Synoptic Arctic Survey 2021

[uniquorn]

Nansen Legacy
A handful of suitcases

A handful of suitcases teach us how waves and sea ice interact, and improve weather and climate models
Waves marching through the sea ice is an amazing view. It is as if a white, snow-covered landscape suddenly starts gently undulating, the solid ground dancing rhythmically. The waves’ wildness from the open sea is tamed and dampened by the ice. Yet, the waves’ energy can break solid sea ice, greatly affecting sea ice drift, formation and melt. Hence, waves in ice are an important - yet not well understood - factor in the arctic physical environment.
Lena Seuthe & Øyvind Breivik UiT & MET
thursday 17. June 2021 - 10:46

The need for suitcases in the age of satellites

Satellites have been monitoring arctic sea ice distribution since the 1970s and have provided us with an unprecedented amount of information on a changing environment.

Yet, retrieving information on waves in ice-covered waters from satellite measurements is still challenging, and consequently our understanding of this process is limited. Improved understanding and modelling wave propagation in sea ice would increase the accuracy of the wave and ocean models used in climate, weather and sea state predictions.

Better weather and sea state forecasts are becoming more important in the Arctic, where ship traffic and other human activity is increasing.
The suitcases

As the satellites’ ability to measure waves in ice is still limited, measurements have to be retrieved in the field, by placing wave buoys on ice floes. Commercial wave buoys are expensive and not designed for being placed on the sea ice.

This is why researchers from UiO and MET have developed a cheaper, open source instrument: Small orange suitcases, and recently even smaller watertight plastic cases. In many ways, these suitcases are not much more than bulky smartwatches, as they contain a small computer, a GPS, and a high-precision accelerometer. In smartwatches, accelerometers are used for counting your steps. In the suitcases, the accelerometers record the vertical movement of the suitcases. Place the suitcases on sea ice, and the accelerometer will precisely tell us how much and how fast the sea ice moves up and down.

Jean Rabault (now at MET) started designing and putting together the first wave loggers while he was working on his PhD together with Professor Atle Jensen at UiO. Now he has developed a new generation of even smaller instruments together with Malte Müller, MET, slashing the cost to a few thousand Norwegian kroner a piece. This means we can deploy many more, and perhaps answer the question of how quickly waves are damped by the sea ice.

But even more important is the question of how waves break up the ice, or how waves keep the ice broken up. This is extremely important for measuring the amount of heat that escapes from the ocean, because fast ice (unbroken) effectively puts a lid on the ocean whereas ice floes with gaps between them are quite “leaky”.


16 suitcases on the ice

The Nansen Legacy has helped fund the 16 suitcases that have so far been put out on the sea ice.

Four instruments were deployed in the marginal ice zone north of Svalbard in September 2018, six on the Yamal plateau during the summer of 2020, and recently another six suitcases and nine of the new, smaller, wave loggers were deployed east of Svalbard in February 2021. In addition, an ultrasonic companion to the suitcases has been mounted on the bow of R/V Kronprins Haakon to measure waves in both the open ocean and the sea ice.

The scientists were able to measure how much the wave height differs between open and ice-covered waters with the help of the four suitcases deployed during the Nansen Legacy cruise in September 2018. Just a few days after the first suitcases had been placed on the ice,gale-force winds swept in from the ocean. The wave height was over three meters in the open ocean, but the accelerometers in the suitcases showed that the waves in the ice was less than a meter. Just how rapidly the waves are damped as they enter the sea ice is a “hot” topic (or cool?). This will be further explored with the deployments done during the last Nansen Legacy cruise, where a total of 15 wave loggers were deployed.

“The data collected gives us a unique opportunity to tune both sea ice drift models and models of waves in ice, which will ultimately help improve weather and wave forecasts.”

References:

Løken T, Rabault J, Thomas EE, Müller M, Christensen KH, Sutherland G, Jensen A (2020) A comparison of wave observations in the Arctic marginal ice zone with spectral models. Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics. arXiv:2003.09472v3

Rabault J, Sutherland G, Gundersen O, Jensen A, Marchenko A, Breivik Ø (2020) An open source, versatile, affordable waves in ice instrument for scientific measurements in the Polar Regions. Cold Regions Science and Technology 170: 102955

[Jim Hunt]

A handful of suitcases

The associated GitHub repository:

https://github.com/jerabaul29/LoggerWavesInIce_InSituWithIridium

[uniquorn]

Thanks Jim. Contents of the suitcase.
Arduino Mega and RaspberryPi

[uniquorn]

Nansen Legacy
https://arvenetternansen.com/2021/08/26/into-the-deep-unknown-central-arctic-basin/

Into the deep unknown central Arctic Basin
    August 26, 2021

Our scientific crew of 35 people for the Nansen Legacy cruise JC2-2-Arctic Basin will spend five weeks onboard the Norwegian icebreaker and research vessel Kronprins Haakon, with departure on Thursday 24th August 2021. Cruise leaders are Agneta Fransson (NPI) and Bodil Bluhm (UiT).

By: Agneta Fransson (NPI) & Bodil Bluhm (UiT)

The main goal for our scientific mission is to explore the poorly known ice-covered central Arctic Basin, with the 4000 m deep Nansen and Amundsen basins north of Svalbard, and the Gakkel Ridge that separates them, where we have few previous physical, chemical and biological data. The Arctic Ocean is changing due to climate change, warming, freshening, melting of ice and decreasing ice extent and thickness as well as expansion of Atlantic marine organisms northwards into the Arctic Ocean. We have limited knowledge on the effects of these changes on the Arctic ecosystem and atmosphere-ice-ocean system on a regional level and how different regions are connected on a pan-Arctic scale. Since this cruise is a Norwegian contribution to the international initiative ‘Synoptic Arctic Survey’ where several nations conduct similar measurements at the same time, we will contribute to gaining knowledge on a pan-Arctic scale.

