Category Archives: Iridium

How to whisper under sea ice: Wireless Acoustic Sensor Network Design

Posted on March 31, 2019 by | 5 comments

I want to build a cell phone system under water. I want it to send me a text messages every 30 minutes from 200 feet below the ocean that is covered by sea ice next to a glacier in northern Greenland where polar bears roam to catch seals for food at -40 Fahrenheit. Why would I want to do this and is this is even possible?

The author measuring sea ice thickness in Wolstenholme Fjord, Greenland April-17, 2017.

The author measuring sea ice thickness in Wolstenholme Fjord, Greenland April-17, 2017.

Our project successfully showed that it is possible to move data as text messages from a computer in the ocean to another and on to another and then via a cable to a weather station and then on to a satellite and then on to my laptop at home somewhere, anywhere, really [Intellectual Merit]. The ocean data that we moved by whispering from modem to modem (my acoustic cell phone towers) under water can be anything that any scientist may want to study. It could, for example, detect pollutants in the water that seep out of the sediment like gas or oil or radioactive materials burried accidentally [Broader Impacts] such as a nuclear-tipped B-52 bomber that crashed into Wolstenholme Fjord on January-21, 1968 at the height of the Cold War. The propagation of sound under ice also has military applications, because our communication network operates in both ways, that is, if I can receive a text message, I can also send one [Broader Impacts].

Installation of Automated Weather Station on Mar.-23, 2017 near Thule, Greenland via snowmobile. The station includes a satellite connection to the internet and a cable to the ocean.

Installation of Automated Weather Station on Mar.-23, 2017 near Thule, Greenland via snowmobile. The station includes a satellite connection to the internet and a cable to the ocean.

While the problem sounds simple enough, it is hard, real hard, because it requires many different people with very different skill sets. Our project included mechanical, electrical, and computer engineers but also scientists who know about acoustics, oceanography, and sea ice, as well as technicians with common sense and practical abilities to keep machines and people moving and running safely. This includes guns that we had to carry while working on the sea ice via snowmobile to protect from polar bears and medically trained personnel who could spot frostbites before they bite. All of this has to come together in just the right way and right time. Good and successful science is more than just engineering and machines, there is a strong human element in all polar field work such as ours. 

A local volunteer is designing, building, and rigging the Research Sled R/S Peter Freuchen for profiling the ocean below the sea ice in March 2017 on Thule Air Base.

A local volunteer is designing, building, and rigging the Research Sled R/S Peter Freuchen for profiling the ocean below the sea ice in March 2017 on Thule Air Base.

The first step in our project involved the design of the acoustic modems that Lee Freitag of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution did many years back. It took us about 2 years to select this design that Lee then modified for this application in 2014-15). The second step involved the selection of a study site where our small group of 6 people could work and experiment and learn by some trial and error without incurring extra-ordinary costs (2015-16). It helped that I was in and out of Thule Air Base on unrelated projects in 2015 and 2016 when we settled for the final experiment to take place in March and April of 2017. Satellite remote sensing tools where then developed to quantify sea ice conditions for safe operation and navigation traveling on the  ice. We uncovered a barely visible area of thin ice to the south of Manson Island that recurs at the same location every year. We stayed clear of this area.

Thule2017_CTD

Satellite image of ice-covered Wolstenholme Fjord, Greenland with water column profiling station (green dots) and acoustic modems (red dots). Blue lines are water depths in meters. Labels G1, G2, and G3 indicate three tide-water glaciers while Thule refers to Thule Air Base. Saunders Island is near the center left while the weather station is the red dot halfway between Saunders and Manson Islands.

