Departure day for SHEBA. Left Lebanon at noon and had an uneventful flight to Boston with Bill and Jackie. Then the problems began-thunderstorms in Minneapolis. We were rerouted through Montreal and arrived in Edmonton with no problems and no bags.

Wednesday September 17

     Still no bags. We decided to leave Bill behind to ensure that our bags and two air freight boxes make it to Tuk. Arrived in Tuk about 4:00 PM. The barge has not yet arrived and things are on hold. The Pingo Park Hotel is a nice place with TV's and bathrooms. Bruce, Jackie, and I walked down to the Tuk Inn. It was a beautiful night, with the full moon rising as the sun set.

Thursday September 18

     Had a chance to fly out to the Des Groseilliers this morning, but there is still work to be done on the beach. The barge is hung-up because of winds, but might be in tonight. We're running a bit late. 

Friday September 19

     It stime to fly out to the Des Groseilliers. I gave Kathy a call after breakfast, then walked over to NTCL to help with the barge logisitics. I lent a hand rearranging the gear into Louis, Louis buoy, and Des Gros. Louis buoy is high priority gear for the buoy deployment. At 11:00 AM it was time to head to the airport for the helo flight to the Des Gros. We got 3 miles out when the fog rolled in and we had to return to Tuk. Got to the Tuk Inn in time for lunch and found out that the repacking had gone spendidly and the barge is being reloaded. The barge sailed tonight with Dean, Jumper, and Tom aboard.

Saturday September 20

     After breakfast we're told to be ready to fly, so I check out of the hotel and head to the airport just in time for the fog to roll back in. Hung out for most of day seeing the sights of Tuk and thinking profound thoughts. Walk out to the airport at 3:30 PM. The fog is lifting and the helos are coming. First one from the Louis, then 40 minutes later one from the Des Gros. Jackie, Bruce, and Jamie head out to the Louis and Dick, Miles, and I head to the Des Gros. The Louis helo just makes it to the ship before the fog returns. This time we got around 10 miles out before returning to Tuk. Another night at the Pingo Park.

Sunday September 21

     A nice morning, but the fog and low clouds quickly return. Called home and talked to Kathy and the kids. Walked over to NTCL with Dick and Andy and talked to Jim Swift over the radio. Got some good news - the Laurier will pick up the Barrow mooring. That's a big help. The weather is improving and it looks promising flying this afternoon. Shows what I know. Tuk is in and out of the fog and the Des Groseilliers is completely fogged in. Talked to Andy this evening. There's good news that the Des Gros has finished loading and should be ready to go tomorrow. The Louis is scheduled to be loaded tomorrow - weather permitting. The forecast is for 20-25 kt winds.

Monday September 22

     Todays the equinox - first day of fall. We're still stuck in Tuk. There are several sources of optimism today. One is that the tug is bringing the barge back in and has agreed to take people out to the ships. Second the winds are picking up and the weather appears to be clearing. Andy, Dick, and I talked to Jim Swift after lunch and gave him the go ahead to start the section as soon as the Louis is loaded. Plan A is for the Des Gros to install IOEB and the Louis to do the ocean section, with the ships rendezvousing at the ice edge around September 27. The tug will leave at 6:00 AM tomorrow. Unfortunately the fog never lifted, so once again I checked into the Pingo Park. Watched a little Monday night football since the Steelers were playing the Jaguars. With 4 seconds left the Steelers attempt a game winning field goal. Its blocked and returned for a touchdown.

Tuesday September 23

     Saw the barge off at 0620. A surreal scene with the tug illuminated by spotlights. Would not have been surprised if the mother ship landed. Passengers were instructed to take their seasick medication because the seas are rough. Meanwhile its back to the Pingo to wait for the weather to improve. After lunch its time to try again. Off to the airport with liftoff at 2:00 PM. As we got to within 4 miles of the ship the ceiling lowered. We had a great run in cruising along at 110 kts 20 feet above the water. Its great to be on board. Because of lost time the new plan is to deploy the Jamstec buoy on the way to SHEBA. Excellent cooperation from the Jamstec team. This information was relayed to Captain Langois and at 1605 the Des Groseilliers headed for the SHEBA ice station.

     Talked to Jim Swift at 1800. They are at anchor in McKinley Bay. All passengers have been transferred. So as of now all SHEBA personnel and cargo are aboard. The Louis has to wait around Tuk until 1300 tomorrow for an engine part. Jim Swift has put in a request with the Canadian Coast Guard to deploy the Northwind Ridge mooring on the way out. Had our first SHEBA science team meeting tonight.

Wednesday September 24

     We traveled west during the night and are currently in a holding pattern at 70 N, 143 W. When the ship tried to go north, the seas got too rough for the heavy awkward load we are carrying. To the north there are 30 kt winds and large swells. So we are waiting here until conditions improve enough to go north. I had a one-way phone conversation with Jim Swift. I could hear him, but he couldn't hear me. We decided to switch to communicating by fax. He is going to start the section and we plan to rendezvous at the ice edge on mid-day Friday.

Thursday September 25

     Talked to Dick, Andy and Claude about moving the insertion point to 142 W in order to increase the odds of a SE IOEB deployment. "No problem." The seas have calmed down somewhat and we are heading northeast to the ice edge.

Friday September 26

     An eventful day for SHEBA. Sometime early this morning we reached the ice edge with a thud. We're at 73 N, 142 W a little bit into the ice. The Louis will be arriving tomorrow. Had an excellent meeting this morning with Andy, Dick, Jumper, Claude, and Alain mapping out the next couple of weeks. Key issues are: 1) approach plan, 2) floe selection, 3) floe docking, unloading, and setup, and 4) safety protocol. 

     Results from the Ice Patrol overflight were not good. There doesn't seem to be any big floes, one or two at most.Also the observer said it looked like an intense melt season. Our concern is that this could be like the SIMI experiment. The sub cruise is on, so we need to keep everything out of the water from 0000Z 28 September to 0000Z October 2.

Saturday September 27

     Set our clocks back one hour. A bear appeared at 0700 on the portside. Took some pictures, but missed a great shot of the bear standing on his hind legs sniffing the air only 5 m away. What a time to run out of film. Met the Louis this morning and headed north into the ice at 8 kts. Faster than moving in open water. Lunch was great, spaghetti with meat sauce. Talked with the Jamstec team about making IOEB part of the SHEBA buoy array. Everyone is excited about the idea.

Sunday September 28

     At 8:00 AM the ships began moving northward again towards the defined location for IOEB-2. Progress is excellent, with speeds as high as 9 knots. On the down side this excellent progress is due to the ice being quite thin which could be an impediment for finding a floe for SHEBA. Late in the morning the weather began to clear somewhat and a helo flight with Jacques the ice observer was scheduled for after lunch. I got a message from Jackie outlining the positions of the SHEBA buoy array, which has now grown to 13 elements. Trying to draw it is as confusing as putting toys together on Christmas morning. In the midst of this exercise the ice observer, Jacques, returned from an extensive survey flight in search of a big floe for SHEBA. After considerable looking he was able to find one candidate, so Jumper and I went to look at it. For the details see the floe search summary. In short, it wasn’t bad, 10 cm of snow, there was a nice 30 cm frozen lead, and the surface in much better shape that the floes we have looking at on the way up. Unfortunately it wasn’t good either. It was too thin with average thickness of only 130 cm and from the small-scale surface topography had undergone considerable melting. We encountered a few bottomless melt ponds. Still it is somewhat encouraging even though the search must continue.

     When we returned to the ship I started to fill Andy in, when he said there is a little problem and you are wanted on the bridge. Apparently there was a rumor on the Louis that we had found the SHEBA floe and Jackie looked at a map and realized that the ships were in a good place to deploy the WHOI Buoy so we called Dick. I don’t know exactly what transpired, but the gist was that Jackie said the ships should stop until I got back. Since we didn’t find the floe it was time for the ships to start moving again. I then called Jackie and explained the situation and said it was OK for the ships to move. Its difficult having the party split on two different ships. I’m doing a reasonable job of communicating with the SHEBA group on the Des Groseilleirs, but not with the people on the Louis. It turns out that not even the faxes I’ve been sending have not been getting there. So I need to work harder on that.

Talked about the floe at the evening meeting and had a nice discussion. Afterwards Andy and I started talking contingencies if we can’t find anything thicker. With all of our cargo we could have a major problem. Called Jackie back on the Louis to fill her in on the search for a floe.

Monday September 29

     The J-Team, Jacques and Jumper went flying this morning in search of the perfect floe. First they went looking for Jumper’s heart shaped floe. They found something, but aren’t sure if it was the same floe. In any event it was too thin. They stopped at 2 more floes, the last of which was the best. Jumper and I went to check it out. Its big, Jumper’s estimate is 4x8 miles. We landed in a couple of spots and measured some thicknesses. There was a frozen lead that was 44 cm thick. Pretty healthly growth for this early in the season. We tried to play fair and drill only in places that appeared "normal". Jumper’s notes have the measurements. Basically the "standard" ice ranged from 1.7 to 2.0 m. In general, it was the most solid of the floes in terms of hard drilling and the hole being dry. The chips were dry to about a depth of 90 cm. The snow cover was 5-10 cm on the level, 20-30 in the ponds. The results from a snow survey sampled every meter are: 4,6,6,6,6,5,5,8,10,10,8,9,10,6,7,10,6,4,6, 18, 6,5,7,6,7,7,8,6,9,6,9,6, 6,5,9,5,18, 6,6,7,5,4,4,6,5,10,5. Ponds had frozen over about 40 cm. Every imaginable ice type was present on this floe, ponds, hummocks, ridges, lead, etc. Its a little too thin and a bit too wide, but right now its the best bet for the SHEBA home floe.

      At the evening meeting we talked about the days surveys and, in particular, about the choice #1. I outlined the features and drawbacks of the floe in a neutral manner, trying to hit potential problems as well as strengths. There wasn’t much in the way of comments from the general audience. After the meeting Andy and I got together to discuss strategy for tomorrow. Then Andy, Alain, Jumper, Miles and I got together to deal with the nitty-gritty issues of the floe. Right now it appears to be our best choice. Tomorrow we’ll try to fly the captain out to the floe for his opinion and also see if we can find a natural harbor.

Talked to Jackie about all this and asked her to fill in the SHEBA-Louis crowd. Sounds likes the potential dual helicopter woes have been sucessfully resolved. Right now life is good, its time to go to bed.

     Woke up early and checked e-mail. There was a message! Unfortunately, it was an internal message rather than one from home. Life on the ship is pretty good. Food is excellent and there are always sandwich fixings and leftovers available. In the Canadian tradition there are lots of cookies.

     Talked to Jim Swift this morning to ask a) if could do a ctd cast for the JAMSTEC folks, b) any word from the Laurier, c) any word about doing the NWR mooring from the Louis on the way out. They answers were yes, no, and no. During the morning work began on the installation of IOEB-2. After some difficulty with the hole melter the work went exceptionally well. Everything was installed and up and running by 1600 hours local time. At the same time SHEBA remote site 5 was installed. RS5 is pretty simple Stein’s acoustic instrument plus a stress sensor. The stress sensor took about 10 minutes and the acoustic sensor about 3 hours.

After the meeting we sailed in the direction of the SHEBA primary floe until around 10PM. Other events of the day included lifting of the smoking ban and moving the science meetings to the cafeteria. The evening meeting was full of good news regarding the day’s activities.

     Beautiful sunrise this morning. Looks like good flying weather. The Captain and Jumper took off right after breakfast to check out the primary floe. They returned about 5 minutes later because of bad visibility. Andy, Dick, Jumper and I talked strategy for a while regarding the deployment phase. We waited for weather the rest of the morning. Finally at around 1500 the weather cleared, but in the meanwhile the helos rotors had rimed up, so it had to be heated. Jumper and the Captain lifted off again in search of the lost floe. More precisely, in search of the lost garbage bag that marked the floe. They found it, got their orientation and flew back towards the lead on the eastern boundary and found the Louis sitting there. They found a nice entry point. Tonight we sail to and into the floe and finish the parking job tomorrow.

     The weather looks crummy this morning with low clouds and light snow. We could use just an hour of flying weather to help find the right path for the ship to enter the floe. Jumper may just set a path by skidoo. At 900 AM the weather lifts enough for a helo recon with Jumper and the Captain. They find the ultimate destination of the ship and return. At around 1000 AM we begin moving towards home. The weather continued to improve and I got a call from Jackie that they were going to fly. I was hoping for Site 3 or 4 (25km mass balance), but the pilots were leery about the weather. Instead we did 9 and 10 of the 15 km array. We had time for 11, but Sigrid wasn’t sure if her instrument was working. Here is some data from the trip

RS9 : Hi=1.16, Fb=0.90. Snow survey results from approximately every meter 8 18 16 10 11 12 15 18 16 18 9 17 14 1/ 8 8 9 15 22 24 22 11 14 12 11 11 12 13 13 13 13 16 18 22 26 7 9 35.

RS 10: Hi=1.62, Fb=1.37. Snow survey results from approximately every meter 14 14 20 22 20 14 8 9 8 13 12 9 9 7 7 14 16 15 10 12 9 18 13 9 10 7 8 7.

     Today was unloading cargo, moving fuel drums and building huts. Unfortunately, our stuff is still buried deep in the hold so mainly I acted as a tour guide when the party from the Louis showed up. Pointing out all the highlights of our splendid floe. While the weather was OK for working on the ice, it wasn't good for flying, so we couldn't deploy any remote sites. Hopefully we'll get to some of our stuff tomorrow. Todays bad news was that IOEB-2 isn’t speaking to the world so Rick Krishfield requested a rescue mission.

     Yet another gray overcast day, and a windy one at that. Jackie, Bruce and Bill came over on the morning shuttle. Bruce started moving fuel drums, while the rest of us got to work building a platform for our hut. The weather began to improve at 1030 so I was called to the bridge to authorize the hunt for IOEB-2. Also the Scientific Solutions stuff isn’t working so one of their guys is going along too.

     During our lunch break Jackie was paged to the bridge. It was the Louis saying that flying weather is improving. We decided to go for site 4. After a taxi ride to the Louis and a long climb up the gangway and a packing flail, we took off at 1415. I was back home at 1730. For all the running around we did a good job. The ice had moved alot so we almost went too far. Luckily I was bored and reading the GPS display. Photos are on roll 4. Here are the stats:

RS4: Thermistor string, ice thickness is 1.90 cm; freeboard is 1.62. String design was 4 connected together with the fifth one doubled up right between strings 1 and 2. The probe was installed so that the break between 1 and 2 was at the surface with 5 extending upward and downward equally. Gauge 97: ice thickness of 1.85; surface was 13 cm below the end of the tape, gauge was at a height of 1.05 m up the tape. Gauge 98: Thickness was 1.85, freeboard was 1.64, surface was 12 cm below the end of the tape and the initial gauge height was 0.84 m. Gauge 96: Ice thickness was 1.82 m; freeboard was 1.53 m, surface was 11 cm below tape and gauge height was 108 cm. During installation the snow was cleared away, bu the wind was blowing so it should drift back in.

    The day started auspiciously with nice flying weather. However, things deteriorated rapidly when Jumper was seriously injured when hit by a sled. The rest of the day was spent making medevac arrangements. There were some difficulties at first convincing people on the beach who we were and yes we know our position is in the Beaufort Sea. A Twin Otter arrived around 5 PM and Jumper was on his way out by 7 PM, just as the fog rolled in. Last night when everyone was on board eating dinner Jumper was out grooming the runway. Later that evening I mentioned that the first rotation wasn’t for a couple of weeks. "Yes", he said, "but you never know if someone will need to be medevaced." I hope his injuries aren’t too serious.

     Weather looks great (for here) this morning. Its cold, but not foggy with a clear horizon. So hopefully we’ll be off to Site 1 or 2. Not so fast. Robert the helo pilot on the Louis is sick. So we only have one chopper. We decide to do site 3. The weather is good enough that we think we can leave people. Bruce, the bear guard and I went on the first chopper load, then Jackie, Sigrid and Armand came on the second. Pickings for a floe were rather slim. We’ve been trying to find kilometer diameter floes, this one was more like a few hundred meters. The installation went super well. It took a little under 3 hours. We then sent Sigrid and Bruce off to do site 6. This went so well that they also had time to do site 12. Great day of flying for Daniel. It was a very upbeat meeting tonight; science cargo was unloaded today and people are psyched. Here are the stats for Site 3.

Site 3: Storage module is SM3484.

Thermistor hole: Hi=1.65, Fb=1.35 m. Thermistor string was configured same as site 4, four in a row with the fifth one doubled up between 1 and 2 and the string installed so that the bottom of 1 is at the surface.

Stake 93: Hi=1.71, Fb=1.48. Initial readings of thickness gauge is 1.015 on stake and the end of the tape is 22 cm above the surface.

Stake 94: Hi=1.71, Fb=1.48. Initial readings of thickness gauge is 1.015 on stake and the end of the tape is 29 cm above the surface.

Stake 95: Hi=1.73, Fb=1.48. Initial readings of thickness gauge is 1.26 on stake and the end of the tape is 25 cm above the surface.

     Good news from Jackie regarding the Louis. As a contingency they will put in the southwest supersite if we can’t get it done by helo. Flying weather was good again, but Robert is still sick so we only have one helo. In spite of that we decide to do a supersite in serial, rather than parallel mode. The CRREL team left first to install our mass balance stuff and drill holes for everyone. We flew out 50 km picked a floe and landed. Unfortunately it was a crummy floe, too much rubble. So we lifted off moved around a km and tried again with better success. We installed our mass balance equipment in good form, but had trouble with the underwater pinger. Its not clear if its working properly. Drilling holes was tough. Lots of 10 inch holes with one through a 3 m ridge. The thickest ice of the experiment and we have to put a 10 inch hole through it. In lieu of an evening meeting we watched a video of this summers cruise of the Des Groseilliers ending with the installation of SHEBA.