For this cruise, we have a special focus on sea ice and upper ocean work as well as connectivity to the mid and deep water column and underlying sediments in early autumn. In addition, we will explore the role of transport of elements and organisms from the Siberian shelves through the Transpolar Drift (a prominent surface current crossing the Arctic Basins), and for that we will enter the Amundsen Basin. Onboard and in situ experiments are an important part of the cruise and are designed to measure and quantify processes and rates such as production and respiration, and sinking of food particles to the seafloor.

We have five scientific teams; physical oceanography and sea ice physics, ocean and ice chemistry, lower trophic levels, zooplankton and pelagic fish, and benthos and sediment work. There will be lots of activities, we will for example take water and plankton samples, conduct ice work, sample leads in the ice, bring up seafloor from 4000 m to the surface, etc… We will jointly collect interdisciplinary samples and data at five long process stations and about a dozen shorter stations, extending northward from the previously northernmost station in the northern Barents Sea to about 86 degrees north. This is about how far explorer and researcher Fritdjof Nansen got during his famous Fram expedition from which he returned 125 years ago – we are excited to follow his foot steps.

Hopefully the images will get bigger

35 researchers ready for the Arctic. Photo: Elin Vinje Jenssen, NPI

[Bardian]

Into the heart of the Arctic

Join 35 researchers on their scientific journey to the Central Arctic Ocean

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3e2d0f059df746be8b37bf130e089ddc

[uniquorn]

Thanks Bardian.

Oden blogs gone quiet. The change of route completely avoiding all the lowest concentration ice. Maybe Kronprins Haakon will cover it.

[Bardian]

Oden updates, in swedish

https://www.polar.se/nyheter/?c=Blogginl%C3%A4gg

[AndyQ]

Thanks Bardian.

Oden blogs gone quiet. The change of route completely avoiding all the lowest concentration ice. Maybe Kronprins Haakon will cover it.

I think the Oden Tracker is showing the wrong position. According to Marine Traffic sattelite position as well as a recent blogpost on Polar.se they are on a Western lattitude, not eastern as the Oden Tracker shows.

So I believe they are following the original cruise plan.

[oren]

Welcome, AndyQ! And thanks for the info.

[Jim Hunt]

I think the Oden Tracker is showing the wrong position.

Oden has discovered an Arctic wormhole!

[Bardian]

https://www.polar.se/nyheter/2021/provtagningar-dag-som-natt/

[kassy]

Arctic Ocean, evening 1 September, N86 ° 02.8 W39 ° 56.3

An easterly wind of 4 m / s is blowing and it is about -3 ° C.

We are starting to see the end of this fantastic expedition so everyone is doing everything to ensure that we have time for as much important research as possible before we have to set course home to Sweden on 11 September. This has, for example, involved sampling even at night, where enthusiastic researchers have, among other things, drilled ice cores and sampled the seawater in the light of the midnight sun.

Today's photos show a little taste of what the researching chemists and meteorologists are doing.

Translatation of the blog text. The bold... i know you can still be tired if you have also been sampling all day before that. Never been up north enough to see any midnight sun.

[Bardian]

weekly letter from Odens captain

https://www.polar.se/media/nbogmrkd/veckobrev-fraan-isbrytaren-oden-2021-09-05.pdf

[A-Team]

highlights from the weekly letter from Odens captain

The bathymetry chart was way wrong north of Morris Jesup. It showed 500 m whereas the plumb line established 885 m. This area has been repeatedly probed in recent years during ice openings but that data may not yet have made it into the charts.

The ship's track through the ice is clearly visible on the usual DMI S1 radar page for 03 Sep 2021. It was not possible to recover higher resolution images from the underlying pdf.

They surely have EMI out on the bow + helicopters to measure ice thickness before it is broken up but that was not shared. That would be strongly biased by their choice of route (through easier ice) and so not representative. SMOS though is still reporting ice a lot thinner than what they encountered.

Lost in translation but 3rd image may be showing inertial or tidal loops similar to what we have seen in many buoy tracks. Or not.

I have to show the nice operating pattern we had during the last 24 hours where we also got to be part of a small operating loop between operating periods. These loops occur only when the weather is extremely calm which we have had for the past 24 hours. If it blows properly, the wind smooths out the semicircles and it joins as an elongated sine curve. See the nice little loop that we drove around midnight yesterday.

[Bardian]

last weekly letter from Oden

https://www.polar.se/media/nbogmrkd/veckobrev-fraan-isbrytaren-oden-2021-09-17.pdf


Welcome home!

https://www.polar.se/en/news/2021/welcome-home/

[Bardian]

Kronprins Haakon is back in Longyearbyen

https://twitter.com/NorskPolar/status/1441370057645379584

they met a guy who`s been drifting with a sailboat for a year already, they ate dinner together and resupplied him with fresh vegetables, fruits and eggs. He still have food for 17 months but he is counting to reach open water sometime in December. The mast is covered with a lot of solar panels and  there is also 2 wind turbines. He has on only used 4000 liter of diesel since ha started the trip. He doesn`t wish any social media attention so I don`t post his name or nationality.

This is the boat, I got confused and thought the latter one was the ONE

https://www.kmy.nl/yachts/nanuq/

very important detail

The retractable propulsion system of the yacht



this is a different boat with same name

http://igloo.sailworks.net/boat_e.htm

more info about that boat and its past actions

http://www.polarquest2018.org/
https://www.polarquest.org/nanuq2020/