Arctic Sunrise

The Ice Report: Out of Petermann, into the Basin
The Arctic Sunrise has departed Petermann Glacier. I'm writing this blog from tranquil Kane Basin, 80 nautical miles (148 km) south of the fjord where we spent the last two weeks. Texas, the Radio Operator, just looked out at the near mirror world surrounding the ship, exclaiming, "well, that's pretty freakin' close to spectacular!"
 
We hightailed it south on Wednesday, to evade getting closed in by a wave of tough, thick, sea ice coming down from the Lincoln Sea. Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we made it up to through Robeson Channel, and stopped at the ice edge, 445 nautical miles (824 km) from the North Pole? That's where our friend, the polar bear happened by.
 
After inexplicably remaining intact for 16 months, this ice has now broken up and is drifting south, five or six weeks earlier than would annually happen in a normal season. While this is odd behaviour, so is the fact that ice in the Nares Strait did not consolidate last winter. This is a first in 32 years of official records, and doesn't seem to be matched by the intermittent historical accounts from two hundred years of expeditions to this area. While it appears to be evidence of a changing climate, we can't be sure what the cause is, but something funny is going on.
 
Earlier, I was looking over Arne and Melanie's shoulders at yesterday's MODIS satellite pictures– you can see the ice has now drawn level with the mouth of Petermann Fjord. It was these images that gave us the early warning to get out yesterday morning, just in time, but not before Jason, Alun and Martin spotted four pods of Narwhals from the helicopter. Narwhals – the marine unicorns of old, are those strange smallish whales, famous for their distinctive spiraling tusk. Only the males have the tusk, which is actually an overgrown left tooth.
 
"But what about the ice", I hear you ask. "Aren't you folks floating about in an icebreaker? Should you be able to cut through sea ice like a hot knife through butter?"
 
Yes, the Arctic Sunrise is an icebreaker, but having a ship like this doesn't give us a free licence to go ploughing through any bit of sea ice we fancy. We can't just slide through the ice – the ship has to push and crack its way through. Even a skilled ice navigator like Arne tells me "that's it's my job to keep us out of the ice, to stop us getting stuck. Getting through lots of multi-year, several-metre-thick sea ice like the stuff coming down from the Lincoln Sea would take a lot of time to get through – maybe even a week, and would use a lot of fuel".
 
Last night we hit some one-year fast ice in Kane Basin; Arne was in his element, on the bridge, wiggling the Arctic Sunrise through the difficult. In the distance, an amorphous brown lump on the ice ahead gradually turned into four walrus; they took one look at us, before tumbling into the water and vanishing.
 
Kane Basin came at the end of a beautiful day's sail down the Nares Strait, passing Hans, Franklin and Crozier Islands. The heat of the day – up to 7 degrees Celcius - created heat inversions, so we could see mirages distorting the coastlines of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. About 8pm, after turning east into the basin, we passed through a mindboggling gallery of icebergs on our starboard side. To port was a haunting coastal landscape, of limestone cliffs and landslides looking like a mixture between Monument Valley and a gravel quarry.
 
We're now anchored near the mouth of Cass Fjord, below the Tailenguak Cliffs in Nygaard Bay. The ship is beside a small iceberg that looks, when doubled by its mirror images, like an ancient axehead. Off to our south east lies the 100km wide Humboldt Glacier.
 
Now that we're here, we'll be continuing to monitor Petermann Glacier through our "early warning" GPS and by regular cross-country helicopter flights to check on the time-lapse cameras. Petermann Glacier flows from southeast to northwest – so to reach the glacier interior From Kane Basin is a much shorter cross-country flight than it is a sea voyage.
 
This ensures we'll be prepared to get close to the 100 sq km ice island as it actually starts to break off. That area of ice would contain about enough ice to keep New York in fresh water for two whole years. Already this week, a three-square kilometre chunk broke off Peterman, splitting into fragments before edging out towards the mouth of the fjord. But this is still small fry compared to the big break up we expect.
 
- Dave
 
Some Notes:
Ice Bridge: In this context, an ‘ice bridge' is a curved line of sea ice that holds back the ice pack from open water. Due to support from the combined pressure of the surrounding ice pack, it maintains its structure. When viewed from above, it is reminiscent of the keystones of a bridge.
 
The Arctic Sunrise was at Petermann Glacier at approx 81 deg 11' north, 61 deg 50' west since early July
 
The Arctic Sunrise's position is 80 degrees 02' North, 65 degrees 50' west, in Nygaard Bay, below the Tailenguak Cliffs, near Cass Fjord in Kane Basin, Greenland
 
Farthest north reached by Arctic Sunrise on June 29th 2009: Latitude 82 deg 34' north, longitude 61 deg 13' west.