     Beautiful weather this morning, though its a bit breezier. For helo ops the plan is to finish site 1, then try to do the JIC buoys. If there is any time left, do some surveying of the SHEBA floe. After breakfast Bill and I went over the Louis to help Jackie pack things up for shipment to the Des Groseilliers, Bruce was off flying with Sigrid. Then it was off to the hut that Bill built for box unpacking and organizing. We have most of our stuff except for the thickness gauge stuff; wire, cross pieces and chain. The weather gradually deteriorated throughout the day, with winds increasing and visibility decreasing. By supper it was an all-out blow, 30-40 winds and snow. Super site 1 was completed, but Bruce and Sigrid were turned back by weather before the JIC buoys could be deployed. This evening, for the first time this experiment, the CRREL ice team was all together for a meeting.

     Flying weather is bad, no contrast. After a quick meeting with Andy it was off to the ice. Bill found all of our stuff, so Bill and Bruce made thickness gauges while Jackie and I scouted sites. The light was somewhat flat and we were having a hard time finding a decent site near Ed’s tower. We put in a placeholder and gave up. There were areas of snow that were visibly darker. We then decided that a change in venue was needed, so we hiked over the local ridge and found that things were much nicer real estate. We selected not one, not two, but three sites; a supersite, a melt pond site and a ridge site. After lunch the four of us went over to install the pond and supersite. Got the pond site totally completed and the supersite 80% done. We had a small problem with the thickness kits getting to flights to work together. All the setup notes are in Jackie’s book. Curfew for the Louis folks was extended to 1930 tonight.

     Flying weather looks very promising. Came up with a plan last night to use one chopper to install the remaining 2 JIC sites and the other to do local floe stuff like mapping, site selection and aerial photography. Jackie, Ed and I took off in 366 (Des Groseilliers) chopper to fly the perimeter and look for potential PAM sites. We found candidates for young ice, rough ice and smooth ice. The young ice is also a potential backup runway. We’re going to put out a mass balance site at the young ice location, which will also serve as the anchor for a chain of 1 km spaced stress sites that Jackie will install. Afterwards Bruce, Jackie and I loaded up two stress sensors sites into the chopper and started deploying her "chain" of sites. We got the first one deployed quickly (35 minutes) and went off to the second when the weather almost instantly closed in. So it was straight back to the ship. I’m glad we weren’t at site 2. Returning to the ship at 1645 the Louis announced that the crew transfer would be at 1800. So it was a mad flail for everyone to get ready. We had to transfer the remaining CRREL equipment as well as get Jackie and Bruce moved. The CRREL ice team is now all aboard the Des Groseilliers.

     This morning Bruce and Bill went out to find a road to "Baltimore", the young ice site. Jackie and I finished installing site 202-the local supersite. In the afternoon Bill and Bruce worked on the road some more while Jackie and I installed a 500 m line extending over the ridge through Site "Quebec" and out. Then we did a 500 m snow survey (every 5 m) and a 100 m albedo transect. Light was fading during the albedo measurements and the incidents were pretty low. Sky conditions were complete overcast some brightening to the south. Took a site photo looking down along the transect.

     Another nice day with light winds and morning temperatures around -18C. Its SHEBA Indian Summer. Our first goal is the stress sites 1 and 2 km counterclockwise from Baltimore. We had problems with the 2 km site (Odessa) since it was hard to determine where the edge of the main floe was. After considerable wandering around we picked a site. Summary is in Jackies notes. Then it was off to the 1 km site (Wilmington) which was much smoother. Took some site photos at the end of a roll of film. We got back to the ship around 1400 had a quick snack and went back to Baltimore with a mass balance site and a stress site. We put the mass balance site in the young ice (Hi=38 cm). The young ice is about 120 m across and 400 m long. Jackie put stress sensors in the young ice and in the adjacent thicker ice. Did a snow survey with lines perpendicular and parallel to the young ice. New roll of film with site photos of Baltimore at the beginning. Returned to camp at 1800 and received a message to meet the chopper coming in from site 2. They got part of the site deployed before the visibility deteriorated. The good news is the radiometers and POP buoy were deployed. The bad news is that the thermistor string, acoustic sensor and tiltmeter were not.

     This morning Bruce and Bill went out to blaze the trail to Milford and Dover, two of Jackies stress sensor sites. Meanwhile Jackie and I worked finding a thermodynamic site near the proposed location of the 20 m met tower. After some looking we found a site which we named Pittsburgh. We spent the rest of the morning installing the thermistor string. We couldn’t do the thickness gauges since we were missing a wrench needed to change adapters on the Jiffy. After lunch it was team picture time with the SHEBA scientists and most of the crew of the Des Groseilliers. We decided that there probably wasn’t enough time to install Milford and Dover, given the long commute. Instead we installed Delaware, the central stress site. Delaware is about .75 nm from the ship situated in the middle of the stress arc. Upon return Bruce and I hooked up the thermistor strings at Pittsburgh, but they weren’t working. Bruce swapped the box and everything was fine. We are also having problems with the pingers. It made be due to the program or to the pingers needing more time to warm up. The first rotation is tomorrow and this is the last night for the SHEBA deployment team, so extra treats are in order.

     Beautiful morning; no fog, light winds and T=-20. Bill and Bruce took an early run around the runway. Once the sun comes up (around 0900), we start packing for Milford and Dover. We decided to take the direct route to Dover rather than following the main road through Rehobeth. This is a great idea until the fog rolls in. But through effective use of the GPS and intersecting the Milford-Dover "road" we find Dover with little difficulty. Installation went like a charm, as we’re really getting this routine down. Jackie and I did a 2-line, parallel-perpendicular snow survey. Then it was off to Milford to repeat the routine. The fog has lifted somewhat and we can see the ship. We can also see the arrival of the Twin Otter. After Milford it was Rehoboth and another snow survey. We also spent 15 minutes investigating the local lead. The lead is about 200 m from the stress site and is 150 m wide with around 5-10 cm of new ice. There were some beautiful frost flowers on the surface; nice, very large dendrites. Jackie and I also looked at some more at the melt pond "shefs". Just like leads only smaller. Stopped at Atlanta on the way home to get some thicknesses. Just before Atlanta we found a huge melt pond that has runway potential. Got back to the ship around 1400 and had a snack. I met Wayt Gibbs and Malcolm Brown from Scientific American and the NY Times. We got together briefly on the bridge for a discussion with Dick, the Captain and me. I had to leave to help finish mass balance site Pittsburgh with Bill, Bruce and Jackie. Afterwards Jackie and I went out to Quebec to check on things. There were a few science highlights at the evening science meeting. Jamie’s CTD data shows fresher water (27 vs. 28) with twice as much heat as AIDJEX, indicating an extensive summer melt. This is consistent with the ice observations. Also Igor talked about his dive. The bottom had the hard glazed appearance of melting ice. There was no evidence of new growth.

     We had a beautiful sunrise this morning, red skies and we actually saw the sun before it disappeared into the ever present low stratus. Of course the sunrise was at 0930, a reminder that we’re losing daylight in a hurry. This morning we lead a field trip to Baltimore consisting of the CRREL Ice Team (Jackie, Bill, Bruce and me), Ed, John Militizer, Miles and reporters from Scientific American and the NYT. Jackie and I played tour guide to the reporters, while Bill and Bruce setup a 200 m snow survey line. After the tour the four of us worked on installing 10 thickness gauges on a perpendicular line from the lead edge into the thicker ice. It proved to be a much harder job than expected. There was deformed ice at the edge and we were getting thicknesses of 3 m and greater. We can only go to 4 m with the thickness kit, so it was tough. We didn’t get back to the ship until 1530, so we more or less called it a day. We spent the rest of the afternoon building thickness gauges and getting things ready to go. 33 gauges done and 67 to go.

     It looks like GMA is coming on Monday. They will not be broadcasting live, but will be filming various segments. Dick has arranged a number of interesting choices for them. After breakfast I gave the Captain and some of the crew an overview of SHEBA and a tour of the village. Meanwhile Bruce, Bill and Jackie were getting ready to install some ablation stakes on the main line. We spent the day installing 16 stakes along the line at spacings of 2.5 and 5 m. At times it was frustrating. Everyone is working hard and we’re working well as a team, but the equipment is letting us done. The auger in the thickness kit is worthless. The only way it will cut is if you lean on it. We tried running with two Jiffys-one with a 1 m section and the other with a two. In theory it was a great idea, but the one Jiffy didn’t run and you could swallow one of the bits without cutting yourself. Also 1/3 of the ablation stakes are too big to fit in the hole, and we’re running out of double crimps and copper wire. On he bright side everyone is handling the annoyances well, with laughter rather than anger. But it slows things down and I hate to see us working harder than is necessary. Passed out Tootsie roll pops to Bill, Bruce and Jackie for their heroic efforts.

     We decided to drill the ridge today. It was a beautiful morning with the moon high in the sky. Jackie and I took advantage of the morning light to look for possible melt pond sites out at the end of the main line. We found a possible pond and also a possible old ridge site. Laid out the 100 m tape, 50 m on either side of the peak and marked every 10 m for an ablation stake/thickness gauge. We used the Finn Bore to drill the thickness holes-it drills infinitely better than the thickness auger and besides we didn’t have enough flights for the auger. The work extremely well-we got all 11 holes drilled and the gauges installed. Tomorrow we’ll go back and finish up the ablation stakes.

     Windy (20 kt) and warm (-10C) this morning. Jackie and I spent most of the day installing the ablation stakes along the ridge line. It was a fairly straightforward task, but took a long time because the auger cuts so poorly and most of the stakes are too big to fit down a hole. So putting in the 11 ablation stakes took up a big fraction of the day. Bill and Bruce were at work trimming stakes and preparing jumper cables for the hot wires. Late in the afternoon Jackie and I did a snow survey on the main line to get an idea of the effects of the drifting. Spent part of the evening working on snow survey data.

     Warm (-7C) and not so windy. First we installed the tide gauge at supersite Quebec. The light isn’t great but we decide to check out the potential multiyear ridge out beyond Quebec. It proves to be disappointing-too thin, more of a hummock than a ridge. We leave install a couple of thickness gauges in the holes we drilled, leave a couple of stakes and head back for lunch. We checked out the ridge on the way to Atlanta in the afternoon-looks like a good bet for a multi-year ridge. We installed a bunch of stakes (check Jackies notes) and plan to return to install a thermistor string and more stakes. While we were working the Good Morning America flight flew overhead. Upon return to the ship Jackie was paged to meet the media. She is the main character in a piece on "life on the ice." She was wisked away to film dinner. The GMA crew was at the meeting today-so I passed out special treats in their honor: Macademia nuts, 3 Musketeers and Gummy Bears. GMA was filming on and off during the meeting. After the meeting they filmed Jackie going to bed-at 930. They ended the scene with a shot from the ice showing the light in her porthole going out. But they didn’t like her porthole, so they had Dean Stewart turn his light off.

     Its showtime this morning. A day in the life of Jackie on the ice. I had a early line-"Is the safety on." Not quite "I’ll be back". We then spent a hour or two driving snow machines in large circles on the ice. By the third time over the pressure ridge I was getting bored so I took it full throtle. I got decent hang time with snow machine, nansen sled and akio. Finally we got to the site where Jackie was interviewed, while Bill, Bruce and I unloaded boxes randomly in the background. It took a couple of tries before we unloaded them properly. When the interview was over they can over to me and said, "OK Don its time for your science piece. What ice thing can you do in 5 minutes that is visually striking." I decided to drill a thickness hole in a melt pond. They were dubious until we drilled through and sent water gushing in all directions. So "Michael and I drilled a hole, spattered water everywhere, and then I said there is the Arctic Ocean. We then measured the ice thickness (2 feet 3 inches) and talked about how there was 10,000 feet of cold water underneath. Then we did it 3 more times from different directions. I was profound, brillant and witty, not to mention good looking, but most likely doomed to the cutting room floor. We’ll see.

     Had lunch with Peggy Hartmann who told tales of how "cute" Kathy and I were romancing in the IMA. After lunch, away from the scrutiny of the media, we went back to work and installed site Seattle. Seattle is located beyond Quebec near the snow "mainline." Seattle is a biggish melt pond with hummocks around. We named two of the most prominent hummocks St. Helens and Rainier. We are also in the process of installing an "X" of thickness gauges covering ponds and hummocks. We have 6 in place and will probably do another 10 or so.

     Went out to Seattle this morning to add some ablation stakes. We only had 8 of the the modified stakes. The ones that Bruce and Bill cut to fit into the 2 inch auger holes. Seattle is turning into a maze of ablation stakes with an array of lines across melt ponds and hummocks. The Twin Otter flew in this morning so GMA could get some aerial footage. After their flight Andy organized joy ride tours of the floe for the ships crew and SHEBA scientists. Bruce flew along to get a few aerial photographs on the digital camera. After missing lunch Bruce and Bill spent the rest of the afternoon making more stakes, while Jackie and I went to Cleveland to set up a snow survey line. With all the rafting the snow is a bit deeper here. Its an interesting site with lots of rafted ice. On the road to Cleveland (I-80) there is a nice 5m tall first year pressure ridge. Meanwhile, back at the camp the search continues for a lead so that GMA can show the ice, atmosphere and ocean.

     The Good Morning America crew is scheduled to leave at 9:00 this morning. The combined Des Groseilliers crew and SHEBA science team are supposed to meet at 8:30 by the gangplank to do our hearty "GOOD MORNING AMERICA!" cheer. But guess what. The good news is that we found the lead that GMA was looking for. The bad news is that is right through the middle of the runway. At 7:00 Jumper called the bridge and said "Andy, we’ve got a problem at the runway". Not quite "Houston we have a problem", but still pretty good. There was a 4 foot crack right across the middle of the runway. So in the cold and darkness of the Arctic morning two parallel surrealistic scenes unfolded: a large group of people stood shouting Good Morning America, while a small group got construction material to build a runway bridge across the lead. The bridge worked and GMA left, with one last bit of Arctic excitement.

     After those thrills it was back to business. We finished site Seattle and broke the century mark on thickness gauge -the count is now at 102. Jackie and I took a quick snowmachine ride to check out the new lead. There were some frost flowers, but nothing spectacular. In the late afternoon we all went to the multi-year ridge site - "Tuktoyaktuk" to install a thermistor string. Thats the last of our mass balance boxes. All 10 have been installed. Not bad at all.

     The weather was beautiful. Sunshine all day, temperature around -20 to -25 C and not a bit of wind. It was one of those days when it a joy just to be working outside in the Arctic. We saw a beautiful sunrise and a magnificent sunset. The fact that they were only 5 1/2 hours apart tells us that nightfall is approaching.

     Went to Tuk to finish the thickness gauge array. Tuk is a nice multi-year ridge. A little on the thin side, but about the best we can find. We have an array of stakes with two lines crossing the ridge and one line running across the crest of the ridge. Jackie has the detailed map in her notes. It felt noticeable colder today. We had to return to camp to thaw out the thickness kit at one point. Tuk is done-a thermistor string and a bunch of thickness gauges.

     At the end of the day we checked out the runway lead. It was around 3 m across and closing. There were some frost flowers on the lead ice, but nothing spectacular. Spent the evening starting to organize all the thickness gauge data. That is when it didn’t interupt the Tetris tournament. Bruce is in first place.

     Nomenclature plays an important role in science and we have developed our own. Our radio handle is "CRREL Ice Team" and of course we have our given names Bill, Bruce, Jackie and Don. However, today Bill and Bruce explained that we should use pronouns whenever possible. They explained that Bruce and Bill are always "we", as in "What do we have to do now." Jackie is always "she", as "She said to..." Don is "he", as in "He is still trying to make up his mind." Finally Jackie and Don together become "it", as in "It decided to instrument that ridge and we have to drill 8 m holes."

     Time to fill in the gaps in the first-year ridge. We’re adding 9 more stakes to give us a total of 20. We did 5 holes and got thickness ranging from 2.5 to 6.2 m. One hole was 6 m of ice, then .7 m of water, then another block. These ridges are very complicated. Igor Melnikov brought out his underwater camera, which gave us a chance to get a long distance look at the underside of the ice. We’re going to try to get some more video in the next few days and then again in the spring and summer.

We tried out the thickness gauges at Pittsburgh and Quebec. The generator-Variac combination worked well as long as the gauge handle wasn’t stuck in the ice. The Variac is on its last legs-I think its from IGY. We’re going to ask John to bring a replacement.

Under the illumination of the low sun angle the snow surface had a very interesting appearance. There were large bands of lighter and darker looking snow. At first we thought that this denoted ponds and hummocks, but the areas were bigger than those features. After some looking and thinking we decided that the light and dark were due to the presence of surface hoar in some places, but not others. In fact when looking towards the sun the smooth (no hoar) snow surface looked brighter and the the rough hoar covered surface looked darker. Looking away from the sun it was the opposite-smooth darker and hoar brighter. This all makes perfect sense considering surface scattering of the direct beam. The only question is why was there hoar in some places and not others. There were quite distinct lines of demarcation between the two. We’ll talk to the met guys and see what they think.

     Sunset was beautiful, but eerie. The sun was a crimson orb, devoid of heat, suspended on the horizon. With the vast expanse of white with sillouetted ridges and a haze of ice crystals you could easily imagine that you were on the Martian ice cap. Come to think of it CRREL should be involved in the planning for manned missions to Mars.

     After dinner it was time for a practice night mission. We went out and did a snow depth survey along the "main line". It was a beautiful night, a little ice crystal haze, but clear skies above. At the end of the main line, away from the lights of the ship, we stopped to watch the aurora and do a little star gazing. There wasn’t much color in the aurora, but lots of activity.

     Set the clocks back one hour to mark the end of Daylight Savings time. It seems like winter-temperature of -29, clear skies with lots and lots of haze and diamond dust, but luckily no wind. Forget DST, its almost time for daylight to end! Sunrise and sunset are about 9:30 and 3:30 and we’re losing about 15 minutes a day. This morning it was off to Baltimore to "finalize" the site. Basically make sure its completed and ready for the night shift. We took a full set of measurements; snow survey, ice thickness at stakes, and a core. We also added reflectors to things to make them easier to find. After Baltimore we hit the road to visit three more of the stress sensor sites: Wilmington, Odessa and Delaware.

