Chasing Sea Ice While Playing Tag With a Satellite

New sea ice growing in a lead at different stages of formation with the pink skies creating nice lighting on the ice. Credits: NASA/Linette Boisvert

 

by Linette Boisvert / PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE /

This mission, called Mid-Weddell, is probably the most complex of not only the fall 2018 Antarctic campaign but all of IceBridge.

Overnight I got to take part in a truly historic Operation IceBridge (OIB) mission and I couldn’t be more happy or excited to tell you all about it! This mission, called Mid-Weddell, was probably the most complex of not only the fall 2018 Antarctic campaign but all of IceBridge. To add to this, some unforeseen issues made this particular mission difficult. Upon landing after our previous mission, we were informed that there was a local fuel trucker strike. This meant NO FUEL for all of Punta Arenas, Chile. So we had no fuel for our plane, which meant we couldn’t fly the next day and had no clue when this strike would be resolved.

The strike was resolved after a few days, but the Mid-Weddell mission was again delayed when we found out that there were cracks in the NASA DC-8 pilot’s window. A new one had to be sent from Palmdale, California, and installed before we could fly again.

Local Chilean fuel truckers burning tires along the side of the road in protest. Credits: NASA/Jeremy Harbeck

 

NASA’s DC-8 Crew replacing the pilot’s window. Credits: Kyle Krabill

After all of these added stressors, we began to worry that we wouldn’t even be able to pull off this mission because it was an overnight flight and had to be timed perfectly with an ICESat-2 satellite overpass. These two mandatory factors are not so easy to achieve based on: 1) The weather in the Weddell Sea has to be clear, as in no low or high clouds, so that ICESat-2 can see the sea ice that we are flying over; 2) there has to be a crossover of ICESat-2 in the middle of the night and in the middle of the Weddell Sea.

Map of the Mid-Weddell sea ice mission. Credits: NASA/John Sonntag

In order to make things easier on ourselves (please note my sarcasm here), we were also “chasing the sea ice” during this flight. Why do we need to chase the sea ice, one might ask? Because sea ice, frozen floating sea water, is constantly in motion, being forced around by winds and ocean currents. This makes it rather difficult to fly over the same sea ice as ICESat-2  because the satellite can fly over our entire science flight line in about 9 seconds, where as it takes us multiple hours to do so by plane.  Thus, in order to fly over the same sea ice, the sea ice must be chased during flight.

A view of NASA’s DC-8 engines and wing as we were chasing the sea ice below. Credits: NASA/Linette Boisvert

Chasing the sea ice is essentially my OIB baby project, and before this campaign I diligently worked on writing code that would take in our latitudes and longitudes along our flight path, and, depending on the wind speed, wind direction, and our altitude from the plane, determine where the sea ice that ICESat-2 flew over would have drifted by the time our plane got there. This way we could essentially fly over the same sea ice that the satellite flew over. To do this we asked the pilots to take the plane down to 500 feet (yes, 500 FEET!!) above the surface and stay there for roughly a minute in order to take wind measurements. I then plugged these values into my code program and changed our flight path so that we could fly over the same sea ice. We monitored the winds during flight, and if they changed significantly we would do this maneuver again. Now how cool is that? I was in charge of changing our flight path as we flew! Can’t say I’d ever “flown” a plane before.

Lynette Boisvert, Operation IceBridge’s deputy project scientist, is “chasing the sea ice” during the science mission. Credits: NASA/Hara Talasila

 

During our flight and because of our flight path we were able to see multiple sunsets and sunrises as the sun bobbed up and down across the horizon.

Since our flight was a low-light flight it had to be conducted at night, so we took off from Punta Arenas at 7pm for an 11-hour flight, heading south to the Weddell Sea. During our flight and because of our flight path we were able to see multiple sunsets and sunrises as the sun bobbed up and down across the horizon. Because of the low lighting, the sky changed from oranges to pinks to blues, making for quite the show from the DC-8’s windows. Even the land ice lovers enjoyed it.

Sunrise over the Weddell Sea and sea ice below from the window of the DC-8 Credits: NASA/Linette Boisvert

Right before 1:35am local time, John Sonntag began a 10-second countdown, and when zero was reached, ICESat-2 crossed directly above our plane, thus “playing tag with the satellite” and making history, as it was the first time this was done since the satellite’s launch a little over a month ago. We all began chatting on our headsets about how awesome it was to be part of this mission and to be able to witness this moment. This is what OIB had been working toward since its beginning in 2009. The data gap was now successfully bridged between ICESat and ICESat-2.

An ICESat-2 flyover as seen from Punta Arenas, Chile, in the middle of the night. Credits: NASA/Jeremy Harbeck

Later, during the flight, I began to think about how everyone on the team really stepped up and how easily we were all able to work together to make this mission happen. I mean, we literally chased sea ice and played tag with a satellite during this flight! It took the pilots’ maneuvering, the aircraft crew’s hard work, the instrument teams’ and scientists’ steady collecting of data—everyone working together all night long—for this mission to run smoothly. I am truly grateful for everyone’s hard work and dedication and was so happy to be there that night. As we on OIB say, “Team work makes the dream work.”

IceBridge Deputy Project Scientist Linette Boisvert is interviewed, explaining how the crew chases sea ice in flight. Credits: NASA/Hara Talasila)

Team Sea Ice or Team Land Ice?