Field work started with a survey of sea ice thickness on Mar. 18/19, 2017 by drilling 2” holes through the sea ice that varied in measured thickness from 0.12 m (4 inches) near Manson Island to 1.25 m (4 feet) near Thule Air Base. On Mar.-23, 2017 we deployed the weather station along with a tent and survival gear at the center of our study area. An ocean temperature mooring was deployed to complement in time a spatial survey of ocean sound speed profiles estimated from conductivity, temperature, depth (CTD) measurements. We drilled 10” holes through the sea ice for our profiling CTD operated via an electrical winch. Our CTD survey spanned the entire fjord from three tidewater glaciers in the east to the edge of the sea ice in the west. Concurrently ocean testing of acoustic communication between modems commenced Apr.-8, 2017 and the final array was deployed Apr.-14/15 to be fully operational Apr.-16/18. All gear was recovered and stored at Thule Air Base Apr.-18/19, 2017 before our departure Apr.-20, 2017.

Research Sled

Research Sled “Peter Freuchen” with wooden CTD storage box, electrical winch, tripod, and electrical motor during deployment on Apr.-7, 2017. View is to the west with Cape Atholl on the left and Wolstenholme Island on the right background. University of Delaware technician operates the winch via joy stick while a student monitors the instrument’s descent through water column visually at the 10” hole and acoustically via a commercial Fish-Finding sonar.

Subsequent analysis in 2017/18 revealed a successful experiment as data from ocean sensors traveled along multiple paths to the weather station and on to the internet. All data were submitted to the NSF Arctic Data Center where after review they will become public at

https://arcticdata.io/catalog/view/urn:uuid:d2775281-3231-47d0-ab79-b2e506ea8d04

This graph is just one of many in desperate need of a proper peer-reviewed publication. There is always more work to do …

Time series of ocean temperature at the weather station from 10-m (top) to 100-m (bottom below the sea ice. The red line gives the -1.7 Celsius for reference. The temperature field dominates the speed of sound field. Note the presence and absence of tidal oscillations.

Time series of ocean temperature at the weather station from 10-m (top) to 100-m (bottom below the sea ice. The red line gives the -1.7 Celsius for reference. The temperature field dominates the speed of sound field. Note the presence and absence of tidal oscillations.

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Posted in Greenland, Ice Cover, Iridium, Oceanography, Polar Exploration, Thule

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Greenland Oceanography by Sled and Snowmobile

Posted on March 29, 2017 by | 3 comments

Wind chill matters in Greenland because one must see and breath. This implies exposed skin that will hurt and sting at first. Ignoring this sting for a few minutes, I notice that the pain goes away, because the flesh has frozen which kills nerves and skin tissue. The problem becomes worse as one drives by snowmobile to work on the sea ice which I do these days almost every day.

Navigating on the sea ice by identifying ice bergs with LandSat imagery. The imagery also shows polynyas and thin ice in the area. [Photo Credit: Sonny Jacobsen]

Mar.-22, 2017 LandSat image of study area with Thule Air Base near bottom right, Saunders Island in the center. Large red dots are stations A, B, and C with Camp-B containing weather station, shelter, and first ocean mooring. My PhD student Pat Ryan prepared this at the University of Delaware.

My companion on the ice is Sonny Jacobsen who knows and reads the land, ice, and everything living on and below it. He teaches me how to drive the snowmobile, how to watch for tracks in the snow, how to pack a sled, and demonstrates ingenuity to apply tools and materials on-hand to fix a problem good enough to get home and devise a new and better way to get a challenging task done. Here he is designing and rigging what is to become our “Research Sled” R/S Peter Freuchen, but I am a little ahead of my story:

Sonny Jacobsen on Mar.-27, 2017 on Thule Air Base building a self-contained sled for ocean profiling.

First we set up a shelter in the center of what will hopefully soon become an array of ocean sensors and acoustic modems to move data wirelessly through the water from point A in the north-west via point B to point C. Point C will become the pier at Thule Air Base while the tent is at B that I call Camp-B:

Ice Fishing shelter to the north-east of Saunders Island seen to the left in the background.