     In the afternoon we went through the same routine at Atlanta. This time it was added reflectors, a snow survey, and reading the gauges. The evening was spent organizing thickness gauge information to get ready for John.

     Preparations for our departure continue. In the morning Bill and Bruce went to Tuk to put in ground wires. Jackie and I added a 200 m spur road on the main line snow line. You go to stake 5 and hang a right. We also put in 50 m post all along the main line. Bill and Bruce also put ground wires in Seattle. Jackie and I attempted to map the pond coverage from stake 6 to 5 along the main line and then from 5 to 5a along the spur line. The idea is to see if the ponds return to the same place next summer.

I attended a PI meeting after dinner regarding what happens in November after we all leave. The key is going to be to find someone for John to buddy up with, both the thickness gauges and the snow surveys work best with 2 people. After the meeting it was time for a night mission to Tuk. Things went well. Doing the snow surveys and the thickness gauges is very doable as long as you have a partner. I have to get myself a headlamp, they seem pretty neat. There was a lot of diamond dust in the atmosphere so it wasn’t the best conditions for star and aurora gazing.

     A warm, windy day. It was "switch" day. Jackie and I did a set of thickness measurements on the ridge, while Bill and Bruce did a snow survey on the main line. The ridge is difficult for thickness gauge measurements because its so blocky. Partway through the exercise Jackie was paged for a phone call. You never know about these phone calls, so she went back to the ship to check. It turns out that it was a magazine reporter that wanted to interview her. Ahh, SHEBA fame and fortune. At noon Jackie and I did an albedo traverse. Pretty dull data. There was hardly any light. Incident Kipps were around 0.12.

     Jackie and I spent the day doing thickness gauges along the main line and Seattle. It was a beautiful day sunny, calm and temperatures around -20 to -25 C. Bruce worked on dataloggers and Campbell programs. I also took a bunch of digital images hopefully for use in my Orcas Island talk. Bill did some packing and rearranging in the hut. We actually ate lunch today, since everyone assembled for a group picture at 11:30. After dinner worked on data some. Its difficult to believe that in a couple of days we’ll be gone. But we are making good progress preparing for John.

     At 2:30 AM a trick or treat lead opened up right through the ship. The lead came up the stern following the ship track and continued beyond the bow out towards the runway. A closer examination showed that the lead didn’t follow the ships track from the edge of the floe, but picked it up a few hundred meters from the stern. Got up at 2:30 AM and helped rearrange power lines etc. Another small crisis at 7:00 AM; the ship was frozen on the port side and was drifting away from "camp". Jumper remedied this situation by hooking the bulldozer to the ship and giving a tug. After breaking the ship free of the ice on the port side, the ship was tightly moored to the starboard side. By the time breakfast was over it was business as usual.

     After lunch, with Tanneil’s help we installed the ceremonial Gauge 100. We took lots of pictures. Did a little Halloween decorating in the cafeteria and put out some bowls of candy. Spent the evening working on data and getting stuff ready for John.

     The science rotation starts today. The Twin flys out from Deadhorse, circles for 30 minutes and flies home. Its just too foggy to land. Conditions improve by the afternoon and the rotation is made right around dinner time. Spent the evening going over things with John.

     At breakfast found out that the Twin is in the air, so its time to go home. Packed up my gear and put a duffel bag in a room on the main deck. Cleaned and vacuumed the room, said my goodbyes and thank yous, and had one last unsuccessful try at Tetris. Jackie, Bruce and I, along with 7 others were off at 10:30, with Bill to follow on the afternoon flight. We had beautiful flying weather, with clear skies and great views of the ice. We also had suspense-would we get to Deadhorse in time for the "Jet". It is going to be close. We landed at 12:50, the Jet leaves at 13:15 and in a scene reminescent of O.J.’s airport Hertz commercials we race from ERA to Alaska Airlines and just make the flight. Its air SHEBA. There are 22 SHEBA folks heading south. All goes well until we hit Anchorage where customs is not ready for us. Everyone misses their flights to wherever, but we get to Seattle by 22:30.

     A nice day of relaxing in Seattle – hit REI and Gameworks.

     Stopped by UW and talked to Tom, worked on ACSYS talk and let Kinko’s be my office away from home. Headed up to Rosario in the afternoon. Arrived at the resort at 8 PM to find that due to a mixup my room was not ready. Not to worry, we’ll just put you in the honeymoon suite. Pretty nice, there is even a remote control for the blinds.

     Attended ACSYS conference and gave my SHEBA overview talk, which was warmly received. Spent the afternoon at the poster session and talking to people about SHEBA. Left for Seattle on the 440 PM ferry to Seattle. Time for a cheeseburger at Kidd Valley and the red-eye home.

     Back home at 1000 AM. Overlapped for 1 hour with Kathy before she had to leave, but she will be back tomorrow. Its great to be home.

     Left Hanover at 11:55 AM on a beautiful warm sunny day. Flights to Boston and MSP were fine, but was delayed in MSP because of a spectacular thunderstorm. After an hour delay it was off to Anchorage and a short (10 PM - 5 AM) stay at the Marriott Courtyard.

     Left Anchorage at 6:25 AM (half asleep) for beautiful and cold Barrow. During the stop in Fairbanks someone walked up to me and said "Excuse me are you Don Perovich, I saw your picture on the SHEBA Web Page." Unfortunately it wasn’t a baseball scout, but a fellow SHEBA participant. Got to the airport in Barrow and was met be Dian who said "How would you like to go to SHEBA in 15 minutes." Sure, why not. While I was waiting for my bags, someone said "Why if it isn’t Don Perovich". It was Richard Glenn who was at the airport picking up his daughter who won the state science fair.

Off in the Otter to SHEBA. It was a nice, though somewhat cramped two hour flight. Five people and half a ton of groceries. It was great to be back, but there was a certain Twilight Zone element. There was strong memories and recognition of the ship and the camp, but it was all rearranged. The main camp has moved about 400 m north of the ship and there is a ridge where the old camp was located. Speaking of ridges they’re everywhere. To get from the ship to the displaced camp you have to cross a mongo ridge that a pass was cut through. The ridge has some big meter plus blocks-I try to make some measurements.

After lunch I walked out to camp. Things have been considerably cleaned up. All extraneous stuff is back on the ship. The Ocean plywood hut has been abandoned. It was sinking due to drifting. One of the met huts is basically below the surface of the snow. Our hut is fine because it has been moved twice. During this tour I ran into John and hear that there was an expedition to Baltimore. Sounds great.

     Its definitely harder to get to Baltimore these days with leads and ridges to cross. The leads were closed for the most part. There was only one dicey area where we had to look for a crossing. Power through for safety! John and I did the thickness gauges, the snow survey and downloaded the loggers. He realigned the snow survey, since the old one disappeared. There is a huge ridge just beyond the thickness line. It definitely dwarfs the old thick portion near the lead edge. It makes you wonder with all these big ridges - where were in the fall. Are we getting anonomalously large deformation this year, or did all of last years features melt during the summer of 97. Unfortunately when I got back I realized that the "empty" storage modules sitting on the table were not empty. Hopefully it won’t be a problem, I’ll just swap them on the next trip to Baltimore.

     A beautiful sunny morning. Ahh springtime in the Arctic. Went out to Quebec and Seattle this morning. The going to Seattle is much more difficult that in the fall. There is some new ice (Feb 6) to cross as well as a couple of rubbly working areas. We lost a couple of gauges at Seattle and there is a new ridge at one end, but for the most part its still intact. Quebec 1 has a small crack between the box and the thermistor string. Retrieved the storage modules from these 3 sites, while John did the mainline ice thickness measurements.

     John and I then went on a road trip with the met guys to Atlanta-just so I could see what is looks like. Its the most similar of all the sites, though our snow survey line has shifted somewhat. While the PAM folks were fixing things we zipped over to Tuk, though zip isn’t quite the word. We had to leave the machines and scramble the last 200 m. It was rubble and ridges all around Tuk, the gauges across the road were long gone and the new snow survey line (a few days old) was skewed by tens of meters. But Tuk was still there. You almost wanted to cheer. Tuk is surrounded by rubble and blocks, but is still there. At the risk of antropomorphizing - Tuk is one tough site. But they all are. Who knows what the future will bring, but they all have hung in there for 6 months.

Matthew and John arrived so showed them around the local sights/sites. During the tour I switched storage modules on Pittsburgh and the Ridge so we have them all. The Ridge box had to be dug out since it was buried by the spindrift.

     April Fool’s day and John’s day to head home. Got all the storage modules dumped and the files transfered so John will have full set to take home. We went out to the hut so he could talk me through the Jiffy’s, generators, and Finn bores.

In the afternoon did an albedo transect more or less coincident with Matthews first snow line. The data and details are entered in the Kipp.xls file.

     Its a beautiful bright sunny day with no wind at all. There is a modest lead that opened yesterday morning about 200 m off the port stern so off I went to do a little sampling-Leadex Redux. Took some photographs on the first roll of film just after a balloon photo. The ice sample was 5.6 cm thick with some frost flowers on the surface. Unfortunately it was impossible to reach the flowers, but they were nice looking long dendrites. There was evidence of some rafting in the middle of the lead. The ice was way too thin and soft to even think about walking on.

     After the visit to the lead I helped Matthew and Jon get rid of their snowmachine boxes. Everyone was disappointed to find out that in spite of the new looking Polaris boxes they were old machines. Oh well. Then went out to the hut to start working on the optical gear. Got the ASD stuff out. It would be nice to run it off of batteries if possible and avoid the generator.

I took the ASD to the lead in the mid-afternoon to try and measure some albedos and transmittances of lead ice. I found that, at least for leads, this is definitely a two person job. By the time I got everything set up the lead had begun to open and I was dealing with open water instead of ice. A couple of sightseers came by who I asked to hit the spacebar for me. Sampled an open water albedo that should be good and made some transmission measurements at different depths in the water which are questionable at best. Sky conditions were CO-SDNV.

     First science meeting of the shift tonight. "Welcome to SHEBA. Its springtime in the Arctic. The sun is back, the frost flowers are blooming, the bears are stirring and the activity at SHEBA is increasing. But before we look forward and plan for the future, lets pause for a moment and look backwards into the past, for today marks the 6-month anniversary of Ice Station SHEBA..." I provided goldfish, m+m’s and macadamia nuts to mark the occasion.

     Warm (-15C) and cloudy with light winds (<5 kt) this morning. After breakfast the ship machinist turned down one of the arms so I could jury rig a setup for the albedometer. Afterwards it was off to Pittsburgh. Matthew and Jon showed me their radar, then I did the thickness gauges at Pittsburgh. I then recruited Matthew to help me do the mainline snow survey. Matthew brought along his magna-probe which is a fancy ski pole with a sliding basket connected to a Campbell. You push the probe in, the basket slides, you push a button, and the Campbell records the thickness. It only took us twice as long as writing the numbers down. Actually its really slick and you can do it much faster than the manual way. We just had some problems at the beginning with the battery disconnecting. The snow main line is definitely different than in October. Stakes 5 and 4 have been displaced off the straight and narrow by about 75 and 50 m respectively. It also looks like stake 3 is new. There are detailed notes on the line in the snowsurvey XLS file. It now has rubble, ridges, leads and cracks. The was also some shear on the thickness mainline. There was a 1m offset between stakes 92 and 120. Stake 120 was in rubble.

     In the afternoon did some optics at the portside lead. I selected four sites where I first did Kipp albedos, then SE590. The sites were within 30 m of one another and give an idea of the variability in the lead. The new albedometer has some bugs. The newly designed arm is a bit too long allowing the instrument to sag somewhat. Also the switching box is totally flakey and doesn’t work well. Sky conditions were CO-SDNV. Took photos of all the sites towards the end of roll 1. Here are the sites:

1: (1438) Rafted ice with a thin snow cover. There is 2 cm of fluffy snow mixed with frost flowers. The ice underneath is somewhat mushy. I=1.11, R=0.78.

2: (1450) Thin black ice-very clear-about 2 cm thick. I=1.00, R=0.08.

3: 6 cm thick ice with a sprinkling of frost flowers. The top 2 cm was frazil and the bottom 4 congelation. Took a salinity sample in T82. I=1.14, R=0.25.

4: (1500) Snow covered first year ice. This ice started growing on Feb 6. There is a 6 cm fluffy snow cover. I=1.11, R=0.94.

Dream dinner tonight-cheeseburgers, fries and onion rings.

Spent the morning getting caught up on notes and doing weapons training. Rene did a nice job of explaining both the shotgun and the rifle. Had two good shotgun rounds and one OK. Did better than I expected on the rifle. I had the best shot on the flare pistol, its the closest to throwing a football.

After lunch 7 of us went out to Atlanta; Jay, Jim Maslanik, Bob Stone, Neil Fisher, Matthew, John and me. Jim and Bob, with Jay’s help did their triangle transect measuring KT-19 temperatures and PAR albedos. I did the Atlanta ice thickness line and the snow survey. The snow survey was interesting because I used Matthew’s magnaprobe. It worked well-you can generate a large number of points in a hurry. I had almost 300 for the line. Some notes are: Point 144 is at Stake 2, 293 at stake 3. Stake 3 looks new. The last 10-15 m is in the lee of a ridge. Took a bunch of pictures on roll 2.

Upon return from Atlanta went out to the port lead to make some Kipp measurements.There were high thin scattered cloudswith SDCV-pretty sunny. Results are:

-(1652) Rafted ice site (site 1 from yesterday) with complete frost flower coverage+a little bit of snow. Frost flowers are 2 cm deep and almost look like snow only they are too big. I=1.44, R=1.01. Two site photos after Atlanta pictures.

-Site 3 from yesterday. Moist surface,partially covered by frost flowers. I=1.41, R=0.80. 2 site photos.

-(1715) Wet mushy new ice. 2 site photos followed by photo of snow blowing in the lead. I=1.42, R=0.34.

Ended the first roll of film with shots of camp and port-side lead from the bridge.

     Switched to Daylight Savings Time this morning, so now we are only 8 hours off of GMT. Unfortunately that just drags us further from local solar time. For our longitude we should be around 11 hours off of GMT, so solar noon here is around 1500. Oh well, I’ll just have to adjust the optical measurements accordingly.

During morning cleaning of PUV (only a slight bit of frost), started a new file with some dark readings at the beginning. Check the clock in Dell 320n notebook to determine UTC offset. Salinity sample T82 is 7.2 ppt. T156 is 17.5 ppt. Matthew’s sample from Atlanta is 20 ppt. This was a scraping of surface ice near the small ridge at Atlanta. I take this to be a good indication of surface melting.

     This morning I took several photos of the big ridge near camp. They were photos 12-16 on roll 2. These were big blocks, some as much as 2.5 m thick.

     Just after noon decided to a snow albedo profile line along the first 100 of the snow mainline. Sky conditions were haze and some high scattered cirrus but the sun was shining through-SDCV. Decided to try the albedometer. The values started off OK, but albedos got to be too high. I’ll have to check the new switching box to see if there is a problem. Results are in the Kipps spreadsheet. The patched together arm for the albedometer is too long and it sags making it difficult to level. I repeated the run with the old Kipp arrangement-those numbers looked fine.

     Off to the lead to try out the ASD and make some transmission measurements. Matthew came over and gave me a hand. Time was 1540 to 1600. Sky was partly overcast-solar disk occasionally visible (PO-SDOV). The ice thickness was 17 cm and there was 2 cm of snow/frost flowers. I took a core for salinity, which I think it was 9.5 ppt. It looked granular and was like mush, it seemed warm and very breakable. ASD worked well and the measurements went smoothly, though I still have to look at the data.

After the optical measurements, Matthew and I took a look at the snow and frost flowers. The very top of the snow had a salinity of 2 ppt. In contrast, the frost flowers were 60 ppt and the slush layer below was 90 ppt.

Had a good science meeting. Its fun to listen to all the interesting research thats going on at SHEBA. After the science meeting Dick, Jay and I discussed moving the camp. We all feel that a big move should only be a last resort. Small moves, as in the past, will be dictated by leads and ridges. In terms of preparing for various eventualities we are: 1) looking locally for good pieces of ice (Atlanta looks good), 2) arranging for Jumper for fly around within 10-20 km of the ship and 3) updating buoy analysis to get as good as possible indication of where we are going.

     Finally, grilled cheese day. I went wild and had 2 sandwiches. It was great. After getting organized I went out to Seattle with Matthew and Jon. I showed them around and we talked about where to survey. Matthew gave me some quick instructions on the smart stick. It could be a powerful way to look at surface ablation in the summer. I then worked on thickness gauges and did Seattle, Mainline and the Quebecs. I was a little clumsy about it. Putting the wire on a reel instead of a spool and making the alligator clips a little less slippery would help. We need to make it as simple (and light) as possible for the summer. Looked around in the Seattle ridge for the missing stakes, but didn’t find them.

     By this time (1400) it was bright and beautiful-sunny skies, no wind and temperatures around -10 C. Now is the time to do a BRDF! Unfortunately, by the time I got everything ready we were into patchy clouds. I decided to do a spectral albedo transect using the ASD. Even more unfortunately the ASD, which worked so well yesterday, was not working today. It could seem to find any light. I tried various things (turning off and on, switching batteries, rebooting the pc, switching fiber optics probes, going to manual operation) to no avail. The dinner horn was a good reminder to give the instrument a chance to warm up and me a chance to regroup. Straps are the sled should be made easier to use (or replaced). The hooks don’t want to grab onto the sled and they’re tough to loosed. Also, add a box for miscellaneous stuff between the two big box holders

Edited the weekly science report and e-mailed it to Dick for distribution.

     Another bright sunny day (high scattered clouds SDCV). A bit chillier than yesterday. When out to camp to work on the ASD. This morning it worked fine. Perhaps the problem was that yesterday I swapped the floppy drive for another battery and in some odd way that confused the com port arrangement. Drilled a hole at Seattle to get a base level for Matthew’s survey, data are 240 cm of ice, 26 cm of freeboard, and 19 cm of snow. Showed Ola around Seattle this morning. They are probably going to move the old Cleveland PAM station out there. The PAM data will make a nice complement to our mass balance studies.

