Preparing Ocean Work outside Thule Air Base

I am heading to North Greenland in 3 days time to work where temperatures will be close to -20 F. The ocean is covered by 3-4 feet of sea ice that is frozen to land. We will drill lots of ice holes to deploy ocean sensors that will connect via cables to weather stations and satellite phone. Fancy $20,000 GPS units will measure the tides across the fjord and provide a group of future Naval officers a reference for their fancy electronic gear to measure sea ice thickness remotely by walking and comparing results to those obtained from planes overhead. Cool and cold fun.

There has been much packing and shipping the last weeks, about 2300 lbs to be precise,which made my body stiff and sore. Another way to hurt my aging body was to learn shotgun shooting for the unlikely polar bear encounter on the sea ice. My shoulder still hurts from the recoil blasts of the 12 gauge pump-action gun with 3” long cartridges that included a 1 oz. lead slug. I also tested a cot and sleeping bag that will be with me on the ice for emergencies. The night in my garden a few days ago was cozy, but the cot required an insulation mattress, as it was too close to the ground. It was rough sleeping, because of unexpected noises not cold, but I did sleep some and woke up when the sun came up.

The clear skies over Thule during the 2 weeks that the sun is up again also gave me the first Landsat image. It shows the landfast sea ice, but it also shows its very limited extend as very thin ice and perhaps even open water occurs while the winds blow along the coast from the north. This cold wind moves the mobile sea ice offshore to the west thus opening up the oceans that will promptly freeze, however, the back ocean still shows under the inch-thin new ice:

This thin new ice is the limit of where I expect to be working. After measuring ice thickness directly via drilling through the ice, my first measurement will be that of how temperature and salinity varies from under the ice to the bottom of the ocean.

Danish friends do this routinely about 60 miles to the north where they work out of the Inughuit community of Qaanaaq, but Inglefield Fjord is much deeper and connects to warm Atlantic waters from the south that, I believe, we do not have in Wolstenholme Fjord. Hence I expect much less heat inside Wolstenholme Fjord and perhaps a different response of three glaciers to ocean forcing. This theory does not help me much as I will have to lower instruments via rope and a winch into the water. How to attach rope to instruments and winch? Knots.

I am very poor at making knots as my hand-eye co-ordination and memory is poor. So I spent some time this week to learn about knots such as

that should work on my braided Kevlar lines that I connect to shackles

There are always devils in the many details of field work. Another worry is that my 10” ice-drill is powered by 1 lbs bottles of propane. It is not possible to send these camping propane canisters via air, but larger 20 lbs tanks exist in Thule for grill cooking at the NSF dormitory where I will be staying. So I also will have to learn how to fill the smaller container from the large one. Just ordered another adaptor from Amazon to travel with me on my body to do this.

I am both terribly nervous and excited about the next 6 weeks. This is my first time working on the ice, because before I have always been on icebreakers in summer. These past Arctic summer expeditions on ships created an unreal and distant connection that, I hope, will be shattered by this spring. I will get closer to the cold and icy seas that are my passion. Oceanography by walking on water … ice.