Next, we set up an automated weather station (AWS) next to this site, because winds and temperatures on land next to hills, glaciers, and ice sheets are not always the same 10 or 20 km offshore in the fjord. It is a risk-mitigating safety factor to know the weather in the study area BEFORE driving there for 30-60 minutes to spend the day out on the ice. It does not hurt, that this AWS is also collecting most useful scientific data, but again, I am slightly ahead of my story:

Weather station with shelter at Camp-B with the northern shores of Wolstenholme Fjord in the background. Iridium antenna appears just above the iceberg on the sidebar of the station. Winds are measured at 3.2 m above the ground.

With shelter and weather station established and working well, we decided to drill a 10” hole through 0.6 m thin ice to deploy a string of ocean instruments from just below the ice bottom to the sea floor 110 m below. Preparing for this all friday (Mar.-24), we deploy 22 sensors on a kevlar line of which 20 record internally and must be recovered while 2 connect via cables to the weather station to report ocean temperature and salinity along with winds and air temperatures. It feels a little like building with pieces of Lego as I did as a kid. Engineers and scientists, perhaps, are trained early in this sort of thing.

Weather station with ocean mooring (bottom right) attached with eastern Saunders Island in the background on Sunday Mar.-26, 2017.

Sadly, only the ocean sensor at the surface works while the one at the bottom does not talk to me. I can only suspect that I bend a pin on the connector trying to connect very stiff rubber sealing copper pins from the cable with terminations equally stiff in the cold, however, there are other ways to get at the bottom properties albeit with a lot more effort … which brings me to R/S Peter Freuchen shown here during its maiden voyage yesterday:

R/S Peter Freuchen in front of 10” hole (bottom right) for deployment of a profiling ocean sensor. The long pipes looking like an A-frame on a ship become a tripod centered over the hole with the electrical winch to drive rope and with sensors (not shown) over a block into the ocean. This was yesterday Mar.-28, 2017 on the way from Camp-B back to Thule Air Base.

The trial of this research sled was successful, however, as all good trials, it revealed several weaknesses and unanticipated problems that all have solutions that we will make today and tomorrow. The design has to be simple to be workable in -25 C with some wind and we will strip away layers of complexities that are “nice to have” but not essential such as a line counter and the speed at which the line goes into the water. There can not be too many cables or lines or attachments, because any exposure to the elements becomes hard labor. This becomes challenging with any gear leaving the ocean (rope, sensors) and splattering water on other components. Recall that ocean water is VERY hot at -1.7 C relative to -25 C air temperatures. This means that ANYTHING from the ocean will freezes instantly when in contact with air. Efficiency and economy matter … as does body heat to keep critical sensors and batteries warm.

A big Thank-You to Operation IceBridge’s John Woods for something related to this post that I wish not to advertise 😉

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Posted in Greenland, Ice Cover, Iridium, Oceanography, sea ice, Thule

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Oceanography below Petermann Gletscher for 400 Days

Posted on September 23, 2016 by | 1 comment

Ocean data from 810 meters below sea level under one of Greenland’s last remaining ice shelves arrives every 3 hours at my laptop via a 3-conductor copper cable that passes through 100 meter thick ice to connect to a weather station that via a satellite phone system connects to the rest of the world. This Ocean-Weather station on the floating section of Petermann Gletscher has reported for 400 days today. I am still amazed, stunned, and in awe that this works.

The station started 20th August of 2015 as a small part of a larger joint US-Swedish expedition to North Greenland after friends at the British Antarctic Survey drilled holes through the Empire-State-Building thick ice shelf. It is powered by two 12 Volt car batteries that are recharged by two solar panels. When the sun is down, the car batteries run the station as in winter when temperatures reached -46 C. When the sun is up, the solar cells run the station and top off the batteries. The voltage during the last 400 days shows the “health” of the station:

Battery voltage at the Petermann Ocean-Weather Station from Aug.-20, 2015 through Sept.-23, 2016. The polar night is indicated by slowly declining voltage near 12 V while during the polar day voltage is near 14 V with oscillations in spring and fall during the transition from 24 hours of darkness to 24 hours of sun light.