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[Nick Cobbing is the photographer on board the Arctic Sunrise, here at Petermann Glacier. You may be used to seeing his name underneath Greenpeace photographs, but here he adds some words to his photographs, to describe the audacious challenge taken by some of our colleagues – to kayak 25km down a meltwater river glacier. Perhaps it's not as crazy at seems – the floating ice of Petermann Glacier is horizontal enough that lazy blue rivers can meander along it, eventually ending in raucous whirlpools as described in earlier blogs. The kayakers' pullout zone was well before the maelstrom.
 
Of course, the scientists Jason, Alun and Richard, along with polar explorer Eric and ship's Radio Operator Texas did this mini paddling expedition in the name of science – connecting all four kayaks was the long antennae of an elaborate ice-penetrating radar system. It's Alun's baby, and he wanted to use it to survey a long section of the glacier, to gain knowledge on the ice thickness, melt-rates and the eventual breakup of Petermann Glacier. The trip was a success, and they're planning on repeating it on a different river, to get further data. Now let's see what Nick has to say - Dave]
 
The day before, I must admit that I did think it was a crackpot scheme, concocted so that the guys could get out there on that water - and looking at those deep ultra-blue channels winding their way through the glacier ice, who wouldn't want to, well... Kayak in them! These ravines had it all: sweeping bends, majestic mountains towering one-kilometre high and Petermann Glacier itself, seemingly infinite to the eye. To say this landscape is vast and other-worldly, doesn't even begin to describe it; I would have to refer you to the photographs which accompany this blog entry and perhaps the many more that I have had the pleasure to make during two weeks spent in this captivating place.
 
Suspending my cynicism the next morning, I watched the 'string' of four kayaks, each some 20 metres apart, drift slowly down the deeply cut channel away from my lens, radar antenna floating on the water behind them. My VHF radio crackled above the Arctic silence as their signal weakened, as they negotiated the meanders and ice banks of the ravine, disappearing downstream out of view. Taking to the air we caught up with them, tracking from 300 metres above, careful to go no lower in case the force of air from the helicopter's rotor would upset their course.
 
The kayaks lent a scale to the landscape, something to grade those cracks and circles; offering a reference point for the magical detail of the blue moonscape below me. On the seat next to me sat two ice-axes, a short coil of rope, a steel pole and ice auger, in my head a detailed rescue plan should our paddlers get into difficulty - this is a multi-skilled expedition and I was asked to stand in as ground support. Later sitting on a bank of ice at the half way point, sharing sandwiches and coffee, watching a smaller ravine carry melt-water into the channel, it became obvious that these guys weren't going to need any help, all experienced kayakers, it was a walk in the park for them. Twenty-five kilometres later I sunk the poles into the ice and threw out a rope as they pulled into the bank with big grins and confident paddle-strokes.
 
Alun cracked a joke that he'd forgotten to switch the machine on, but of course the data was all there, a glimpse of the graph on the screen showing the data reflected off the different densities of ice strata, which creaked deep below our feet. A perfect record of radio waves emitted from one kayak and collected by another and in between the two, the mysteries of the complex construction of Petermann.
 
In walking, running and flying the whole route, in order to put visual narrative to this crazy plan, I realised that they were perhaps not so crazy, and that amongst those six bold paddlers were three scientists who had a passionate reason for doing this; for making an exploration of a different kind, to pull data from this inaccessible place.
 
As I packaged the images to send to the outside world I received a lesson in basic geophysics. Trying to make a caption for the images, I crossed the short distance between the scientist's bench and my small photo work-station in the hold of the Arctic Sunrise. I drew diagrams, I asked stupid questions and slowly an understanding of how the science of this rather unique experiment dawned; science in the school lab was never this interesting, I no longer fear phrases like basal hydrology - I will write my Nature paper! But until then I will leave you with my photo caption, so you can judge whether I have succeeded in distilling the concept.
 
- Nick
 
Photographs: (c) Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

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Fata morgana visible north west of the Arctic Sunrise for most of today. Eerie and surreal! #gpas #arctic

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Swirling vortices, bright blue rivers, earthquakes, icequakes and 24-hour sunshine. Welcome to the weird world of the Arctic Sunrise, at Petermann Glacier, 81 degrees 11.272 minutes north, 61 degrees 50.892 west. To be exact.
For over week now, the Arctic Sunrise has been at Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland, where, according to my morning Google Alerts we had a 6.1 earthquake yesterday, at 17:11 local time. No one on board admits to noticing it, despite the epicentre occurring just a few hundred kilometres south of us in Baffin Bay. The three glacier scientists on board are checking their data for the period, to see if the glacier reacted in any way.
 