Afterwards Matthew, Jon and I went on a foray to try to find the "unknown" orange box that can be seen from the bridge. I think its Delaware. We went to Atlanta then took off cross country by GPS and dead reckoning. Thanks to my trusty new binoculars we found it, and it was Delaware. Swapped the storage modules and helped Matthew and John do a 100 m snow line. Digging snow pits every 20 m we found an interesting feature. At 100 m there was a very heavy snowpack (>50cm) at the base of which was 18 cm of water on top of the ice surface. Looking at the surface there wasn’t any obvious explanation.

Got back to the ship at 1330 for the remote sensing voyage to Atlanta. Waited around for people to congregate, then finally left at 1415. At Atlanta Matthew, John and I sent up a 100 m snowline. I measured albedo every 2 m along the line and did some magnaprobing. Albedo notes are in the Excel file. Jon found an incredible depth hoar vug. Afterwards it was back to the ship for dinner and data reduction. There was some widening (to 6-12 inches) of the cracks on the way home.

     After lunch went out to Pittsburgh for some optical measurements. Did both Kipp and SE590 traverses. Descriptions and results are in XLS files. Took some site photos are roll 3.

     Special science meeting tonight to talk about 1) coordinating resources (snow machines, radios, weapons) 2) red tags for save me first, 3) aircraft overflights and 4) Smithsonian and KBRW visit. New locale for the science meeting is the bar.

     Its warm this morning around -15 C. There was more activity around the port side leads and cracks. The biggest has opened to about 20 m. When out there this morning with Jim,Bob and Taneil and made Kipp and SE590 albedos, repeated right after lunch and again just before dinner.

     This afternoon it was time for the old camp cleanup party. Excellent turnout of about 15 people. Part 1 of the cleanup was a snap. Part 2 was to retrieve 15 frozen in fuel drums. With great difficulty we got 4 of the barrels out and almost had 2 more, when we hit water. It was an impressive geyser. and put an end to the days festivities.

     Ridge-Pittsburgh AM, optics PM

     A brillantly clear morning. A bit chillier than usual -21C and the strong east wind continues unabated at 25-30 knots. After breakfast went out to the mainline to do a snow survey using the magnaprobe. Two days of wind has resulted in some activity. The portside leads have closed, there is some compression in the where the mainline crosses the February ice and there is one new conspicuous new crack. It runs diagonally from the ridge towards the ridge line going right between the stake and gauge closest to the Pittsburgh site. It continues on heading directly towards the 20 m tower, but petering out before it gets there.

     Right after lunch the plane came in bringing Jumper, KBRW, and the Smithsonian team (Holly and Jim). Matthew, Jumper, Jay and I went on a flight in the general area looking for other local floes. It was a beautiful day and the visible and contrast were superb. For all that has changed, one thing has remained the same. We have the best looking floe in the area. There are some other substantial pieces from the original SHEBA home floe in the area where we could move things to in a pinch. I took a roll and a half of photos-hopefully getting some good shots of the ship and camp. Matthew took some digital images.

     Afterwards did some optical measurements from ridge stake 41 back towards Pittsburgh. Took some site photos of the albedo line after aerial photos followed by shots of the crack.

     Dick and Jay Marble, a reporter for KBRW, showed up and I gave a little tour of Pittsburgh and the met tower. In the evening Dick and I briefed Jim Barker and Holly Menino, the photographer and writer from Smithsonian. A regular media blitz.

     Happy Easter! The Easter bunny came early to SHEBA, at 2:45 AM, same time as Halloween lead, there was two sudden lurches (around 5.2 on the Richter scale) and some grinding. Thumpety-thump-thump. After 3 days of 20+knot winds the ice was starting to ridge near the ship. No big problems though so I went back to sleep. One of Buster's huts is doing a slow-motion Titantic manuever. Its listing 10 degrees to stern-starboard and has around 10 inches of water in one corner of the hut.

After breakfast (serve yourself Sunday is brunch day) went out to the hut to put together the BRDF instrument and the IL1700. It took awhile, but I’m ready to do BRDF using the SE590.

     Brunch was a magnificent buffet, with these incredible chocolate balls-delicous. After lunch I gave Holly and Jim the tour to the camp. Matthew, John and I then zoomed off to Tuk for thickness gauges and snow work. Tuk has been hammered big time. There are a couple of significant of cracks inside the "A" of gauges. In one place a 1 m lead opened and froze so you can climb into it and look at the ice and snow stratigraphy. I read all the gauges and did the new Tuk snowline using the Magnaprobe. Stake 1 is still around, but the rest are history. I took a line in the general correct direction heading towards one of Buster’s sediment traps. I did 200 points at a spacing of approximately 1 m (72 to the new stake 2). Matthew and Jon did snow survey maps along our ablation stake lines. Drilled a "zero" hole for the snow survey line in the thinner ice near the apex of the "A"; stats were freeboard 1.9, thickness 2.05, snow 0.21.

     The wind continues-another day of +20 kt winds from the east and our drift to the west continues. After the Monday morning grilled cheese special, I opened up the new box of ablation stakes. Time to get the count back up to 100. Went out to Tuk-where Jon and Matthew were already working with Jim and Holly. I put in two stakes to reestablish the triangle across the road from Tuk. I didn’t put in a ground thinking I can just go wire-to-wire. I’m not sure that this will work, as I tried without success to melt out stake 3. The details on the installation are in the thickness file. Also talked to the Chief Engineer who turned down the adapter on the new Kipps so that it will fit into the SE590 tinkertoys.

     After lunch met with Dick and Jumper to try to call Andy, but he wasn’t around. We’ll try again tomorrow. Went out to camp to work on assembling the IL1700. Got that all ready to go. The sensors are separated by 35.2 cm, which when correcting for the 45o angle should be a vertical spacing of 25 cm. Then I went out to the young ice just before Quebec and drilled a ground hole using the 6 inch Finn Bore that I borrowed from Dean. It worked great-should be useful for the ASD underice measurements. Stats for the hole are in the thickness file. Buster gave a talk tonight about the lifestyle of one of last of the old ways Innuit. It was extremely interesting.

     Installed the IL1700 at Pittsburgh at 1045. Did an intercalibration at site by leaning the wooden rod against the Pittsburgh orange box so that the cosine collectors were horizontal.

There were large fluctuations during this time as clouds were moving across the sun. There is a 23 cm snowcover and 5 cm of ice above the top sensor.

     Went to Baltimore this afternoon. It was a major expedition with 9 people and 6 snow machines. We were gone a little over 5 hours. The road to Baltimore is far more circuitous than in the old days. Every so often we had to stop and chop our way through a ridge. The PAM station was buried in snow and had to be dug out. I did the gauges and what's left of the snow line using Matthew's magnaprobe. The new ridge at Baltimore is huge. I climbed to the top and looked south for other stress sensor sites, but to no avail. It looks pretty broken up down that way.

Finished up the weekly report tonight and sent it off.

     In the morning modified the IL1700 setup by getting rid of the spool and putting the connectors in a salinity container. Then I made a couple of thickness gauges for the Quebec lead. How nice to have to once again redrill holes in the bars so that the wire can fit through.

     After lunch it was off to the mainline for some serious albedos. I used the new albedometer and the SE590. The first pass was with the SE590 starting at Snow Mainline stake 2 heading back to stake 1. The line was about 10-15 m west of the mainline. There were a total of 25 measurements so about every 4-5m .Took some site photos with the SE590 and sled on top of the ridge. Then I repeated with the new albedometer in tripod "hopscotch" mode. Details are in the files. The albedometer measurements seem too high. I need to do an intercomparison with the old instrument and check with the met and ARM folks.

Worked up the albedo data tonight. Also looked at the thickness data-not as much growth as I’d like. Baltimore is only 1.35 m thick. That’s not much for first year. I expected more like 1.8 m.

     First thing this morning went out to Seattle with Ola and Jumper to talk about where to site the PAM station. Then I went to the ground stand off the stern of the ship to make some se-590 albedo measurements for Knut.

After lunch went out to the Quebec lead to make some ASD measurements. There were 3 basic sites: lead ice, lead ice with snow shoveled off and the Quebec 1 pond. Took some site photos. All the particulars are in the ASD spreadsheet. It appears that we may have had light level problems at the Quebec site. Lead data looked pretty good. Did the IL1700 on the way home.

     Talked to Dick about the future. On one hand the buoy tracks and ice edges look good. On the other hand it was a warm winter and if its an early melt season we could have a problem. Spent the rest of the evening reducing the ASD data and looking at the ice thickness file.

     Almost like summer this morning. Air temperature of -8C and no wind at all. Snow is melting big time on the ship. This morning put in a 100 spur line off the snow main line at stake. This line will be used for albedo measurements. After this I put in 2 thickness gauges into the Quebec lead. Data are in the ICETHICKNESS spreadsheet.

     After lunch I took Holly along for some albedo measurements. Did the new albedo line every 5 m with the Kipps and every 5 from 0 to 50 and every 10 from 50 to 100 with the SE590. When this was done I took Holly over to the Blue Bayou and then read the IL1700. Worked up the optical measurements in the evening.

     Another "hot" day, -8 C and no wind. Last night we either had a bit of freezing rain or some rime icing. The met people can't agree. All I know is that the UV radiometer had 1 mm of icy stuff on it this morning.

     Taking advantage of the warm weather I read the thickness gauges at Seattle, the MainLine, Quebec 1, Quebec 2, Quebec Lead, the Ridge, and Pittsburgh. Thickness gauge data are all entered on thes preadsheet. The ice is still growing, but not much, maybe 1-2 cm/week. Worked on the data in the evening. It was Karokee night at Ice Station SHEBA.

     Used the magnaprobe to do the mainline snow line this morning. I also did the new albedo spur line off the mainline at stake 2. The deformation has definitely made the Mainline longer. There are small refrozen leads beyond Seattle and between Quebec and the ridge line. The shear between stakes 6 and 5 also lengthened the path.

     After lunch worked on the albedometer and Kipp intercomparison. Things are looking up. The albedometer seems to be working fine and the intercalibration on the Kipps may be slightly different. I’m going to do some more calibrations in the morning when there is a nice uniform cloud deck. After which is was off to the albedo spur line for a 100 m SE590 and albedometer traverse. No site photos were taken. Results are all in the spreadsheet.

     Went to Atlanta to read gauges and do snow line in the morning. Took CBS out to Seattle in the afternoon for brief interview and a look at my stuff-gauges and albedos. Terry came in on the flight and I showed him around the local area.

     Escorted CBS to film Matthew and John. They did great. Afternoon showed Terry albedo line and how to work Kipps and SE590. Also showed Lyn Symarski of NSF and Curt Suplee of Washington Post around.

     Another beautiful day. The Otter is in the air. Did some last minute backups and packed. Took the first otter flight of the day. We raced towards shore at an altitude between 200 and 300 feet. We were looking for bears, but didn’t have any real success. Got to Barrow around 1330. Hung out with Dian and Andy for a couple of hours Stopped at Barrow Search and Rescue-they have some impressive helos plus a Lear jet. They dropped me off at KBRW to get some pins. Hit the grocery store for a light supper, then off to the airport to wait for the jet.

     After plenty of flying made it home on schedule at 1800, though my bags were lost along the way. The stops were SHEBA-Barrow-Fairbanks-Anchorage-Seattle-Denver-Boston-Lebanon.

SUMMER

     Left home today on a beautiful spring morning. It was sunny and breezy and just the right temperature. It was a whirlwind dropoff; Carly at the Cradle and Crayon yard sale, Dan at Lightning Soccer, and Laura, Kathy and I to the airport. Left at 1100, Leb-Phl-MSP-ANC without a hitch. Not an empty seat on the MSP-ANC flight, with lots of "tour" people on the MSP-ANC flight. Ran into Scott Pegau at the Anchorage airport. Spent the night at the Courtyard by Marriott.

     Up early at 0430 to catch the 0630 flight to Barrow. Plane was only half full. Arrived Barrow on time, but missed the early Otter flight-it left at 0600. I’m scheduled to go out this PM. I checked into the Top of the World-might as well use my non-refundable room if only for a while. Meet Terry and Bill when they arrived at Barrow and got the SHEBA update. It sounded like thing went well for them and they had a great time.

     Woke up at 0500 as I’m still partly on east coast time. First day back on the ship and its grilled cheese day to boot. Before breakfast unpacked my stuff and checked various computer setups. Dell is definitely dead and is headed back with Ed. It could be a while before I get e-mail in my room, but I can use the desktop.

     After breakfast met with Tom, Bonnie and Hajo to plan the day’s activities. They said that every morning Terry would outline the days activities and they would break into teams and execute them. Tom and Bonnie are now masters of the helo gear. After the meeting I dug out my waders and bunny boots. Its getting a little to sloppy for mukluks. Unfortunately there is no sign of the black Tuf-Bin I shipped. Andy had said that he thought it was send out on the first flight. This could be a major problem as it has the calibration lamp, chest waders, hip waders, crampons and most importantly science meeting provisions.

     Walked out to camp myself to see the sights. Summer is definitely upon us-the snow pack is beginning to melt and walking is a series of intermittent knee-deep plunges into the snow. We now have two huts-the original and the helo-hut. Worked on rearranging the hut as it was in an ice properties mode. We’re need to police the area as there are empty and full boxes scattered about as well as a 6-week residue of ashes on the front porch that are melting like crazy. First thing I did was fix Laura’s bootjack which had broke in transit. Spent the morning rearranging and headed back to the ship for lunch. I wore my orange mustang suit and was sweltering beyond belief-it was way too hot.

     After lunch the 4 of us headed out. I switched clothes and tried out my new parka. Hajo and I did the snow mainline, while Tom and Bonnie were doing Kipps on the albedo spur. Getting to Quebec is dicey. The Quebec lead has been working forming rubble and flooded areas. It takes some looking to find a good, make that an OK, place to cross. There are bear footprints everywhere, up and down the mainline, back and forth through Quebec and over the ridge. There was a mom and cub set and then a big male set. The male’s prints were huge! No apparent damage. The Quebec 1 thermistor string broken at the joint between string 1 and 2, but I’m not sure if that was bears or ice motion. Tom and I started to do SE590 measurements, but the computer battery died. We had it plugged into the big battery, but the connector didn’t seem to be working. All of the connections were worse for wear (optics gear being more sensitive than coring gear), so some repairs are in order. Called it a day and took the computer and connectors back to the ship for fixing.

     Fog was in and out all day so flight operations were canceled.

     Decided to do some thicknesses this morning. Beautiful morning-scattered high clouds and no fog for now. I built a little snow and ice bridge to help traverse the Quebec lead and got the snow machine out to Seattle. Sometime, probably last evening, it was visited by bears, a mother and cub. Like all the other bears they walked along all the stake lines and by the orange box. If only we could just get bears to read all the thickness gauges. They probably wouldn’t even need a generator. Unfortunately, like me they tripped over the guy wires for the pinger. Unlike me they didn’t trip, they snapped the PVC in half. The bears also broke off one of Matthews hobos-some impressive claw marks in the snow. With some help from Bonnie we did Seattle, the Mainline and the Quebecs before lunch. The Otter finally made it bringing Scott, Sarah and Jinro plus a few others.

     Since it was so beautiful we decided to try for a helo flight. Spent some time planning the pattern-probably too much time since Terry had left an excellent description of what we should do. We got the camera loaded and the video and still cameras mounted on the plate, just in time for the weather to go down the drain. So it was off to the ice for more thicknesses. Jinro and I did the ridge and the daily chores; Il1700, UV, and 10 m photograph.

Pierre made a modified battery connector cable for the Dell notebook-maybe we can do some SE590 measurements tomorrow. After dinner talked to Claude some about the melt season and general things. Also talked to Julie who is the lead project officer for this segment. She works for Judy on the Single Column Model and decided she wanted to come up to SHEBA, so Dick hired her for a shift. Entered the thickness data- essentially no growth in the past week and the snow is melting.

     Today was the last flight of the 1 June rotation. Its amazing that the runway held together this long. It was an aircraft carrier today, completely surrounded by water. They had to ferry the cargo from the runway to the ship by chopper. It will be very interesting to see how we do the 23 June rotation. My box did arrive on the last flight, with 50 pounds of goodies. Apparently it arrived in Barrow on 28 May, but disappeared in Alaska air cargo.

     Ice conditions are getting sloppy in a hurry. The low parts of all the trails are filling up with water. The snow is melting and the meltwater is collecting at the snow-ice interface. We saw our first pristine melt pond today-just beyond the albedo line.

This morning Bonnie, Hajo, Jinro and I went out to Atlanta and Tuk. Hajo and Jinro did EM-31 work. Bonnie and I did the snow lines and mass balance measurements. We got done about 1330.

     Tom, Bonnie and I went out to the albedo line and did Kipps and SE590 visible. The SE590 was acting up. There seemed to be an intermittent problem with the RS-232 connector. I have a collection of site photos on the little camera. Pictures of Bonnie and Tom with the albedo gear.

     We had the first science meeting of the rotation tonight. There was a combination of new and old faces. Not as many people as expected. The Japanese TV crew bailed and there are fewer scientists. Everyone has their own room and there are some empty rooms and it isn’t very crowded at meals.

     Wind has picked up this morning- 15 kts from the south. We’re moving NE away from Russian air space. In a few more days the spring FIRE flight operations will be over. After breakfast the 5 of us got together to come up with our day’s wish list. Found out there was a Baltimore run- so Bonnie and Jinro went. Hajo is set for some permeability studies, while Tom and I are going to check out the bear damage at Seattle and try to fix the broken pinger stand. First I met with Yvon about the ASD mounts for the chopper. Before anything Tom, Hajo and I went dumpster diving in the pressure ridge and found 3 sheets of plywood to use as an ablation screen for our tent. Finally it was off to Seattle-me driving and Tom riding. Just before Quebec I got hit by a snowball by Tom. I figured he just thought I was going too fast, but he was waving his arms. Apparently the ships horn had blasted five times. The radio came to life with Claude’s whistling call (eerily similar to the way Kathy used to call Daisy) followed by "Bridge to Don-there is a bear heading straight towards you." Following protocol, along with everyone else, we came back to the ship. Actually it never got that close to us – maybe 200 m. But like all other bears it was headed straight to Seattle. Jumper and Alain ran it off. We do need to pay attention out at Seattle.