Battery voltage at the Petermann Ocean-Weather Station from Aug.-20, 2015 through Sept.-23, 2016. The polar night is indicated by slowly declining voltage near 12 V while during the polar day voltage is near 14 V with oscillations in spring and fall during the transition from 24 hours of darkness to 24 hours of sun light.

There is an unexplained outage without data from February 12-25 (Day 175-189) which happened a day after the first data logger shut down completely without ever recovering. Our station has 2 data loggers: A primary unit controls 2 ocean sensors, atmospheric sensors, and the Iridium satellite communication. The secondary unit controls 3 ocean sensors and the GPS that records the moving glacier. Remote access to the secondary logger is via the primary, however, each logger has its own processors, computer code, and back-up memory card.

Inside of University of Delaware command and control of five ocean sensors and surface weather station. Two data loggers are stacked above each other on the left.

Inside of University of Delaware command and control of five ocean sensors and surface weather station. Two data loggers are stacked above each other on the left.

The primary logger failed 11th February 2016 when we received our last data via Iridium satellites until Keith Nicholls and I visited the station 27th and 28th August 2016 via helicopter from Thule, Greenland. Since I could not figure out what went wrong sitting on the ice with the helicopter waiting, I spent a long night without sleep to swap the data logger with a new and tested unit. I rewired sensors to new data logger, switched the Iridium modem, transceiver, and antenna, changed the two car batteries, and now both data loggers with all five ocean sensors have since reported faithfully every 3 hours as scheduled as seen at

http://ows.udel.edu

Lets hope that the station will keep going like as it does now.

The major discovery we made with the ocean data are large and pronounced pulses of fresher and colder melt waters that swosh past our sensors about 5 and 25 meters under the glacier ice. These pulses arrive about every 14 days and this time period provides a clue on what may cause them – tides. A first descriptive report will appear in December in the peer-reviewed journal Oceanography. Our deeper sensors also record increasingly warmer waters, that is, we now see warm (and salty) waters under the glacier that in 2015 we saw more than 100 km to the west in Nares Strait. This suggests that the ocean under the glacier is strongly coupled to the ambient ocean outside the fjord and vice versa. More on this in a separate future posting.

Time series of salinity (top) and potential temperature (bottom) from four ocean sensors deployed under the ice shelf of Petermann Gletscher from 20th of August 2015 through 11th of February 2016. Temperature and salinity scales are inverted to emphasize the vertical arrangements of sensors deployed at 95m (black), 115 (red), 300 m, and 450 m (blue) below sea level. Note the large fortnightly oscillations under the ice shelf at 95 and 115 m depth in the first half of the record. [From Muenchow et al., 2016]

Time series of salinity (top) and potential temperature (bottom) from four ocean sensors deployed under the ice shelf of Petermann Gletscher from 20th of August 2015 through 11th of February 2016. Temperature and salinity scales are inverted in order to emphasize the vertical arrangements of sensors deployed at 95m (black), 115 (red), 300 m, and 450 m (blue) below sea level. Note the large fortnightly oscillations under the ice shelf at 95 and 115 m depth in the first half of the record. [From Muenchow et al., 2016]

P.S.: The installation and year-1 analyses were supported by a grants from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, respectively, while the current work is supported by NSF for the next 3 years. Views and opinions are mine and do not reflect those of the funding agencies.

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Posted in Arctic Glacier, Greenland, Iridium, Oceanography, Petermann Glacier, Petermann2015

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Greenland Calling: Iridium Satellite Phone

Posted on December 30, 2015 by | 4 comments

I have trouble calling Petermann Gletscher, Greenland where I am collecting ocean data that feeds into a remote weather station. This station is run on a pair of car batteries, because the solar panels do not work until the sun rises again in two months and the next electrical outlet is about 300 miles away. A computer controls power to sensors and a satellite phone. All calls from and to the station are routed via a commercial satellite phone system that consists of about 66 satellites orbiting our planet. They often appear as shooting stars in the night sky that are called Iridium flares. As beautiful as these orbiting satellites are, they have driven me mad.

