We have moved south! One of the many challenges of our Greenland survey is the need to switch bases in the midst of the season since Thule Air Force Base also serves as a staging location for a major resupply mission for many of the Arctic outposts. The whole set up has to be packed [...]
By Brian Moses This past week, Operation IceBridge undertook a detailed survey of the ICEX camp, situated on the ice sheet north of Alaska. This complex 3 day mission involves a transit to Fairbanks, AK over the top of the world, refueling in Fairbanks and flying the survey on day two, and a low-altitude nighttime [...]
Operation IceBridge has returned to the Arctic for a second Greenland season collecting critical measurements of Arctic sea ice cover and thickness and Greenland’s coastal outlet glaciers. Traveling on a DC8 outfitted as a cargo plane with only 6 rows of seats, the team flew from Baltimore MD to Thule in northern Greenland. The workhorse [...]
We are finally back from Greenland, bringing to a close the data collection piece of the spring 2010 Ice Bridge campaign. During my month-long piece in this campaign our time was split between two West Greenland base -camps, Kangerlussuaq and Thule (also known as Qaanaaq). Thule, at the northern end of Greenland, is the farthest [...]
Jacobshavn Isbrae is one of the fastest moving and most productive glaciers in the world. Scientists estimate that close to the snout (front) its movement has accelerated in recent years from 20 to 40 meters a day. At the same time that the front has accelerated the glacier has been rapidly retreating through ‘calving’ (large sections breaking [...]
Having seen the Russell glacier from the air (May 13, 2010 blog post), several of us decided to travel the 35 miles by land from our Kangerlussuaq station with a local guide named Adam. Adam is from Southern Greenland and fills us in on local information. He notes in that area it is illegal to [...]
Nature is keeping us in check at every turn. With weather and volcanic ash clouds limiting visibility we have to regularly rearrange plans, but most days we are able to capture a fairly complete set of data. The flight over Russell Glacier in Southwest Greenland (just inland from Kanger) was a redirect from a mission [...]
Today’s flight had to be carefully planned in order to avoid the volcanic ash plume still drifting from Iceland, so we flew to the east coast of Greenland to survey the Helheim glacier first. Glaciologists refer to Helheim glacier as one of ‘The big three’ in Greenland. The ‘big three’ (Helheim, Jakobshavn/Ilulissat and Kangerdlussuaq) are among [...]
Since the first week of the Spring Campaign we have had a planned flight from Thule to Fairbanks. This trans Arctic flight will provide a valuable overview of the icecap and the condition of the Northwest Passage. The weather has caused reschedules in that flight until we are down to the last days of the [...]
It’s amazing to think that Greenland is only hours from Baltimore’s BWI Airport, but the aircraft loaded at 2AM and we arrived in Greenland six hours later at 8 AM local time. The science teams are transported on an Air Mobility Command flight, the US Military’s “airline” for service men and women, contractors, and others [...]
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