Petermann Glacier the largest floating glacier in the northern hemisphere is starting to showing wear and tear, even though we've only been monitoring it for a little while. There's four 'ice islands' that we expect to break off within the next year or so. The most likely, the gargantuan 100 square kilometre piece "A" contains, according to calculations by Jason and myself, around 5 billion tonnes of ice. Since we arrived, some of the cracks between these sections of ice have started to widen. We don't know when the break will happen, but we're planning on being on location for some weeks.
 
Time passes strangely here –it's hard to go to bed, when the sun is shining 24 hours a day. That sunshine has been beating down on the ice - we've measured the temperature at the ship at up to six degrees Celcius at times. Up on the glacier, the day progressed, the trickles and torrents of water increased, and at the front, more sea ice and 'bergs have been breaking away. Most people on board have now had a chance to get out and experience the scale and beauty of glacier first hand – and I'm currently trying to persuade, bribe, cajole and perhaps blackmail some of them into blogging their experiences.
 
Up north of here, where we saw the polar bear last Monday, the Lincoln Sea ice bridge has started to collapse. It's called a bridge, because when looked at via satellite, the sea ice is held back by a frozen barrier that's keyed like a bridge. However, once the bridge breaks goes, the Nares Strait, at the moment practically free of ice willl flood with ice floes drifting south, making life complicated for the Arctic Sunrise. We may have to take evasive action.
 
But speaking of bears, just after dinner yesterday, Arne shouted down 'two polar bears!' Crew members were out on the bridge wing in seconds, scanning the glacial ice dunes, to spot what turned out to be three bears, a mother and two cubs. They could be seen with binoculars from where the Arctic Sunrise is moored, before ambling off out of sight, presumably on their way to some seal hunting lessons. We're keeping a close eye for reappearances.
 
Over the last week, the three scientists on board – Jason, Alun and Richard, have been busy deploying all kinds of scientific equipment onto the ice, the cliffs above the glacier, and the ocean in front of it. The time-lapse cameras are clicking away 1,000m above the ice, while Jason has placed another on the glacier itself to show movement between ice and the cliffs. Arrays of GPS units deployed by Alun have record not only the overall travel of the glacier, but changes of position of parts of the glacier, relative to one another as well as giving data on the twisting and turning of the ice flow, in three dimensions.
 
Richard, a geophysicist, brought along a device called a 'CDT', which stands 'Conductivity Temperature Depth'. It's getting referred to 'The Thing' or occasionally 'Suzie'. Whatever it's called, the long steel cylinder, which looks like some sort of nuclear device from a James Bond movie, has been getting dropped into the water from the bow of the Arctic Sunrise before the ship's windlass hauls back up the five of six hundred metres of rope that have followed it to the bottom of Petermann Fjord. The CDT measures not only 'Conductivity Temperature Depth', but also the 'turbidity' of the water, and gives details information about salinity and water currents.
 
More recently, Richard has gone all extreme on us, and had our helicopter, known as 'Lucky Bird', haul the CDT a few miles up the glacier to drop it into cracks and holes in the glacier itself, at what's become known as 'the whirlpool', a huge swirling vortex of blue water and ice chunks fed by melt streams running swiftly along the glacier.
 
Spending most of Tuesday at the whirlpool only increased my sense of Petermann's strange otherworldliness. I keep thinking of it as 'The Maelstrom', although Edgar Allen Poe's short story of the same takes place a long way from here, off the cost of Norway, near Lofoten.
 
At about 27km from the open sea and the Arctic Sunrise, around one-third of the way up the floating ice shelf, the whirlpool is fed by a ranging bright blue melt river that grows stronger as the sun grows higher in the sky. Richard estimated that by about 4pm on Tuesday, around 50 cubic metres per second were flowing past us, and vanishing into a hole in the ice.
 
This, of course, didn't stop him, with Eric's help, from dropping his CDT down 183 metres into the whirlpool, timing the drop to avoid the circulating ice blocks, and hoping that he would be able to retrieve the device again. When "Suzie" returned to the surface – and Richard later downloaded the data, it came up with some interesting data – at around 60m, the fresh water suddenly turned to saltwater. The ice under our feet could be thinner than we think.
 
Alun came back the next day with his radar equipment, which penetrates the ice and gives a view of what's below. His data matched Richard's, and lends credence to the fairly new revelation that warm ocean currents are playing a major role in triggering the acceleration, breakup and thinning of glaciers. Alun reckons that these currents are "are circulating around the fjord here and eroding the underbelly of Petermann Glacier at an incredible rate which is 25 times that of the surface melt".
 
As if all this wasn't enough, yesterday, when Richard, Alun, Faye, Sarah, Martin and others were at the whirlpool , a seal popped its head up several times to check them out – 27km from open sea!
 
 
Dave

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