Operation IceBridge - Arctic Spring & Autumn 2015

[Jim Hunt]

NASA Operation IceBridge is gearing up for another Arctic campaign. The team are just getting ready for deployment to Thule. Much like last year, all flights can be tracked via:

http://airbornescience.nasa.gov/tracker/

Photo courtesy of NASA / Christy Hansen:

[jdallen]

NASA Operation IceBridge is gearing up for another Arctic campaign. The team are just getting ready for deployment to Thule. Much like last year, all flights can be tracked via:

http://airbornescience.nasa.gov/tracker/

Photo courtesy of NASA / Christy Hansen:

I am very keen to follow their progress and hear of their findings this year.

[Jim Hunt]

The IceBridge Hercules C-130 is currently en route to Thule.  Pictures from the mission are available on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa_ice/sets/72157650973820319/

[Hunter]

Just took off for the first flight.  Today they will be surveying sea ice and also doing an overflight of the RV Lance ship which has stuck itself in the ice.  Yesterday is was moving up to 700m/hr so it makes it tricky to track on the fly!

More info on the RV Lance project here

http://www.npolar.no/no/prosjekter/detaljer?pid=b98886ce-590a-48a8-b113-4b96e98c65c8

[Jim Hunt]

Just took off for the first flight.

Welcome back Hunter! A bit more information on both Lance and Sabvabaa:

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,116.msg45971.html#msg45971

Today's mission plan, via the Operation IceBridge Facebook page:

[Jim Hunt]

Conclusive proof that NASA have already invented the warp drive!

Proof also that more than one NASA aircraft was flying over Greenland today.

[Jim Hunt]

The IceBridge team are relocating to Fairbanks:

[Jim Hunt]

The move to Fairbanks didn't take place yesterday. Whilst we await further news, here's the first video of 2015:

[ghoti]

I'm trying to remember how long it usually takes before data from Icebridge transects becomes available. Given the noise being made on the Arctic Sea Ice blog about how thick the Beaufort ice really is I'd love to see what the transects made this spring show.

Not this will really change the discussion much over there since the poster doesn't believe the satellite data nor the PIOMASS model nor the in situ buoy data. I seem to recall previous years' Icebridge data didn't contradict any of these sources.

[Jim Hunt]

The IceBridge quick look data archive suggests sometime in May at the earliest:

ftp://n5eil01u.ecs.nsidc.org/SAN2/ICEBRIDGE_FTP/Evaluation_Products/IceBridge_Sea_Ice_Freeboard_SnowDepth_and_Thickness_QuickLook/

[Hunter]

Should be soon, I know a few personally who stay up long nights working on this product...

No rest for the weary

[ghoti]

Well my thanks goes out to you and them!

[Jim Hunt]

Well my thanks goes out to you and them!

Seconded!

[Neven]

Thirded!

Thriced!

I mean: +1! 

[Jim Hunt]

As Hunter has pointed out elsewhere, a new video is now available, albeit not on the official NASA channel! I'm going to remove the 's' from "https" in the link provided by YouTube, which will hopefully allow it to embed properly:

[plinius]

a minimap of the flight route would be fantastic!

[ghoti]

Minimaps are on their Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/NasaOperationIcebridge

[Jim Hunt]

Two days ago the NASA Operation IceBridge Facebook page reported:

Operation IceBridge is ending its Arctic 2015 campaign a few days early due to maintenance issues with the aircraft.

Today the message reads:

The C-130 is headed home! Follow along on the final leg of the journey as the team transits on down to the Eastern Shore: http://airbornescience.nasa.gov/tracker/

[Jim Hunt]

I've changed the title of this thread, because NASA Operation IceBridge is heading to the Arctic once again:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-to-fly-parallel-science-campaigns-at-both-poles

For the first time in its seven years of flights, NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of changes in Earth’s polar ice, is conducting overlapping campaigns in Antarctica and the Arctic. Since 2009, IceBridge has studied Antarctic ice conditions each fall, but this year a new field campaign has been added to collect measurements of sea and land ice in the Arctic to provide insight into the impact of the summer melt season.

The first flight of the Arctic campaign is scheduled for Sept. 23, weather permitting, with ongoing flights until Oct. 23. The Arctic campaign team will fly aboard NASA Langley Research Center's Falcon 20 aircraft. The plane will carry three instruments: a laser altimeter called the Airborne Topographic Mapper, a high-resolution camera technology called the Digital Mapping System (DMS), which allows researchers to create maps of polar ice, and an experimental infrared camera.