     After lunch, we tried again. Tom and I brought back the pieces from the pinger stand for repair. I did the snow Mainline while Tom read the ablation stakes at Seattle, Mainline, Quebecs. Jinro and I did the Ridge ablation stakes. Looking at the ablation data I decided to increase the frequency of snowlines and ablation stakes to every 2-3 days. Not much happening yet at the bottom so every 6-7 days is fine for now, though I expect that will change soon.

Melting is really kicking in-we lost 6 cm of snow on the mainline in 3 days. Its interesting the snow melts, the water drains through the snowpack, gets to the ice surface and collects in the low areas. The high places are pretty firm, but there are places where you step and there is 10-20 cm of water under the snow. Grains are definitely big and round-nice corn snow.

Climbed the met tower and took a picture. Then I reoriented the camera to look at our sites, rather that the scintillometer line. I can get Pittsburgh and Quebec in the frame.After the daily chores (IL,UV,photo) I did some "tent-keeping". Brought back a bunch of boxes and ice properties stuff back to the ship including bandsaw, chop saw and one core tube box. Also took the helohut box to the Pinkel pile. Note that this box has the probe for the steam drill and also has a propane bottle in it. Gave Jinro a tour of our data tonight. He seemed suitably interested and impressed.

     Tom and Bonnie are still having problems with the IR head-it doesn’t want to do anything. Our SE590 literally had a screw loose,but Bonnie and I fixed it. Dell #2 is having power problems. It doesn’t want to admit that there is an external battery attached. The charger is fine, but a battery with an identical connector is not. I’m using Jerry’s Compaq for now.

     I had planned on starting the day with a visit to Atlanta and Tuk for surface ablation measurements, but its foggy and snowy. It had snowed some last night. Instead Tom, Jinro and I went out to the albedo line. Bonnie was working on the ship calibrating the water level recorder and Hajo was processing some samples. The albedo notes are in the spreadsheet. In general albedos were a bit higher from the cm or so of new snow. As we were working, the snowfall increased-the Compaq got wet, but didn’t seem to mind. I think its slow-or at least spacey. Sometimes it will just pause for several seconds. Jinro and I finished the albedo line and I went to check the UV instrument and Jinro helped Tom and the kipps. Power went out in camp last night so I had to reinitialize the UV program. Just after the horn sounded for lunch there were 5 blasts-yet another bear sighting. This one off the stern. So I picked Tom and Jinro up and we headed back to the ship to safety and lunch.

     After lunch Tom and I went back out to finish the albedo line. Conditions had changed dramatically. The sun was coming out and the weather was turning bright and sunny with patches of clouds. We finished the line and then did every 5 m on the way back to provide a sunny sky / cloudy sky comparison. Then we extended the albedo spur another 100 m parallel to the ridge and added a 100 m perpendicular to the ridge in the middle. Basically the albedo spur is now a T with a 200 m top and a 100 m bottom. Tom did a snowpit right at the start of the albedo line. He has the notes. Took a quick look at Seattle and a bunch of pictures. There is a 20 m lead between our Seattle site and the PAM station. PAM is around 10 feet from the edge. This is potentially a great lead site.

More bears, this time a mom and two cubs out at Atlanta. The mom was pounding on the sled some and managed to break the chimney, otherwise no damage. Ended a roll of film with a panorama from the tower.

     A little chillier this morning-not quite so much like summer. Temperature was only –1 or –2, but there were 15-20 kt winds from the northwest. As a result the snow had a crunchy crust and the ponds had frozen over with 1 cm of growth. After a free-form breakfast (Sunday is brunch day) Hajo and I, along with Scott and Sarah went out to the airport lead. We put in 6 thickness gauges along a line perpendicular to the edge. Notes in the ice spreadsheet. Took some site photos-some with Hajo pulling the em device and some of Scott and Sarah with their boat.

     After a late brunch, Tom, Bonnie and I went out to the albedo line. Did the full 200 m with SE590 every 5 m and Kipps every m. Had to wait a few minutes for the sun to disappear, but after that it was pretty much CO-SDNV. SE590 still has intermittent flakiness. My guess is that it’s the RS-232 port acting up. The tipoff to a bad scan is if you have to "double send" if that is the case its best to retake the scan. Dell computer made it through on 2 batteries. I can’t figure out why it won’t accept the external battery through plug. One option is to get a connection that goes directly into the internal battery socket.

     After dinner worked on optical data. Still have some more data to catch up on-maybe tomorrow night.

     Another grilled cheese morning – ate 1 ½, Tom got ¼ and Bonnie and Hajo each got an 1/8. At our morning planning meeting decided to thicknesses. Shortly thereafter a mom and two cubs showed up headed towards Atlanta. Bonnie, Tom and I did Seattle in plus the snow line. Hajo and Jinro went out to the airport lead. The chopper ran the bears several leads beyond Atlanta. The lead at Seattle was working a little in shear, but crossing to stake 6 was easy. It was fun listening to the weird noises that the ice was making.

     After lunch, with the bear’s gone, Bonnie, Hajo and Jinro went out to Atlanta and Tuk to do the ablation stakes and thickness gauges. Tom and I went out to the airport lead to do some ASD measurements. Managed to get 3 sites done.

Had a good science meeting tonight – whoppers and rollos. Lots of interesting discussions about clouds and solar heat and rain and snow. The weekly temperature range has been –3 to 0 C. Not much but a degree of two makes a world of difference. A few days ago it was 0 C and melting like crazy. Then we got 1 cm or so of snow and it cooled off to –1 to –2 C and the ponds froze (2 cm thick today) and the snow firmed up. The snow pack is still big, rounded grains, but instead of having lots of water, the grains are all frozen together. This all implies that change is not continuous and monotonic, but rather event driven: rain, snow, a sunny day.

     Weather looked promising for flying today. Some clear patches to the NW with winds from the W. After breakfast we went up to the bridge and decided to load the chopper up with the photo equipment and stand by for the morning. Of course once we got all the gear installed it began snowing. Worked on yesterday’s ASD data while waiting.

     After lunch it was back to the bridge for another confab. The usual afternoon mix of sun, low clouds and snow squalls. Tom, Bonnie and I went out to do albedos. We figured we could get back to the ship in the time it would take to get dressed if we stayed on the ship. Sky conditions made the albedo work a little difficult, but we got through it OK. Still some intermittent flakiness with the SE590 even when using Tom’s hardware. That narrows the list of suspects down to the two cables-the white one is the prime candidate. We’ll test it next set of measurements. Did Kipps along the whole 200 m at 2.5 m spacing. Did visible and uv at 5 m spacing along the first 500 m. "Cold" conditions continued: the ponds have frozen about 3 cm and there is 1-2 cm of new snow.

     I woke up a little early this morning with sunlight streaming in my window. Beautiful clear skies, time to go flying. After breakfast Tom, Bonnie and I took off on a helo photo flight. We did the big grid at 6000 feet. There were some areas of patchy clouds along the northernmost leg, but for the most part we got a real good set of photos. It was good to see that conditions near our sites are the same as those far away from the ship. 20 miles out there are nascent ponds, so it isn’t just a ship induced effect. All in all a good mornings work.

     After lunch the five of us went out to do mass balance work. Bonnie and I did Atlanta and Tuk in record time then went to help out Tom, Hajo and Jinro. Hajo and Jinro did an EM-31 line from Stake 5 all the way in. We got done early so spent some time shoveling snow around the hut and enjoying the afternoon sunshine.

     A bright, beautiful morning at Ice Station SHEBA. Sunny skies with high clouds, light winds and temperatures near zero. Its still cold enough that the ponds are frozen over and the snow isn’t mush. A great day to work outside. In the morning Hajo, Jinro and I went out to the Seattle lead to put in some thickness gauges. We installed 5 gauges from the lead edge towards the Seattle main array tying in at gauge 34. It’s a lot easier to install gauges at 0C than at –30C. Crimping is easier with bare hands than mittens. The notes are in the thickness file. I took a few photos of the new line.

     After lunch it was time for optics. Since it fairly sunny we decided to use the integrating sphere instead of the standard cosine collector. There is plenty of throughput for this. In fact almost too much. We were running very close to saturation. There were still problems with the scan transfer. Right now my best guess is the white cable. These intermittent problems can be the toughest to deal with. In any event we did an visible albedo pass 0-100, an IR pass 0-100 (first of the experiment) and a big Kipp set 0-200 plus 100 m spur.

     Another bright and sunny morning at Ice Station SHEBA. Got the word that I’m flying down to Site 9 after breakfast to swap storage modules. The ice group decides that the morning will be "free play" and we’ll do mass balance in the afternoon. Immediately thereafter the fog rolls in putting a hold on my helo flight. I sat another waiting until 10 AM, then decided to go do the snow mainline. I got that done in time for an early lunch.

     After lunch it was finally time to fly. On the way to site 9 (13 nm from the ship) we flew over the new airport. It’s a big piece of 1.4-m-thick first year ice, probably started growing back in the fall. Its amazing what Jumper did in a day. There is a 2500 foot main runway, plus a 1500 foot cross runway-all marked and ready to go. You half expect to see a couple of 737’s on the ice. Swapped the module with no problems and headed back to the ship, stopping briefly to drop Jumper and Bob off at the new airport.

I did surface ablation at all the stakes out from camp; Pittsburgh, Ridge, Quebecs, Mainline and Seattle plus all the benchmarks. By the time I was done (1530) Tom, Bonnie, Hajo and Jinro had finished doing full mass balance at Atlanta and Tuk. Jinro, Hajo and I went out to the Airport Lead and did thickness measurements and lateral melt-no measurable lateral melt.

     Worked on data while White Squall was on as the evening movie.

     A bit cloudier and windier this morning. The wind has turned to come from the SE. Off we go to the NW again. Jinro and I made some ASD measurements this morning

0613A: 1050 Multi-year ice near the turnaround by the end of the ridgeline. Ice thickness was 2.38, freeboard (Jinro). Snow depth was 8-10 cm. CO-SDBV. I took one site photo from a distance. Jinro has a couple on his camera with me in the picture. Snow was wet and melting.

     After this I did a sequence putting the cosine collector in the 6-inch FinnBore hole looking down and lowering it in 10 cm steps. I filled the hole up with chips.

     After lunch it was back to the albedo line. Did a full 200 m of SE visible and Kipp. Tom and Bonnie did IR albedos for part of the first 100 m of the line. Took some photos of the line (after ASD site picture). Melting has kicked in again big time. The snow was sloppy and ponds were growing. Details are on the spreadsheet. Bonnie and I still had intermittent problems with transferring scans. I don’t know what it is. Theories include a loose connection, the cable leaking when it drags through puddles and how I push the send button. I think I’ll try a shorter cable.

     The fad these days is talking in French on the radio. "Timorie, c’est Don. Tom, Bonnie, Hajo and Jinro allons au Seattle." It keeps radio traffic to a minimum

     A bright beautiful morning with not a cloud in the sky. Sundays usually start slowly. There is no formal breakfast, just brunch at 11. Tom, Hajo and I were up early and decided to go do some mass balance work. I toyed with the idea of doing some BRDF measurements, but the mass balance has priority. I did the snow main line and along with Hajo and Tom did full mass balance at Seattle, Mainline, Quebecs, the ridge and Pittsburgh.

     The original after lunch plan was to have Bonnie and Jinro do Atlanta and Tuk, while Tom and I did BRDF and Hajo did tracer studies. However, moving the hut took priority. Our front porch has become a melt pond and the crack in our backyard has begun to work. Time to move. We’re over by the generator shack, so getting power shouldn’t be a problem. We emptied the hut, put it onto a Nansen sled, hooked it to one of the drove it over to the new site. Jumper and Bob helped greatly in the exercise. By the time we got done it was time for the evening chores and dinner. There was a great appetizer; shrimp crepes.

     Another bright and sunny day. Can’t beat the weather lately. We decided to take advantage of it and go flying. Once we mounted thegear on the chopper the fog rolled in. But we decided to persevere and wait. After the coffee break the fog had rolled through and off we went. It was a beautiful flight, only one very minor patch of low clouds-otherwise crystal clear. More open water, ponds and fragmented ice than the last flight. Ponds were mainly on the deformed (multi-year) ice. The flat first year was snow-covered and pond free. Took a whole roll of film, with some aerial shots of our sites at the end.

     After lunch it was off to the albedo line. Used the integrating sphere since it was a beautiful sunny day. Did the first 100 m with vis head, full 200 with Kipps. Tom and Bonnie tried to do the first 100 m with IR head, but the battery died. Tom and Bonnie installed the water level recorder.

     After dinner it was time for the science meeting. It was a good get-together, everyone brought a plot. Next week its bring an interdisciplinary partner. Should be interesting.

     On the logistics front the big news was a change in the rotation schedule. Ship based rotations on 24 July, 24 August, and 24 September. See email record for the details.

     The beautiful weather has departed- cloudy skies with fog today. Its an ablation day. Tom and I did surface ablation at the local sites and Bonnie, Jinro and Hajo did full mass balance at Tuk and Atlanta. More changes on the snow main line between stakes 5 and 6. There has been additional activity beyond Seattle-ridging and shear. Instead of being 80 m away in a NNW direction, stake 6 is now 40 m away in a NE direction from stake 5. There are some impressively big blocks rafted as well. The ridge line is a morass of deep snow with water beneath.

     We had big plans for the afternoon, but then the fog rolled in, so we adapted to stay closer to home. We made a series of optical measurements not too far from the hut. We’ve decided that in addition to the optics work on the albedo line we going to do a number of sites, a la Barrow 79 to get the optical properties of various ice types and conditions. I started this in the spring with the ASD measurements at the new lead, Quebec lead and Quebec 1. A few days ago I returned to the Quebec lead for a late spring set of measurements. Today we looked at ponds and unponded ice.

     Tom, Bonnie and I did an assortment of errands this morning. Went to the Chien de Maison to check the water level recorder, watched Hajo do some dye experiments and then went out to the Airport Lead to make ablation measurements. We also took a look at some of the big ice crystals/snow grains. I have a few photos of some of the grains. Hajo took samples for isotope analysis. But its pretty evident that it is rotting ice and not snow. Typically it is found on hummocky areas. The grains are huge and in their early stages show remnants of the ice crystal structure.

     After lunch it was off to the albedo line. Did a complete 300 m of Kipps, first 100 m of vis and IR SE590. Took some site photos down the line with Tom and Bonnie in the distance. After scouted around the Quebec lead for snowmachine route. The old one has eroded because of the lake caused by rafting. You can still walk across.Took a bunch of photos of the sites. Ended the day and the roll of film with a panorama from the 20 m tower.

     Another windy day, 20-25 kt from the SE, off we go to the north. After breakfast Dave, Jinro and I took the helo to Baltimore. The road is closed for the summer. Helo is a much nicer way to travel. Jinro and I did the gauges, the snow line, and swapped modules on the thermistor box and the stress box. Conditions at Baltimore were highly variable. There were places on the FY ice that still had snow, others that were bare, some that were ponded and a few that had internal melt ponds. The internal melt ponds were under a couple cm of ice and were a few cm deep. The snow line was 300 m long. The last 200 m was the original line, while the first 100 was the portion added during the winter. Got back just in time for lunch.

     After lunch first it was the snow mainline. The ridge is a major challenge. Once I went in up to my hip in snow and the underlying water was over my boot top. Stake 6 continues to move around. Its around 30-40 m from stake 5 to the NE. After the mainline I worked with Hajo and Jinro doing the ablation stakes. Took photos of all the ablation sites using the little camera. This will now become common practice. If the date option worked they should be annotated. The top m of the Quebec 1 thermistor string has fallen over again-I’ll try a better repair job tomorrow. Melt is arriving in a big way at Seattle several of the stakes are in ponds now.

We’re trying to quantify all the various melt processes, but trying to understand what is going on qualitatively is also quite difficult. Often pools of water collect under deep snow layers. This water could be from the melt water from the snow directly above, or perhaps it collects over a larger area. A good question is what is going on with the solar radiation incident on this. The snow is large grained and slopping wet, so there probably is decent transmission through the snow. What thermodynamic role do cracks play. As the snow cover melts the cracks appear and seem to melt faster than the surrounding ice. This could possibly weaken the ice facillitating the fragmenting of big floes into small floes. Another interesting area are the ponds that form adjacent to pressure ridges (in the subduction zone). These ponds are typically connected to the ocean via the cracks between individual blocks. Melting seems to progress fairly rapidly in these ponds with both deepening and lateral growth.

     The SE winds continue unabated, as we move north away from Barrow. This morning was a collection of odds and ends. Bonnie stayed to get caught up on paperwork. Jinro and I a) fixed the thermistor string at Q1, b) put in a deep ablation stake at Q1 and Q2, c) worked on the "pass" to Quebec, and d) made some S,T measurements in the big pond by the QL rafted blocks.

After lunch it was the albedo line. Did 200 Kipp, 100 vis and IR. Great diffuse conditions-CO-SDNV, light sleet. Jinro and I then mapped the 200 m line for ponds. We marked the start and finish of the ponds as well as the depth every 20 cm. Jinro has the data and is making a new spreadsheet in the computer.

     We got a few cm of new snow last night, giving Ice Station SHEBA a Christmas feel. The snow was wet and great for making snowballs. It was a mass balance morning. Bonnie, Hajo and Jinro went off to Atlanta and Tuk to do the full treatment, while Tom and I did surface ablation on the main line suite. I had an exciting experience just into the Quebec lead area. The ice had been working and a small hole had opened up, froze over slightly and had been covered with snow. It just happened to be right in my path. Up to the hip on one leg and up the knee on the other and it was a long way down. What I don’t like is with the magnaprobe you’ve got a 25 pound pack held in place with the shotgun sling.

