So we did get a curious bear inspect the mass balance site in the mean time. Looks like he/she tried pull-ups on the pinger mast… However, unlike last season, we didn’t need to repair the probe, just correct data for physical distortion.
While Matt Druckenmiller travelled to Barrow without hick-ups a few days earlier, the arrival of Marie Kapsch and myself was delayed by the better part of a day after Alaska Airlines grounded planes due to a plume of ash from Mt Redoubt that made its way across Alaska. BASC was a busy place, in part because many researchers had to change their travel plans. However, we were cared for with the usual great flexibility. NSF logistics support will change effective next month, and we are excited to see what that means in practice.
Marie and I installed a wind turbine to keep the batteries of the mass balance probe charged throughout the season. The manual advised to install the turbine on a calm day; of course it turned out that we happen to have installed the turbine on the windiest, most miserable day of this trip. In spite of this we set up the turbine in no time and it started spinning happily in the wind. With all the high-tech equipment around (including that of a group from Belgium nearby), still I think this turbine is the visual highlight since it has moving parts.
We also deployed three spectral radiometers of our Norwegian collaborators. Two above the ice (one looking up into the sky, the other one looking down at the snow), and a thrid one looking up underneath the ice. And since we were at it, we added another snow depth pinger to the mass balance site right at the radiometers.
While I left on Sunday, Marie continued to help Matt with ice property and thickness measurements in Barrow until later in April.
The Geophysical Institute used one of the photos of this trip for a holiday post card (after photoshopping).