Screen shot of Iridium satellite orbits observed in real-time from http://www.satflare.com/track.asp?q=iridium

Screen shot of Iridium satellite orbits observed in real-time from http://www.satflare.com/track.asp?q=iridium

Iridium satellite phones and modems connected to computers are the only way to get data from remote areas of the Arctic and Antarctic. Some modems send small text messages called Short-Burst-Data (SBD) while other modems support a true two-way dial-up connection that includes all the hand-shaking of a telephone call. This computer-to-computer calling is more tricky than the person-to-person calls that this system was originally designed for. Working near Petermann Fjord, we had much trouble with even the person-to-person calls. Senator John McCain’s of the U.S. Congress was rudely disconnected, when he called us on the ship while in Sweden working with Government officials. And the Iridium phones on our Swedish icebreaker I/B Oden were thoroughly checked by field technician Robert Holden:

Rob Holden testing Iridium phones above the bridge of I/B Oden.

Robert Holden testing Iridium phones above the bridge of I/B Oden in August of 2015.

The building and coding of this ocean weather station is cool stuff for someone like me who likes Legos, computer games, and hacking electronics. Our Greenland ocean observing system uses both the text message SBD system at two smaller stations and the dial-up system at the larger weather station. The SBD system is great for small burst of data smaller than 1960 bytes per message. The Greenland station makes the call to a ground station that then e-mails the message forward to us. The method is very reliable, but there are small connection gaps that become data gaps.

Inside of University of Delaware command and control of five ocean sensors and surface weather station. Two computers are stacked above each other on the left.

Inside of University of Delaware command and control of five ocean sensors and surface weather station. Two computers are stacked above each other on the left with satellite modem 9522B on bottom left with RS-232 cable connecting to computer (Campbell Scientific CR1000).

In contrast, the dial-up method delivers a gap-free data set, but its bi-polar behavior drives me nuts. There are periods when each scheduled call results in a connection and new data, but there are also periods when each scheduled call fails to connect. Over the last 4 months I made 1450 calls to Greenland. Only 189 of these 1450 calls resulted in a connection. That is a failure rate of 87%. It admittedly includes one desperate day (Sept.-18) when I made a call every 3 minutes and each call failed. This desperation was after a 10-day sequence of failed calls when I lost my cool. There were 86 out of 130 days when a successful connection was made, that’s still a large failure rate of 34%, but there are zero missing data so far. [The station was set up Aug.-20.]

Logs-OWS

The advantage of the fickle dial-up connection is that I only need one connection to recover all data that has been collected since the last successful call. This differs from the SBD text message, where a lost connection means lost data. Furthermore, the connection to the Greenland station is a regular RS-232 connection which acts the same as the iPhone connected to the computer from which I type these lines. Hence software changes are possible, too, as scary as they may be.

Now why is the Iridium connection acting in a such a bi-polar fashion, that is, working like a charm for weeks and months to suddenly shut down completely for days to weeks just as suddenly? My honest answer is that I do not know. Furthermore, nobody really knows for sure. There is some talk in hidden places that Iridium modems or phones “de-register” themselves from the Iridium network, if they do not start a phone call. This is no problem for the SBD message as the Greenland modem always does the calling. It does matter for my dial-up, because the Greenland modem never initiates a call, it only responds when called after the Greenland computer gives it the power to do so. Which brings me to

‘Fake call’
Register_Modem = “ATDT 1234″ & CHR(13) & CHR(10)
SerialOpen (ComRS232,19200,0,0,2000)
Delay (0,1,Sec)
SerialOut (ComRS232,Register_Modem,””,0,0)
SerialClose (ComRS232)