     After lunch we modified the usual schedule to do Kipps on the albedo line to get the impact of the new snow on albedo. Jinro, Tom and I took care of this, while Bonnie and Hajo went to the airport lead to do permeability measurements and read the stakes. We got done a little early so we worked on our golf clubs for the minature golf tournament tonight. The golf tournament was lots of fun meandering through the corridors of the ship. I used an aluminum foil ball and a club made of a trail marker and a thickness gauge handle. I couldn’t buy a putt and ended up in the middle of the pack with a 38. Alain won with a 29. I took a bunch of photographs of various radiometers around camp for the AMS talk.

J     umper was able to fly out to the runway this afternoon. His report is that its bad shape and on the ragged edge of useability. He wants to check it again tomorrow. Not exactly good news.

     Following the new Sunday morning protocol I took it relatively easy. Worked on reducing data and getting caught up on paperwork. After lunch it was out to the albedo line. Did full 200 m with Kipps and vis, first 100 with UV. There appears to have been some draining of the ponds-not quite as much water on the line. Evening bad news is that the runway is dead. Time for Plan Bravo. We had an evening meeting to spread the word to the science team. Everyone is taking the bad news with good spirits. Andy is working on solutions.

     Partly cloudy skies this morning, looks like it will be a nice day. It was a mass balance morning. Tom, Jinro and Hajo did full mass balance on the Seattle run. Bonnie and I went to Atlanta for mass balance and for instruction in the art of PAM visitation.

By lunchtime the skies had cleared even more so we decided to go for a helo flight. Beautiful flying weather. We got the full box at 6000’ and at the end of the flight made several video passes at 6000, 5000, 4000, 3000, 2000 and 1000’. This should be good for camp mapping.

     News from the beach is good. Two options are being seriously pursued-the Polar Sea and the Super Puma. Broke my SHEBA career phone call record in one day. Called Vicki twice this morning, talked to Andy this afternoon, talked to Dick twice this evening.

     Talked to Dick at 6:30 AM. It’s a gorgeous morning. Beautiful sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. A great day for Tom, Bonnie and I to do BRDF measurements. We got off to a late start because I was slow. I asked numerous questions about rotation issues and talked to Claude and Jumper about the science options. Finally we left at 0940. Just as we were setting up an announcement came over the PA system that the Polar Sea will be doing the rotation. Details are sketchy, but the Polar Sea is supposed to take on passengers Friday morning and then set sail for SHEBA. When she is in helo range the personnel exchange will begin-probably Sunday or Monday depending on ice conditions. I also learned that the Polar Star is looking good for the 5 August rotation. Her drydock appointment is being moved up. According to Claude she is scheduled to arrive at SHEBA on 6 August. People will be exchanged and she will set sail for Barrow. She will return at Ice Station SHEBA in early September for another rotation.

Did 2 details BRDF measurements near the hut. One site was drained white ice and the other was a melt pond. Details are in the ASD file. Beautiful conditions for the measurements BC with not a cloud in the sky. Details are summarized in the spreadsheet.

In the afternoon we did the albedo line. Since it was sunny we used the integrating sphere and all of Bonnie’s electronics. Did 200 m for Kipps and first 100 for vis and nir. Jinro and I did the melt pond survey for the full 200 m. Took a site photo on the Nikon for each SE site. There seemed to be a fair amount of drainage. The pond area appears to be smaller. He will put the results in a spreadsheet.

     Beautiful morning with light winds from the north. It’s a mass balance day. Jinro and I are doing surface ablation on the Seattle set, Tom, Bonnie and Hajo full service at Tuk and Atlanta. We’ve retired the Magnaprobe, the mix of snow and ponds makes for too much notetaking for the magnaprobe to be useful. We did the snowline out and started reading stakes on the way back in. Looking to the north we could see a wedge (high on the leading edge) of clouds come in. In the course of 45 minutes we went from unlimited visibility so the thickest fog of SHEBA-couldn’t see the ship from Pittsburgh. Jinro took photos of each site.

In the afternoon Hajo and Jinro went off to do some permeability studies, while Tom, Bonnie and I did optical measurements at the Quebec lead. Did 2 sites with ASD and SE-deep pond plus rotting FY ice. Notes are in the spreadsheet. Took a couple of site photos.

     A little cloudier today, but still pretty nice. We got around 0.5 to 1.0 cm of new snow last night. It gave the surface an odd looking appearance. Parts were brighter, but other portions were more or less unchanged. Pond surfaces are frozen as are smaller leads. Bonnie and I went to Maui with Dave for our final PAM exam. It was a snap. After that we checked out the Maui lead. Lots of brash and chunks in it. There was also a fair amount of thin ice (only a few cm) piled up. It must have grown over the past few days. Did a quick and dirty CTD profile in the top 2 m. There was freshening near the top, but it was uniform below.

     After lunch it was off to the albedo line. Pond drainage was evident and the ponds were frozen over with 0.5-1 cm of ice. Hajo’s measurements should provide some good insights into changes in permeability. I think there are two factors at work in the sharp drop in pond levels; drainage due to increase in permeability and cooler weather decreasing the input of melt water. Ponds are deeper and there is more surface topography. Jinro and I did another pond mapping profile along the line. Did full 300 m for Kipps and first 100 m for vis and nir. Took site photos of the vis sites using the digital camera.

Brief meeting tonight so Jumper can get the weight information for the helo flights.

     Same weather pattern. The ponds continue to drain and with sub-freezing temperatures they are not being It’s a mass balance morning. Jinro and Hajo did the surface at doghouse, Atlanta and Tuk. Tom, Bonnie and I did the Seattle suite. The magnaprobe has been retired for now. The combination of snow and melt ponds required so much notetaking that it was easier to do by hand. Tom and Bonnie did the snow line while I started the ablation stakes at Seattle. Took a bunch of site photos on the Olympus. Stake 20… at the Quebec lead is dead. There was ½ a meter of surface flooding from the big pond by the ridge and the stake completely melted out. I still did ice thickess by measuring the pond depth and then the height of the gauge above the water surface. By hustling we were able to get done by lunchtime. Tom fell into a deep melt pond and got both boots wet. Bonnie stepped into the side of the hole that got me and filled up one boot. I however remained dry, though I did manage to shock myself doing the thickness gauges. I got too efficient for my own good.

     We decided to do some site specific optics in the afternoon. Tom, Bonnie, Jinro and I went out to the airport lead with the ASD and SE. We did 2 sites: one was the FY ice and the other was the lead.

Site A: Airport first-year ice. Hs=5 cm, Hi=153, Fb=135. There was lots of biology at the bottom of the core.

Profile looking downward with depth every 10 cm from 20 to 160. There was a problem with this measurement since the detector slipped up the rod – use hose clamp in the future.

     Have an ice physics group meeting in the evening with Jinro, Hajo, Tom, Bonnie and me to discuss what we are doing and what we are missing. There was quite a bit of discussion regarding how much in the way of physical properties characterization we can do in support of the optical work. Tom is interested in filtering samples for particulate analysis. Hajo and I felt that if you were going to do that, then what about the biology and air bubbles. The issue was left somewhat unresolved. We may take cores and put them in the freezer. We also came up with a list of things to do: 1) take short cores, 2) fly ASD in the chopper, 3) do smart stick lines across a ridge, along the albedo line, along the snow line and at Seattle, 4) fix the Ridge site, 5) do Kipp albedo lines at different sites, 6) try to find another lead site, and 7) select some ponds for time series measurements.

     Got up early to call home for Laura’s half birthday. Laura was at a sleepover at Suzy’s, but I talked to Kathy, Carly and Dan. It was great to talk to them all. Got the word this morning that the Polar Sea sailed at midnight. ETA is Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. After breakfast Tom, Jinro and I did the first ever helo ASD mission. Details are in the spreadsheet, but it seemed to work pretty well. Ideal incident conditions – CO-SDNV and very little change in incident. Made 3 passes at 100, 400 and 1000 feet. As expected spatial variability in incident decreased with altitude.

     Did the albedo line in the afternoon. 200 Kipps, 200 vis and 100 nir. For the first 100 m used my controller and camera head with the IBM. Second 100 used Bonnies controller and my camera head. We had problems on the first 100, but not the second. Latest theory is that my controller is screwy. For the first 100 there was no tell-tale evidence of failure.

     It was an "easy-going" Sunday morning. Sundays are slow with most groups taking at least part of the day off. Our policy is that you can do what you want in the morning and we try to get done a little early in the afternoon. Worked on data trying to get caught up on the ASD files. After lunch it was mass balance. Tom and I did surface measurements on the main line-Seattle suite. Also made some CTD measurements in the Seattle lead. Definite surface freshening and heating. Big notch as well, though no lips have broken off.

     What a difference a day makes. Yesterday the ponds were frozen over and had been draining and the snow/ice surface was firm and frozen. Today the melt season is once again in full swing. It’s a sloppy mess today. Winds are from the SE, with a mix of flurries, sleet and a light mist. The ponds are filling, the snow is slush and the ice is rotting.

     Flew out to Baltimore this morning for mass balance etc. Swapped both storage modules. Next time need to take a new battery for the stress box. Tried to use the battery for the mass balance, but it didn’t work very well. It was slow and couldn’t melt out a couple of the multiyear gauges. Quite a bit of surface meltwater at Baltimore. Did the 300 m snow/melt pond line. The first and last stakes are lying down in a ridge, so it takes a little looking. There were deep ponds on the flanks of both ridges.

     While I was flying Tom and Bonnie made a couple of sets of uv-vis-ir albedo measurements. Hajo was working on permeability studies and Jinro assisted MJ in building a bridge across the Quebec pond.

     It was an albedo afternoon. Did 300 m of Kipps, 100 of visible and 70 of ir. Jinro and I also did the pond mapping survey. For the visible measurements we used my camera head and Bonnies controller along with the IBM. That combination seemed to work great. My controller appears to be having com port problems. Also the Compaq appears to be having com port problems. So there may have been 2 intermittent bugs in the system.

     How is this for a paper or talk; "The many faces of melt." There are ponds, rotting snow, rotting ice, ball bearing ice, shards of ice and today we saw honeycombed ice. There was a flat, thin (few mm) surface layer of ice. Underneath it was a sparse honeycomb of ice. The honeycombs were a few cm across and 5-10 cm deep in a regular looking pattern. I took some photographs just before the CRREL/UW/UAF/Frontier team photo.

     All in all a busy day. I was taking a relaxing break before the science meeting. Enjoying a root beer barrel and a Spenser book when I felt something funny between my front teeth. I thought it might be a piece of plastic or something from the rbb, so I got out the floss and toothpick. It wasn’t plastic, but shards of filling. One of my front tooth fillings fell apart. I managed to avoid fainting and convinced myself that losing a filling isn’t any worse than chipping a tooth. We’ll see.

     Good science meeting tonight. We talked about how much of what we are seeing is event driven, rather than a continuous function. MJ gave his report in rap. M+M’s and smarties for a treat.

     Beautiful morning when I woke up, but during breakfast clouds moved in from the west. So rather than flying we did a mass balance morning. Jinro and Hajo did surface measurements at Tuk, Atlanta and the doghouse. Tom, Bonnie and I did full ablation on the Seattle-Mainline suite. That’s quite a job and I don’t look forward to it. With the clear skies last night the surface was reasonably hard and there was a m or so of ice on the smaller ponds.

     After lunch sky conditions improved to broken clouds with a ceiling of 2000 m. With the rotation in the works this was our last chance to fly for a couple of days so we decided to go for it. Did the full 100 nm grid at 6000 feet. Considerable changes since the last flight. There was more open water and the floes were definitely more broken up. Many of the leads looked new (new leads having distinct edges with the pieces easy to put back together visually).

     Better progress for the Polar Sea today. As of 8:00 PM they are 201 nm from SHEBA.

     July started out with miserable weather; 30 kt winds dense fog with a bare hint of rain, or at least condensed fog. The 8:00 AM report has the Polar Sea 150 miles from SHEBA. They’re hoping to cover the last 50 today and be ready to start rotating people tonight. Jinro stayed in to pack this morning. Tom, Bonnie and I went out to the hut area to do some ASD work-two sites bare white ice and a melt pond. Incident conditions were ideal. I drilled the pond hole and took around 10 minutes to get stuff together. In that short time a false bottom formed, one that was thick enough that I had to drill it. Amazing. Site details are in the spreadsheet.

In the afternoon it was off to the albedo line. Did 200 m of Kipps, 100 of vis and around 70 m of nir. The nir battery died again. Tom is going to wire an adapter for the my rechargeable batteries. That will give them ample power for IR measurements. Again the incident conditions were wonderful-nice steady, diffuse incident.

Tower film was at the end so I added a new roll. First two pictures are of Tom, Bonnie and Jinro on the ground. Todays melt was very evident. Places that still had a little snow/slush were bare ice now. Here is some speculation – on cloudy foggy days you get a fair amount of melt-but its at the surface resulting in large part from the turbulent fluxes, particularly condensation of the fog. On sunny days the solar radiation induced melt penetrates more and you get rotting and disintegration of the surface.

     Mass balance morning. Tom and I did the Seattle – Mainline surface. The rotation is beginning! Choppers from the Polar Sea in the air under some pretty foggy conditions. Was called to the bridge at 1100 AM for a call from the Polar Sea – it was Dean and Jamie. The connection was terrible and I couldn’t understand anything. There is some confusion between the two ships regarding the batting order for the transfer.

     Stayed close to home in the afternoon photographing surface melt features for "The Many Faces of Melt." Jackie arrived somewhat unexpectedly shortly after dinner with lots of stories about her looonngg trip.

     In the morning Jackie, Hajo and I put in a ridge ablation line consisting of several stakes that we will string rope between to make surface height measurements. Hajo also used the smart stick to survey in the stakes.

     It was albedos in the afternoon. All measurements worked very well. Did 200 m of Kipps, 100 vis and nir. Perfect sky conditions CO-SDNV, completely uniform. Jackie and I did a melt pond survey on the line. Data are all entered into the appropriate spreadsheets.

     Happy 4^th of July! It’s a mass balance morning and since it’s the 4^th of July the afternoon is free. Tom, Jackie and I did the full program on Seattle-Mainline, while Bonnie and Hajo did Atlanta-Tuk. Saw some fascinating crystals that were forming in a false bottom. Took some pictures on the Olympus after a panorama of Seattle. Also took the Seattle box off of its stand before it fell over. With various side issues we didn’t get the line done before lunch. After lunch Jackie and I went out and finished the line and did the afternoon chores. Played some softball, first some catch then everyone (around 8 people) got a few swings. I put 2 over the ridge in right field.

     The last chopper from the Polar Sea left the Des Groseilliers at 3:00 PM ending the rotation. All the gear and all the people are here only a week late. Pretty fine improvisation on Andy’s part.

After dinner we had the SHEBA welcome meeting I spoke very briefly and Rene and Dean did a good job of presenting the ship and logistics perspectives.

     Its raining buckets out, along with a 25 kt north wind. Fortunately Sunday morning is catchup time, so I get to stay inside and organize data. Jackie had a New York Times that was only 2 weeks old, so I got to do some Sunday morning newspaper reading.

After lunch Hajo went out to Sarah’s Lead with Jackie and I as an escort. New rule is that no one travels alone. Jackie and I then did the albedo line, Kipps only, in the rain. Aside from having the wrong gloves it wasn’t too bad. The gloves are windstop, not rainstop and got soaked and very cold. My new Gortex jacket and pants worked great. Melt ponds were high with local flooding in the low lying regions. All in all we got an inch of rain for the day. Quite a bit for a desert.

     The rain has stopped and the sky has cleared. It’s a beautiful morning, but on the horizon you can see the fog on its way. With the clear skies the temperature dropped and the ponds are frozen again. Set in motion the arrangements for a helo photo mission. Unfortunately the fog rolled in and it’s a mass balance Monday morning. After 1.5 grilled cheese sandwiches for fortitude Jackie, Bonnie and I headed out to Tuk and Atlanta for the full mass balance suite. I haven’t been to Tuk in a couple of weeks and its impressive how much the surrounding rubble has melted. Have an Atlanta site photo with Bonnie and Jackie in it plus some pictures of the refrozen ponds showing some interesting ice features. Some ponds have bullseye patterns in the refrozen ice indicating how the pond drained overnight. Looks like about 3 cm of drainage. Working hypothesis is that drainage is relatively constant, but the input (meltwater) is variable.

     Spent the afternoon doing 2 ASD sites. Site A was drained white ice with "polar bear fur" and Site B was a melt pond. Details are in the spreadsheet and Jackies notes. Did have some problems with the intercalibration scans. It may take a little imagination for the transmittance. Did 2 hole profiles at Site A, one with the hole open and the other with a towel stuffed in it. The hole was free of slush and chips in both cases.

     Science meeting tonight. General summary and discussion of SHEBA science. Next week’s assignment is one plot per person. Milky Ways and Hersey’s dark.

     Sky looked good for a helo albedo flight with a nice uniform cloud deck. So I made the arrangements to go after the chopper slings Jamies helo hut. By the time we loaded everything up the fog had rolled in and the deck was down to 75 feet, so we postponed until after lunch. Jackie and I then went out and did the ridge surface ablation line.

     After lunch we took another short at the helo albedos. Conditions weren’t great but we were able to do a pass at 100 and one at 200 feet. The flight path was somewhat complicated because of ship drift, but the basic idea was a box 3 nm on a side flown at 60 nm with a photograph and an albedo every 10 seconds. We used one of the mystery rolls of film. Figured we didn’t have much to lose. I don’t expect a one-to-one correspondence between photos and albedos. I probably missed a couple of photos, but with a little work we can match things up. There seemed to be a bit more variability in incident than the first flight.

After the flight we raced out to the albedo line and did 200 m of Kipps and 100 m of vis under CO-SDNV incident conditions.

     A windy, but beautiful morning. Generally clear skies with some scattered high clouds. Time for a helo photography run. Tom, Jackie and I did the full helo mission at 6000 feet. It went great. Lots of changes in the ice cover. See the log for details. By the time we got back it was lunchtime.