Above Greenland, where land ice meets sea ice and some open water. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

by Linette Boisvert / Kangerlussuaq, Greenland /

Linette Boisvert is a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and researcher with Operation IceBridge. The mission of Operation IceBridge, NASA’s longest-running airborne mission to monitor polar ice, is to collect data on changing polar land and sea ice and maintain continuity of measurements between ICESat missions. 

For more about Operation IceBridge and to follow future campaigns, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge

I am lucky enough to get to travel to Kangerlussuaq—a small town on the southwestern coast of Greenland that means “big fjord” in the Kalaallisut language—to join NASA’s Operation IceBridge for the remainder of their Arctic spring campaign.

Map of Greenland showing the location of Kangerlussuaq. Credit: Google Maps

I landed in Kanger on the morning of Friday, April 20, after leaving Washington, D.C., Wednesday evening, flying and overnighting in Copenhagen, Denmark, and then taking an Air Greenland flight, crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice in less than 36 hours. (Fun Fact: Greenland is owned by Denmark, so flying through Copenhagen is the only way to get to Greenland commercially.) The flight was on an Airbus, which had a surprisingly large number of passengers aboard.

After landing I thought, hmm, why do all of these people want to go to Kanger? Kanger is a small, roughly 500-person town comprising buildings surrounding the airport. There is a grocery store, a coffee/ice cream shop that never appears to be open, a youth “jail” for all of Greenland, and a Thai restaurant that is known for its pizza. Odd.

View of the town of Kanger from across the river. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

Regardless, Kanger is pretty, being situated in the fjord valley with a river running through it, although currently it is frozen solid. It is also warmer here than I would have expected for Greenland, with highs in the upper 20’s to low 30’s. For the rest of the campaign, until May 4, I will be in Kanger, with the rest of my “OIB family,” as I call them, living in dorm-style housing and cooking family-style dinners together just about each night.

Build your own pizza for dinner in our dorm-style housing in Kanger. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

April 21 was our first science flight out of Kanger, and as with the rest of the flights from here, it was a land ice flight. Sidebar: I am a sea ice scientist and have never been on a land ice flight before. There is a friendly rivalry between the land ice and sea ice scientist community (go Team Sea Ice!), and it is clear here that I am the only sea ice fanatic aboard, so I get picked on a bit. For those of you who don’t know, sea ice is frozen seawater that floats around on the ocean, and land ice is snow that is compacted over many, many years and turns into ice and is located on the bedrock of Greenland. Sea ice = salty (good in a margarita), while land ice = fresh (good in a smoothie).

NASA P-3 aircraft propellers outside the hangar in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert
Photo showing land ice (bottom left corner) flowing down through the channel in the (center), and sea ice (bottom right corner). Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

It is not surprising to say that they really wanted to convert me to Team Land Ice, and they couldn’t have chosen a more scenic flight for this attempt. The flight is named Geikie 02 and highlights eight glaciers on the Geikie Peninsula on the eastern coast of Greenland.

Screen shot of the “Geikie 02” flight line mid-flight. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

Glaciers are slow-moving rivers of ice, where land ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet is transported into the oceans or sea ice pack depending on location and time of year. As the ice gets forced into these channels and around bends, it cracks, making crevasses, similar looking to crocodile skin (or the skin on your elbow) at times.

Crevassed land ice in the foreground and Greenland mountains behind. Photo credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

These glaciers have carved out deep channels and fjords in the bedrock over time, making for awe-inspiring views and terrain, especially when you are flying in the P-3 plane at just 1500 feet. There were many times where I would look out the window and see mountains reaching high above us as we flew over the glaciers deep in the fjord valleys and other times where it felt as it we were just skimming the tops of the mountains. This is not something that normally happens on commercial airline flights and is not for the faint of heart, but it is spectacular to behold, and I felt truly lucky to be able to witness this magnificent place.

As we flew out of the fjord to where both land ice and land meets sea, I instantly became overjoyed to view the sea ice (go Team Sea Ice!): all thicknesses, broken up, ridged, consolidated and flooded along with numerous leads and icebergs, which are land ice deposited into the ocean from the glaciers. Sea ice on a land ice flight? I think I could get used to this.

An iceberg surrounded by sea ice. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert
Sea ice floes, openings, and leads. Photo credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert
Where sea ice meets Greenland’s cliffs and mountains. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

As we crossed the fjords and the sea ice, we noticed multiple polar bear tracks in the snow (likened to a “polar bear highway”), and multiple holes in the sea ice where seals will come out for air and rest. A few people even claimed they saw a polar bear running on the sea ice after being startled by our plane flying over, but I didn’t see it and I am skeptical. Another highlight of this flight was flying past Greenland’s tallest mountain, Gunnbjorn, which rises 12,000 feet, and the “Grand Canyon of Greenland” – the one not covered by kilometers of ice in the center of the ice sheet that data from a previous IceBridge campaign had recently discovered. Needless to say, I was glued to my window for the majority of this flight. These pictures just don’t do them justice.

Flying in a fjord valley with the mountains above us. Credit: NASA/Linette Boisvert

Although this flight did not convert me to Team Land Ice, it did reiterate to me that all ice types matter, especially in the broader context of climate change, and it is the main reason for the IceBridge field campaign: to repeatedly gather data of both land and sea ice to determine where, how, and why both ice types are changing. Specifically, melting land ice flows into the ocean and contributes to global sea level rise, whereas the loss of sea ice affects ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns both locally and globally, reminding us that what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.