The “fake call” is a software update that tells the Greenland modem to, well, make a fake call. The text string Register_Modem contains a non-existing phone number (I hope) 1234 as well as a carriage return CHR(13) and a line feed CHR(10) and the string is send via SerialOut to the modem that is addressed here as ComRS232 after the serial port between Greenland computer and modem is opened via SerialOpen. Lets see how this works over the next days, weeks, and months. For the first time, I received this morning a response from Greenland that it was “BUSY.” I took this as a good sign …

PostScript: Data look awesome with new, large, and unexpected diurnal variations that started Dec.-8.

Ocean temperature (black) and salinity (red) below Petermann Gletscher from Dec.-6 (Day-340) through Dec.-31 (Day-365). Top panel is just below the glacier ice at 95-m below sea level while bottom panel shows data 810-m below sea level.

Ocean temperature (black) and salinity (red) below Petermann Gletscher from Dec.-6 (Day-340) through Dec.-31 (Day-365). Top panel is just below the glacier ice at 95-m below sea level while bottom panel shows data 810-m below sea level.

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Posted in Computing, Greenland, Iridium, Petermann Glacier, Petermann2015

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Below Petermann Glacier: The First 100 Days

Posted on November 28, 2015 by | 4 comments

I am still stunned to see data coming to me hourly from below a glacier in northern Greenland while I sip my breakfast coffee. Each and every day for the last 100 days I got my data fix from the Ocean Weather Station that was born 100 days ago. Every morning at 8:15 the station sends me data from 5 ocean sensors below the glacier. A year ago I did not even know that I would be going to northern Greenland with the Swedish icebreaker I/B Oden in the summer of 2015, never mind that we would be able to pull off the engineering challenge to set up the first and only ocean observing system of Greenland. Today, I am over-joyed to report, we got 100 days of data.

IMG_3029

University of Delaware PhD student Peter Washam at the Ocean-Weather station on Petermann Gletscher after final installation 2015-Aug.-20, 17:00 UTC at 80 39.9697 N and 60 29.7135 W.

It all started when a French PhD student approached me at a scientific meeting in San Francisco last December. Céline is a now a doctor of oceanography, but at the time she was not. At the meeting Dr. Céline Heuzé of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden asked me for data and insights on how the ocean circulation in Nares Strait worked, so that she could connect results from planned field work in northern Greenland to her science interests in the Labrador Sea more than 1000 miles to the south. She also introduced me to Dr. Anna Wåhlin and the three of us got very excited about Petermann Fjord, Sweden, and polar oceanography. Here we are in Sweden preparing and off Greenland working:

Anna and ocean sensors.
Happy scientists on a small outing in a Swedish fjord after testing oceanographic equipment.

A few weeks prior the US government and Sweden had just agreed to work together on a joint expedition to Petermann Fjord in northern Greenland. Friends at Oregon State University needed a ship to collect data with which to reconstruct and understand changes of the land- sea-, and ice-scape of North Greenland during the last 10,000 to 50,000 years. They wanted to uncover where past glaciers were located and where sea level was at that time. For this, they needed many sediment cores from the adjacent ocean, fjord, and below the floating glacier. Today this glacier is as thick as the Empire State Building in Manhattan is high. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) agreed to drill the holes, collect the sediment samples, and take a profile of ocean properties from below the glacier ice to the bottom of the ocean. They estimated it would take about 5 days to drill each hole. Our idea was to use these holes to keep sensors, computers, and satellite phones in place to collect hourly data into the future as long as possible … 100 days so far.

Inside of University of Delaware command and control of five ocean sensors and surface weather station. Two data loggers are stacked above each other on the left.
Cable, computer, batteries, and solar cell for a station supporting 2 ocean sensors.
Data loggers and cables to connect ocean and surface sensors to batteries and satellite phone above a drill hole on Petermann Gletscher in August 2015.
Look down the 0.3 meter wide drill hole. Yellow kevlar rope supports cable and ocean sensors.

