent Thursday and Friday building our sleds, organizing our cache loads, and testing the radar equipment. The Twin Otter plane is supposed to spend Saturday and Sunday dropping off ice core boxes, extra food, snowmobile gas, and propane to four locations along our route.
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| Our "kitchen sled" komatik sled loaded up and ready to move to Core 8 |
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| One of our fuel sleds towing the empty ice core boxes |
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| Caches 2 and 3 staged near the runway awaiting the airplane |
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| HP and Tate admire the two radar sleds after their test drive near Summit |
After setting up all the sleds and testing the equipment, we were able to to get a tour of the Temporary Atmospheric Watch Observatory. Located 1/2 mile south of the Big House (in the clean air sector), the TAWO measures temperature, wind speed, humidity, incoming radiation, atmospheric black carbon, and other particulates floating around in the air. We walked past the
GISP2 borehole, which was one of the main reasons Summit Camp was established in the 1990's. GISP2 drilled down 3053 m through the ice sheet and into the bed rock, the deepest ice core ever recovered at the time. After dinner, Gabe gave a 20 minute science lecture on preliminary results from the 2016 GreenTrACS traverse and our plans for the upcoming traverse.
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| Gabe gives a science lecture in the Big House wearing his formal Carhartts |
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| Gabe hugs the GISP2 borehole |
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| The Temporary Atmospheric Watch Observatory |
Thanks for the updates. They are fascinating. Its inspiring to share your adventures. Good luck with your next steps.
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