     After lunch it was mass balance. Jackie, Bonnie and I doing the full suite on the Seattle-Mainline run and Tom and Hajo on Tuk-Atlanta surface ablation. Lost a couple of melt pond stakes at Seattle. It seems that all the pond stakes will melt out. We’re working on a plan B – benchmarks and a surface survey line followed by a lot of drilling in the fall. First shelf measurements at Seattle. It’s 1.4 m with a nice taper.

     On the way back to Pittsburgh we stopped to watch the C-130 flyover. It came straight down the albedo line at 150 feet. Very impressive and should be a great dataset for intercomparison.

Almost lost a snowmachine tonight. Christine was driving 50 m from the Blue Bayou to the logistics hut and got into a deep melt pond. She jumped off and the machine started to sink, but Scott, Sarah and Karen were able to hold it in place until Dean and others could drag it out. Worked on data and watched Indy Part II. Good data, bad movie.

     After crepes it was off to Baltimore. Beautiful morning, no wind and partly cloudy skies. Saw two seals on the way. Dean, Jackie, Ola, Kerry and I went. Top two stress sensors have melted out, but the deep one is still OK. We brought back the 2 melt-outs plus all the cable.There has been considerable drainage around Baltimore since my last visit. You can see areas that used to be ponded, but have drained. Lost 3 more sensors that were in melt ponds. Two were adjacent to the thermistor string, but there is still one left there. One of the melt-throughs was teeming with biology. There were long globs of brown stuff clinging to the crossbar.

     It was albedos in the afternoon. Did 200 m Kipps, 100 m vis and nir. Also did a 200 m pond map. The ponds seem to be better defined. By that I mean deeper with higher sharper walls. It was more difficult dragging the sled through the ponds. Albedo notes are on the spreadsheet.

     Foggy at first, but the fog quickly dissipating to give a beautiful morning. High scattered clouds and light wind. Mass balance morning. Tom and Hajo full treatment on Tuk-Atlanta. Bonnie, Jackie and I doing surface measurements and maintenance on Seattle-Mainline. Did lead measurements at Seattle. Top 60 cm was fresh and hot; +1.1 C. Nice shelf is beginning to develop on the edge. Added a melt pond survey line at Seattle. This is 2 stakes with a line hung between them. The line is marked every half meter. At each point we measure the distance from the ice to the string and the pond depth (or rotted ice). Jackie has the initial data in her log. Took an extensive photo panorama at Seattle. Aside from the Mainline, it seemed like there was less "bear fur" than the day before. Perhaps it is breaking down into a more granular form.

     Did a ton of optical measurements in the afternoon. Jackie and I used the ASD, while Tom and Bonnie did SE-590 visible and nir. We did a survey of local ponds starting with the Quebec lead (which had a lot of biology in it). Also did some white ice cases for comparison. For the ponds we did the standard I, R, T plus upwelling measurements using the underice detector. Typically we would make 3 measurements with the underice; one just above the ice, one just under the surface of the water and one sitting on the surface of the ice. It was a long afternoon, but we collected a lot of data. Took site photos of all the ponds. Maybe we’ll get some insight as to the pond color. The importance of the ice underneath is evident. Some ponds look so dark that you’re afraid to step in them, only to find out that it’s only 10 cm deep. Our working hypothesis is that the beautiful blue-aqua ponds are typically found adjacent to ridges and are reasonable deep with bubbly ice below.

     Spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the evening movie. Doesn’t get much better than that.

     After breakfast the haze came in scrubbing the flight. Jackie and I went to Sarah’s Lake (airport lead), while Tom and Bonnie chainsawed a hummock. While at the lead we did mass balance, lateral ablation, wall profile and quick CTD. Did the wall profile using crampons which worked great. We need to figure out a way to get the bottom part of the profile. We then went on a rowboat ride around the lead. It was very interesting, lots of shelfs with surface undercuts of 1 to 1.2 m.

Being an odd numbered day it was albedos in the afternoon. Did 100 m SE vis and nir plus 200 m Kipps. Jackie and I did the pond survey on the albedo line. After that we measured the ridge surface ablation site and installed the line and measured the stake 81 pond profile.

     Around camp the pontoon float has been moved under the gangway and a few bridges have been build across some of the deeper pond notches. Jamie run his auv under Hajo’s line and will probably do the ridge tomorrow.

     Spent the morning getting caught up on paperwork, then off to do mass balance in the afternoon. Tom and Bonnie did surface measurements at Atlanta and Tuk and surveyed the stakes. Hajo, Jackie and I did the Seattle-Mainline. Jackie and I did the mass balance and Hajo did his EM-31 line. Major wells have begun to form around the stakes so we shoveled some ice in. Stakes in ponds are rapidly melting out. Did wall profiles and CTD in Seattle lead.

     Almost a good cloud deck for helo albedos, but just a bit too spotty. Tom and Bonnie did laser surveying on Seattle-Mainline. Jackie and I did maintenance, resetting boxes, bringing in hobos and carefully filling in wells. I looked like an Arctic gardener with my pail and trowel tending to my ablation stakes.

     In the afternoon it was the albedo line. Bonnie and Tom were still surveying stakes so Jackie and I did 200 m of Kipp plus 100 of vis. Then Tom and Bonnie did 100 of IR, while Jackie and I did stake gardening. The radio was alive all afternoon with traffic regarding search and rescue operations for the AUV. It flipped out and went zooming off, luckily colliding with the Atlanta ridge. Jamie et al. Plus Dean and Paul were able to recover it after much work. Good science meeting tonight, with everyone bringing a a graph I posed the question for the next meeting "The Surface Heat Budget-discrete or continuous?"

     Happy Bastille Day. We’re all to wear red, white, and blue. I was solid in white and blue, but the red was a little meager.

Mass balance day. Jackie and I did surface measurements at Seattle – Mainline plus lead measurements and "gardening" around the stakes. Tom, Bonnie and Hajo did full treatment at Atlanta and Tuk plus some EM-31 work.

     In the afternoon we all went to Tuk, Hajo to continue the EM-31 and the rest of us to do optics on the dirty ice. We did 4 sites with the ASD, clean ice, dirty ice, a bright blue pond and a dark pond. All the albedos turned out great, but two of the transmitted were squirrelly. The underice detector has had some intermittent problems. It may need to warm up more. Be sure to check the scans as they are made. All in all a busy and productive day.

     Evening bridge visit was a discussion of potential rotation plans.

     Though the weather was somewhat marginal we decided to go for it and try a helo photography run. Tom, Bonnie and Hajo flew. Jackie and I went to the albedo line for some stupid stick surveying. Did the first 100 m. The flight went well, with some fog on the north leg, otherwise OK-again at 6000’.

     After lunch it was off to the albedo line. Did 200 m Kipp plus 100 vis and nir. After albedos Jackie and I finished the surveying by doing the last 100 m of the line.

     Mass balance morning. Bonnie, Jackie and I doing the full suite on the Seattle-Mainline: surface, bottom, lateral and surface lines. We had the routine down well and made it home for lunch. Cracks are coming out all over. Every crack (or indignity)that the ice has suffered through is now evident as the snowcover and the thin ice in the cracks melt. As the melt occurs the floes can just start to fall apart. This is how the ice cover goes from the big slabs to the complex mosaic of ice and open water with lots of floes. Getting across the Quebec Lead was quite a challenge. I’m not sure how many more times we will be able to cross at this location. There also are several crack around the Quebec, Mainline, Seattle area. I hope this all stays together.Used the Nikonos for the first time to take some pictures of the Seattle lead and the false bottoms in the crack by Quebec 1.

After lunch took advantage of the uniform sky cover to do an aerial albedo survey. We could only do 1 altitude (100 feet) since the deck was low. Did 1) a pass over the albedo line, 2) a 3 km on a side box, 3) a run over a lead for calibration, and 4) a series at increasing altitudes over the middle of the albedo line. At the end of the flight took some photos of Seattle, Mainline, Quebec, and the Ridge. Should be some good pictures. Details are in the spreadsheet.

     After the flight it was more subroutines. Bonnie and Hajo went to the Airport Lead. Jackie and I did the ridge surface ablation line and surveyed the melt ponds on the ridge. Tom looked at cryoconite holes. All in all a very productive day. We polished off quite a few subroutines.

     A bright beautiful sunny morning. It would be a nice day for a helo flight, but we did one just two days ago. Instead I decide to go for some "bear fur" BRDF’s. We measured 2 sites with bear fur of different maturity. Used the ASD for the observations and measured spectral albedo, BRDF, and transmittance. By the transmittance measuremets the clouds had begun to come in and we were under PC-SDV conditions. This should also give a nice sunny sky/cloudy sky comparison. As part of BRDF measured direct/diffuse of incident. While it was blue sky around the sun there were clouds to the SE.

     After lunch it was off to the albedo line. Did 300 m Kipp, 200 m vis and 100 m nir. Also measured a few specific sites – light and dark pond at beginning, white ice and melt pond at 100 m. Sky started PC-SDCV then gradually evolved into PC-SDBV. Hajo was doing some dye experiments on the ridge-green kool-aid time. It will be interesting to compare the water flow observations to the map that Jackie and I made. Got the sea-birds set-up, maybe we’ll do some pond T/S studies soon.

     Found a significant computer problem in the evening. All the icons were gone and only the wallpaper was left. With much trial and error I got the icons back, but Windows 95 seems a little flakey. It won’t exit. Rather than reload Win95 I think I’ll take my chances for a while.

     Mass balance morning: Tom, Bonnie and Hajo did the full treatment on Tuk, Atlanta and the Doghouse, while Jackie and I did the snow line, surface ablation, lead measurements and surface ablation line. The crossing at Quebec Lead was tough. We never would have made it with the generator. On Monday we’ll use the chopper to forward position a sled and generator out there.

     After lunch Tom, Hajo, Jackie and I did some melt pond studies. Tom did KT-19 measurements until the rain started. He was seeing +1 C. We did some ponds on the albedo line near 50 and 100 m, then some of the ones on the ridge that were surveyed.

Spent the evening trying to get caught up on notes.

     Early morning helo mission to recover the 4 local stress sensor boxes. Not terribly successful – we were only 1-4. We found Delaware and nothing else. Try going to the May range and bearings, then switched to a search pattern, both to no avail. Back to the drawing board.

     It was an albedo afternoon. Full 200 m Kipp, 100 m vis and nir plus site specific albedos at some ponds. Afterwhich Jackie and I did the pond survey of the full 200 m. It rained during the pond survey, not too hard, but a brief shower at 14:45.

Tonight at Irish coffee it was make and wear your own tie. I used orange marking tape and carabiners. The next rotation is coming up in 2 ½ weeks so its time to start clearing the slate of jobs. In particular, I’d like to get as much helo work done as possible in the next week. Its time to start scheduling things.

     A bright beautiful morning, so its time to do the helo survey. Tom, Jackie and I flew this morning; full grid at 6000’. Melting has progressed since I flew a couple of flights ago. We were looking for patches of the pond free ice nd had mixed success. There were some places that looked as though ponds had just started to form. I got the coordinates relative to the ship in case we have a chance to go do some ground sampling. Bonnie and Hajo did the Seattle – Mainline full ablation.

     After lunch Tom and Bonnie went to Atlanta, Tuk, and Doghouse for surface melting. Jackie and I flew out to Baltimore. Revelation of the flight was that the dark rotting portions in the water are places where the pond bottom has rotted to the point where bouyancy breaks it off and it floats to the surface and rots. Did mass balance, snow line and Kipp albedos from the original Stake 1 to Stake 2 (now the second 100 m of the line). We them flew out to Seattle with an Akio, generator, Variac and tinkertoys. We’ll leave this out here for mass balance measurements – saves doing the Quebec crossing. We loaded the Quebec 1 box into the helo and shipped it back. Jackie and I then did the Seattle lead measurements plus the Seattle pond and the Ridge pond.

     Good science meeting tonight, we discussed the relative merits of continuous vs. discrete processes for modeling the Surface Heat Budget. Cheez-its and rollos for the evening snack.

     So much for the sunshine. It’s a foggy morning. Tom, Bonnie, Jackie and I decide to do an optics subroutine and go out towards Quebec beyond the albedo line. Sky conditions were CO-SDNV-foggy. We did 4 sets of ASD measurements while Tom and Bonnie did some profiles. There were 2 ice sites and 2 pond sites. I drilled one hole for the two ponds sites-it was the same pond just a bright area and a dark area. The details are in the spreadsheet and in Jackie’s notebook. At the melt pond sites we used the underwater detector for an extra set of albedos; above the water, just below the water and at the ice/water interface. All in all a very productive morning.

     After lunch it was the albedo routine-200 m of Kipps, 100 vis and nir plus light and dark pond at beginning and a reference white ice and melt pond at the 100 m mark. There is a site picture of Tom at the light/dark area. When we got done Jackie and I went to the Ridge string for some ablation measurements. The first stake had melted out so made a set of measurements with Jackie holding it in place, then we reset the stake in a new position and repeated the first half of the pass. The new stake is in line with the old one, but further away from the ridge.

     The morning weather is too cloudy for the photo mosaic, but not cloudy enough for helo albedo, so it’s a mass balance morning. Tom and Hajo do the works out at Atlanta-Tuk-Doghouse, while Jackie, Bonnie and I do the mainline snow survey, the Seattle lead, surface ablation and "stake maintenance." It was difficult to find rotting ice for stake maintenance. The best source was the ridge by Seattle. Took a panorama of Seattle plus some photos of the surface near the thermistor string. Good example of the bear fur ice. Latest theory is that it’s last years pond ice. Had a great time doing the lateral ablation measurements-it’s a fun job. Linguini with pesto for lunch – excellent.

     Scott went lead flying in the afternoon and was able to sample at solar noon. For us it was blue ice and dirty ice optics near the ridge. Jackie and Bonnie found the best local example of blue ice – unfortunately it was thicker than our 2.5 m worth of auger, so we did albedos and a downward looking profile in the hole. The hole had plenty of chips, but no towel. At 14:38 it started to rain. This was a little early, since the rain usually doesn’t come until 14:45. Had scattered light showers the rest of the afternoon. Hit the dirty ice mother lode. Lots of sediment plus cryoconite holes full of dirt. Also found some heavily candled ice. Did a bunch of albedos of the candled ice plus the sediment laden ice. First made measurements at a few specific sites (with photos), then did a mini-traverse sampling every 1.35 m. Note that I lowered the tripod to "zoom in" on the sediment. After this we finished caretaking of the ridge and Pittsburgh stakes and called it a day.

     In the afternoon word came out that another tethered balloon escaped. Either the string broke or a know slipped. Evening entertainment was the arrival of a bear that meandered out to Maui. Dean, Paul and Matt went out, but the bear kept its distance and they never got close. Meanwhile Robert (the helo pilot), Ingeregard, and Trevor were out walking 1 ½ miles from camp looking for the instrument package for the balloon. Everyone made it back safely.

     Very foggy morning, so no flying for now. For the morning subroutine Tom and Bonnie stayed in to filter samples. Jackie, Hajo and I went to yesterday’s optics sites to take some short cores. We sampled the blue ice, the dirty ice and a pretty blue melt pond. The difference between the bluish ice and the white ice is that the surface scattering layer of the blue is much thinner. Took photos of all cores plus several of dirty ice. We also reset four of the thickness gauges on the ridge line. They had been getting too tall.

It was albedos in the afternoon; 200 Kipps, 100 m plus highlights vis and nir. Jackie and I then did the melt pond profile along the line.

     Pretty nice morning (not beautiful), so let’s go flying. Jackie, Jamie and I went out to find Sites 9 and 11. No problem finding 9, but no luck finding 11. Jamie had some problems downloading the Sea-cat at 9 so he went back in the afternoon with Matt to drill a hole. The ice had rafted and was thicker than the 4 auger flights they had. Tom and Hajo did surface mass balance at Tuk and Atlanta in the morning.

     After lunch Tom made some KT-19 measurements, while Bonnie, Jackie and I did the Seattle – Mainline full ablation. We did 3 wall profiles at the Seattle ice edge. In one place the shelf was 4.2 m long. Also did the surface ablation strings at Seattle, Pond 81 and the new ridge.

     It’s a beautiful morning, above about 100 m. Down on the ground its quite foggy. Tom, Bonnie and Hajo decided to stay in this morning to work on processing various ice samples. Jackie and I went out and did 2 small subroutines. We remeasured the elevation and depth of the "Alpine Lakes" by the ridge and then did an albedo line perpendicular to the ridge. It was in a location roughly similar to where I did some albedo transects in April.

     After lunch the fog dissipated and it was time to go flying. Denis and I had work on range and bearings from the ship to Site 11 for the past week and got a best estimate of 9.8 nm and 060. Off we went and there it was, found it with no problems. It took around 5 minutes to pack up the box and mark the spot with some garbage bags on a nearby ridge and 10 minutes later we were back on the ship. We had radioed ahead, so Tom and Bonnie were on the flight deck for the helo mosaic flight. Though they flirted somewhat with a little fog on the SE portion of the box, for the most part the weather was great. They flew a 5 nm x 5 nm box. The details are in the spreadsheet. Combined with the mosaic Terry flew in late-May this should give us a good before and after picture of the local SHEBA area. It could make a great poster.

     While the photo mosaic was happening, Jackie and I were busy doing the albedo line under bright sunny skies, with the occasional hint of clouds. Did the full 200 m on Kipps and 100 m of SE590.

     The weather isn’t good for flying; the deck is too low for a photo mission and too broken for an albedo flight. Therefore its time for Sunday morning catchup. The first order of business is cleaning up my room, since rumor has it that there is an inspection of today’s agenda. After that, rather than SHEBA data analysis, its trying to write an AT-24 proposal. Not exactly my first choice for spending a morning at SHEBA.

     It was a mass balance afternoon. Tom and Hajo did the full treatment at the doghouse, Atlanta and Tuk, while Jackie, Bonnie and I did surface ablation, lead measurements and "stake gardening" on the Seattle - Mainline run . We need a second bucket for gardening. C-130 did an overflight and I got a couple of photos. Hopefully there will be a good one. The prize is the cover of BAMS. At 3:25 it started to rain and by the end of the day it was raining hard.