Drs. Alan Mix and Kelly Hogan discussing the first-ever ocean sediment cores from below a glacier in Greenland in Aug.-2015.
Drs. Kelly Hogan and Lawrence Dyke aboard I/B Oden in Aug.-2015 preparing sediment cores from below the ice shelf of Petermann Gletscher.
Dr. Larry Mayer carrying sediment cores recovered from below Petermann Gletscher from the helicopter deck to the laboratory aboard I?B Oden in Aug.-2015.

After the Dec.-2014 San Francisco meeting we decided to use these holes to measure ocean temperature, salinity, and pressure for as long as the batteries would last, about 3-4 years, but I had neither money, cables, data logging computers, nor satellite phones to do any of this, only the ocean sensors. When I told Keith Nicholls of BAS about the idea and my predicament, he said that he could find some computers and satellite phones from experiments he had done in Antarctica. I then said that I would organize cables, a weather station, and some funds to pay for it.

A crowd-funding experiment in February failed to generate funds, but NASA came to the rescue by opening a way to compete for the needed $60,000 to cover the cost of hardware, travel, and satellite phone charges. The funds allowed us to ship about 1200 pounds of gear from Delaware to Sweden where it had to be loaded onto the ship in May of 2015. We did not have much time to built the system and had no time left to test it. Two drums of cable arrived with only 5 hours to spare before the ship left Sweden in June for Greenland. We met the ship in Thule, Greenland in July.

Karen Assmann, Celine Heuze, and Axel Meiton getting ready to load the water sampling system onto the I/B Oden in June 2015.
Axel Meiton, Alan Mix, and Chris Moser consulting on the set-up of sediment core processing on I/B Oden in June 2015.
.. and another of many crates readied for shipping to Oden.
One of three crates ready for shipment to the ship. Notice the organizing hand of Dr. Celine Heuze bottom right.
Looking for the right box with the right cables and connectors …
I/B Oden in Landskrona on June-1, 2015. This is the front (bow) of the ship.

Fast-forward to the 20th of August 2015 when our ocean observing system went into the salty ocean waters below Petermann Gletscher. The surface weather station with satellite connections was deployed 10 days earlier to test satellite communications and collect weather data for Oden’s extensive helicopter flight operations on and around the glacier. It included a rushed visit by a large team from CBS News 60 Minutes who were flown and shown all over the place. We last saw the station during 24 hours of day light on 27th August when we calibrated the wind sensors, but to me the daily satellite phone call of the station with new data is a sign of life from an ocean outpost that survived another day in the total darkness of the polar night. It draws energy from two car batteries that run even at the -36 degree Centigrade (-33 F).

AWS

First 100 days of ocean and weather observations from the University of Delaware Ocean Weather Station on Petermann Gletscher, Greenland. Panels show (from bottom to top) time series of 1. battery voltage, 2. ocean (red) and air (black) temperatures, 3. wind speed, 4. wind direction, 5. glacier movement, and 6. atmospheric pressure. Time is given in year-day, Nov.-28 is Day-332. The sun set on Day-290 or Oct.-17.

New data are posted at

http://ows.udel.edu

which over the next few weeks we will develop into a web-site to distribute the daily observations to everyone. I am most thankful to many of scientists, engineers, technicians, sailors, and women in England, Sweden, and the United States of America, but this Thanks-Giving weekend I am grateful to the men and women of a great nation that gave me a place to study, work, and live doing while exploring ocean and now glacier physics as well.

EDIT: I just discovered this 7 minute video on our expedition, credits go to Saskia Madlener at 77th Parallel Productions:

https://vimeo.com/145664210

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Posted in Greenland, Iridium, Petermann Glacier, Petermann2015, Polar Exploration

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