     A foggy morning with uniform incident so we did optics subroutines in the morning. Tom and Bonnie did profile measurements in bare ice and ponded ice, while Jackie and I did Kipps on Hajo’s local EM line. We did his 100 m line up and back, and then did 100 m beyond the line for a total of 100 m. The idea behind up and back was to generate statistics and get an idea of small scale variability.

     After lunch it was more optics with the 4 of us doing the albedo line. We did 200 m of Kipps, 200 m of vis, and 100 m of nir. I took digital photos for the vis measurements. At the 45 m mark the sky condition went from O – SNDV to blue skies and the sun blazing. A sharp cloud line moved through and I took a couple of pictures of it. After optics Jackie and I did the pond survey on the full 200 m.

     Evening science meeting was interesting and fun. It was interdisciplinary night and there were some nice presentations tying ocean-ice-atmosphere-biology together. A highlight was a modeling skit put together by Bonnie, Ingegard, Sarah and Karen. Next week’s meeting is the SHEBA column and SHEBA monopoly.

     High, fairly uniform cloud deck this morning, so we decided to go for a helo albedo flight. When doing the pre-flight intercalibration I noticed that I was getting very little light through the transmitted probe. My guess is that there is a break in the fiber at the big metal connection. Details regarding the flight are in the helo spreadsheet. It was a windy day which made the flight interesting. The box kept moving around making it difficult to fly. Also on one leg we were flying sideways because of the wind. We got to do some good maneuvers to get in place for the start of the line. All and all a productive and fun morning.

     After lunch it was major mass balance at Seattle-Mainline; did surface, bottom and lateral ablation. We also did some maintenance work redrilling holes for the snow line and putting in stakes for the ground wires. Lead walking wasn’t quick so much fun since it was blowing hard. As I was standing in the lead, the water suddenly erupted in what appeared to be a burst of machine gun fire. It was sleet! Little ice pellets that really stung when they hit you. Tony Beeseley came along to lend a hand and see the sights. He was a casuality of the Quebec Lead traverse. He tripped crossing a melt pond and did a face first into the pond. Bonnie took him back to the ship while Jackie and I finished up the ridge and Pittsburgh.

Work came in today that the Polar Star problems are greater than anticipated and they are stopping in Kodiak. We should expect a 2-day delay.

     More wind, still hard from the east. We decided to spent the morning inside getting caught up on data archiving and AT-24 proposal writing. I didn’t accomplish much on my 24, but I helped Jackie some.

After lunch it was off to the albedo line. As we were gathering stuff in the tent for the afternoon albedo measurements five blasts sounded. There was a mama and cub to the east, headed straight towards Tuk. When they got there they broke off a stake and started trashing the thermistor string. Since they were hanging around and posed a potential threat we fired up the helo and escorted them away from SHEBA. After that delay it was off to the albedo line. I decided to put in some ice screws with carabiners at the 25 m marks to help hold the line in place in the high winds. That worked pretty well.After that the albedos went uneventfully – 200 Kipps, 200 vis and 100 nir.

     Another windy day. Too many low clouds for a photo flight so we decide to go to Baltimore in the morning. It was mass balance at Quebec-Seattle in the afternoon. Decided to change modes of transportation, instead of the fabled Quebec traverse we did an easy rowboat ride. This proved to be inspired, because the ice began to diverge while we were measuring at Seattle and the Mainline erasing the land route. The crack between Quebec and the Mainline also began to open. What was a small step is now a jump.

     The wind continues unabated from the west. Too many clouds for a photo flight so Jackie and I decide to do some ASD measurements, while Tom and Bonnie do some characterization along the albedo line. We did five sites: bluish ice, young lead ice (frazil), white ice, unfrozen pond, frozen pond. Lots of frazil and brash in the leads, along with some snow ice. Downwind portions of ponds have 1-2 cm of ice. Took site photos of all sites. Details are in Jackies logbook. All in all a successful morning.

After lunch it was the albedo line. We did 200 Kipp, 100 vis and 50 nir. Tom was having some equipment problems so they didn’t get the full 100 done. After the optical measurements Jackie and I did the pond depths along the albedo line. The ice portion of the albedo line definitely looked whiter and brighter with a light dusting of snow. It was a bit chillier – no surface ablation today. A day without surface ablation is a good day.

     Not as windy this morning and its even sunny, though there is some haze on the horizon and a beautiful fog bow. Decided to try to get a photo flight in. I arranged for us to load things on the helo at 0915. We got everything loaded, but the fog was in and out so we waited around. As we waited I worked on fixing the computer, which had completely locked up. In would boot up in Windows and freeze-no icons and no response to commands. After trying a variety of unsuccessful fixes I went to Carol for help. He was able to fix things by removing some unused network drivers.

     After lunch Bonnie, Jackie and I went off to Seattle and Quebec for mass balance. We passed on Atlanta-Tuk, since there has been no surface ablation to measure. Seattle and Quebec are a short row away, but now are on different pieces of ice. So we rowed to Seattle first and made surface and bottom ablation measurements plus edge profiles. We used a melt pond on the edge of the floe near the mainline as our harbor. In fact, I took a couple of pictures of Bonnie and Jackie in the boat measuring the stakes. After finishing the measurements we did some rowing around, we could almost reach the Seattle lead by boat, but not quite.

I didn’t win, or even come close at Bingo tonight, but it was a ton of fun. There was a major turnout, around 40 people.

     It’s a Sunday morning catchup day. Rather than working on data, or the weekly science report. I’m writing my AT-24 proposal. I got it done in the morning and sent off to Vicki in the evening. Not my first pick as to how to spend my time at SHEBA.

In the afternoon it was off to the albedo line. We did a full 300 m of Kipps, measuring the spur line for the first time in a while. Remember there is a melted through crack at 95 m. Jackie got one foot in above her knee before she recovered. Also did 100 m vis and nir. Downloaded the week’s UV data. We were missing a couple of days due to a glitch in either the computer of the instrument. We need to check more closely to ensure that the program is running.

During the evening bridge visit Rene showed me the drift track on the GPS display. It’s a great example of inertial oscillations; general drift to ESE with scallops every 12 hours or so.

     What a difference a day makes. There was major deformation starting at 2:00 am. There are major openings to the north and the west. Sarah’s Lake is now Sarah’s Sea. Quebec and Seattle are on separate islands. Once again, there is a big, multi-day blow, the wind dies and everything falls apart. This morning Tom, Bonnie, Jackie and I went out to the "Alpine Lakes" to do some melt pond albedos and ice structure characterization. I used the ASD and did the standard albedo plus some albedos using the transmitted sensor. Also measured some transmission through thin ice on a refrozen pond. Details are in the spreadsheet.

     In the afternoon went to the rowboat to commute to Quebec and Seattle. I ferried Hajo, Bonnie and the kayak over first. Jackie and I then got a ride with Scott from our dock to Quebec. It was about 800 m to 1km away, so a motor was much nicer than the rowboat. Everything looked fine on the floe, its just odd to see it as an island. Swapped the storage module and went back to the dock. Jackie and I then rowed over to Seattle to join Bonnie and Hajo. We were able to row right up to the Seattle Lead site and take some pictures from the ocean perspective. Bonnie and Hajo were doing EM lines. Jackie and I laser leveled 4 of Hajo’s lines. The first 3 were every .5 m and the last every 1 m. After finishing the measurements Hajo decided to have some fun and kayak back. The row back was about 300 m, compared to 200 m on the way out. There is still divergence and some relative motion between the pieces. Had to really hustle to make dinner. Bonnie and Jackie went ahead, while Hajo and I got everything packed. They were kind enough to get us plates of spaghetti. Nice combo – grilled cheese for breakfast and spaghetti for dinner.

     Divergence continues. "Sarah’s Sea" even bigger than yesterday. Seattle and Quebec continue to move, they are over around 11:00 now, instead of 12. Semi-promising skies this morning. Not good enough for the long awaited helo photography flight, but OK perhaps for helo albedos. Jamie has the chopper first to measure the amazing and growing Sarah’s lead. We assembled at the helo deck at 1030 to load up, but the time the chopper gets back (1050) and we get everything installed (1110) its raining the ceiling is down to the deck. We decide to leave everything installed and come back after lunch.

After lunch its just as bad, so Jackie and I go out to do optics. Tom and Bonnie decide to setup the microphotography stuff. Jackie and I are smoking on the albedo line. After a latish start, we do 200 m Kipps, 100 vis and the pond depth survey and get back in plenty of time for dinner.

     The evening bridge check shows Seattle and Quebec drifting by the Morison hut on Sarah’s Lake. They are really moving.

     Another morning of fog. Bad flying weather for either pictures or albedos. The ceiling is less than 100 feet (can’t see the top of the met tower). This morning Jackie, Tom and I went to Tuk to retrieve the orange box and move it to the Ridge. The last download from the Ridge seemed a bit flakey, so we’re going to try a new box. Tom has a very nice road to Tuk. You definitely get the impression that it’s a unique solution and there is no other way. Its tortuous with black holes and crack all around. On the way back driving towards the camp gas station the sled broke through some very thin ice. One second I was sitting on the sled daydreaming, the next the sled was sinking and the water was rising. Jackie and I both executed the same move simultanteously – shoulder roll off the sled onto the firmer ice. Jackie got bonus points for grabbing the 2-inch auger once she was done. We decided to walk the rest of the way to camp.

     After lunch it was time to do mass balance at Seattle and Quebec. Forget walking, forget rowing, the only way to get there is by helo. Quebec and Seattle used to be pretty much due north of the ship. In the past 2 days they’ve rotated counterclockwise to around 8:00. Seattle is about a mile from the ship and Quebec around ½ mile beyond. Got some good pictures of each site from the air and from the ground. The standard Seattle panorama should look quite a bit different this time. Most of the Seattle ponds are now connected to the ocean, including the one where we do the surface profile. The shelf at the lead edge has undergone considerable melting. Very rotten and it falls apart as you walk on it. All in all, Seattle and the Mainline are holding together pretty well. The Seattle floe is finally stuck in traffic and maybe will slow down a little. Quebec is a little scarier to look at. The site is on the edge of the floe, like a prow breaking the waves and the floe is out by itself. We may pull out the pingers and the pressure sensor and swap the box. Did the standard full mass balance at both sites. Conditions have remained cool with little surface melting – great!

     Got up bright and early to call home and wish Carly a happy birthday – magic 13, another teenager at home. Talked to Laura, Carly and Dan over a so-so connection. Kathy was at work so I didn’t get to talk to her. Another foggy morning so no flying, not even an helo albedo run. Instead Jackie and I assembled the gear needed to extract the pingers and pressure sensor from Quebec2 and went out and measured the pond 81 and ridge ablation strings.

     After lunch Jackie, Scott and I flew out to Quebec 2 to swap orange boxes and extract the pingers and pressure sensor. It took a bit of effort to find the floe. We went to Seattle, which is easy to find, and worked our way out from there. It’s a fun place to hang out, very quite and a bit eerie being on the edge of an island off by itself in the ocean. First bit of bad news was that sometime around July 20 the box shifted, the battery moved and tore out the connector losing power to the CR-10. So we have a gap of around 2 weeks in the data. Unfortunately that includes the pressure sensor record of the floe breakoff. We did a little bit of drilling and quite a bit of chiseling and recovered all the instruments without breaking anything. We were back onboard at 1600 and went straight out to the albedo line to help Tom and Bonnie finish up their measurements. Another day with no surface ablation.

     Another foggy, windy morning, but at least its cool, with a morning temperature of –3C. Outside it feels crisp and the snow is crunchy. This morning Jackie and I decided to make a trip to Sarah’s Lake. Tom and Hajo went out to do mass balance at Atlanta and Tuk, while Bonnie worked on board to set up her image processing apparatus. Even though the ice has come together somewhat, Sarah’s Lake is still huge. No shelf to speak of. According to Scott most of the shelves melted off during the big blow a few days ago. We did a quick wall profile and then got in the boat to cruise around the lead edge. But wait, the fog is dissipating and there are clear skies above. We headed back to shore as I quickly radioed the bridged to alert Bonnie to load up the camera equipment. 45 minutes later we were ready to fly. A great flight: 6000 feet, perfect visibiliy and the only clouds just beyond our box. Lots of interesting scenery all described in the helo log.

     As we were finishing a celebratory lunch, Bonnie came in with bad news. The Nikon jammed, as it turned out very early in the flight. So we did it all again. The weather was still pretty good, though the west leg had to be flown at 4500 feet, instead of 6000. This time the Nikon worked fine, however it was one of the mystery rolls of film. We’ll see how the developing goes. While the flying was going on Jackie and I took advantage of the sunshine to do a BRDF site – bare white ice. We just got done before the clouds came in. Since all the gear was out we did transmission measurements of the white ice and a nearby pond. Site photos on the Nikon between the helo flight and a 20 m tower panorama..

     Rehearsed for the Improv Night after dinner.

     Very foggy this morning and a bit warmer. Summer may be back. In the morning we installed the pressure sensor at Pittsburgh. The details of the installation are in Jackies notebook. I backfilled the hole with chips and water from a nearby fresh meltpond. Also downloaded data from the Ridge (which now has the Tuk box). It looks good.

     The weather didn’t improve in the afternoon, so we bagged any thought of a helo albedo flight. It was off to the albedo line. Yesterday’s firm white surface has turned into a darker, slushier mess. However, yesterday’s sunshine appeared to take its toll on the melt ponds.

     Talent night was great fun. Big turnout with lots of participation. After our performance of "Every point is precious" and "Icey pokey" can Broadway be far away.

     Helo albedos in the morning. Seattle and Quebec in the afternoon. Quebec logger is bad will replace tomorrow.

     Very foggy so trip to Baltimore is on hold. Switched Pittsburgh over to Quebec 2 box. Hauled Pittsburgh box in to take to Quebec 2. Not as crazy as it sounds. Did the ridge with C-more – get video, good stuff. Did pond and ridge strings.

Did Baltimore, FY ice is very rotten. Stopped at Quebec to change box. Went out to albedo line Bonnie had done Kipps we did first 50 vis. Science meeting was bring a number and there were some good ones – 73 straight days near 0 C. Polar Star due tomorrow.

     Morning radio check indicates that Polar Star is almost in range and the rotation will be starting around noon. Spent the morning packing and getting computer files in order. Explained optics software to Tom and Bonnie. Terry arrived on the first chopper around 1400. The 6 of us (Terry, Jackie, Hajo, Bonnie, Tom and me) talked in the computer room for a while, then Jackie and I took Terry outside for a walk around camp and a tour of our local sites. We stopped at the hut, did the chores, checked Pittsburgh and the Ridge, and walked out to the albedo line. Bruce arrived right at dinner time, so we all went to get some lasagna. Jackie’s meal was interrupted by her 10 minute warning. Two flights later it was my turn. In terms of closure, I left the way I came on 3 – 6 – 6. Contrast between Des Gros and Polar Star is quickly apparent when we’re met by 20 color coded members of the flight crew. I was led to my room in chief petty officer country. Very nice accomodations and I’m sharing it with the chief quartermaster. Personnel transfer between the ships went like clockwork-very well done.

     After yesterday’s fire drill of getting everyone rotated we spent today slowly sailing 20 nm north to Ice Station SHEBA to sling cargo. Spent a nervous hour wondering where we were going to park, luckily it was a floe or two north of Sarah’s Lead. It was strange to be looking south at the camp and to hear the dinner horn. After a few hours of slinging we departed SHEBA and began the trip south.

     I go to the bridge at 0800 and 2000 for radio checks with the Des Gros. and provide written updates for the SHEBA team. Otherwise, for the rest of the day I enjoy a life of leisure on the Polar Star. Spent a few hours watching the ice go by, eat a few meals (the food is good), read some magazines, work out in the gym, watch the evening movie and play cards with Jackie, Hajo and Scott. Tonight I played hearts for the first time in years. I was pretty rusty, but still won two games in a rout. Won big the first game, at which point Jackie, Hajo and Scott united to beat Don no matter what. I started game 2 by running it and they never recovered.

     Moving slowly south through the ice. Lots of loosely packed thin rotting ice. Scott’s pick of card games tonight – spades. The teams are Jackie and Scott against me and Hajo. We’re robbed as they win by one point 502 to 501.

     Continued south. Pizza night tonight. Hajo and I win big in tonights rematch in spades. As the day ends we’re steaming fast in open water. Have we seen the last of the ice?

     No. After hours in open water we’re back in the loose pack slowing us down. Will we make it for the evening jet? The ice is primarily multi-year chunks. Some of it is quite dirty. See a big bear on one floe who watches us with more curiousity than concern.

We get to Barrow right after lunch and its decided that we will use all forms of transportation to go ashore. We’re close enough to swim, but will use the helos for SHEBA science team and the landing craft for the Des Gros crew and the cargo. Time for one last SHEBA meeting to tell everyone the plan and give the batting order. The whole operation goes smoothly and I’m on the last chopper at 1600. After checking in at the airport a bunch of us go off to dinner. Same restaurant as on the way in and the same meal – grilled cheese and fries. All 20 of SHEBA science team are on the flight and are holding our tootsie roll pops in the air as we taxi down the runway. When the wheels are up there is a little cheer and we start eating. The rest of the passengers think we’re insane. They could be right. Changed planes in Anchorage and off to Seattle on the red-eye.

     Arrive in Seattle at 0500 to overcast skies and a hint of rain. The first problem is finding a car. This is difficult since its tourist season; no National, no Hertz, no Avis, no Dollar, but an Alamo. The next problem is finding a hotel; no University Inn, no Meany Tower, finally space at the Silver Cloud. It’s a nice hotel, similar to the University Inn only a bit bigger with a refrigerator and a microwave in the room. Free buffet breakfast.

     Off to the UW for lunch with Gary Maykut. Talked for a few hours about SHEBA. Ran into Mike Steele and Axel Schweiger on the ave, so they joined us at the brewery-sandwich shop.

     Spent the morning at PSC talking to Dick about SHEBA and the Tucson meeting. I spent the remainder of the day goofing off – REI, Gameworks, Kidd Valley. Gameworks has a new deal, all you can play in an hour for $10.