P-3 – Operation IceBridge

IceBridge Readies for Arctic Campaign

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

P-3 on the ramp at Wallops — The NASA P-3 airborne laboratory in front of a hangar at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

With IceBridge’s Arctic campaign flights about to begin, scientists, instrument operators and aircraft experts have been hard at work preparing the NASA P-3 airborne laboratory for its long trip north. On Mar. 10, 2014, the P-3, carrying instruments and researchers, flew from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to Thule Air Base in northern Greenland.

NASA uses a fleet of research aircraft to study things like urban air quality, soil moisture and polar ice, meaning that these aircraft are in high demand. Planes go from one mission to the next with only a few weeks in between to remove the previous mission’s instruments, perform regular maintenance and install equipment for the plane’s next deployment.

Working on servers — Matt Standish of the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets prepares equipment to go on the NASA P-3. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

Removing the instruments gives aircraft technicians the room they need to work on the plane’s engines, electronics and other equipment. Once they are finished, teams install instruments and equipment racks containing the computers and electronics needed to control them.

The moment of truth for this process is a successful test of aircraft and instruments. First, researchers check instruments and wiring on the ground. Once satisfied, the P-3 goes through a series of three check flights: an engineering check flight and two project check flights.

P-3 flight station — Inside the flight station aboard the NASA P-3 during the Mar. 6 project check flight. NASA / Christy Hansen

The first of these three is the engineering check flight, which took placed the morning of Mar. 6. On this flight, P-3 pilots and crew put the aircraft through its paces to make sure things are in proper working order. Later in the day, the P-3 took off again for the first project check flight, and flew along beaches on the Atlantic coast to test the aircraft’s GPS gear and the Airborne Topographic Mapper instrument.

View of Assateague Island, Virginia — View of Wildlife Loop Drive on Assateague Island, Virginia, during the Mar. 6 project check flight. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

The next afternoon the IceBridge team took off again for the second project check flight to test the various radar instruments aboard the P-3. To carry this out the team flew south from Wallops and turned out to sea around Virginia Beach, heading for open water. The relatively flat surface of the Atlantic Ocean acts almost as a mirror for the radars, providing a good test environment. Also, by flying far off the coast, the team can test radars without the risk of interfering with electronics on the ground.

After completing these check flights, the team set out to pack their bags and rest before the flight to Greenland. Once leaving Wallops, the P-3 and the IceBridge team will spend the next 11 weeks in the Arctic, collecting valuable sea and land ice data before returning to the United States on May 23.

Live Twitter chat with Operation IceBridge

NASA P-3 flight deck

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to fly over the Arctic while doing scientific research? On April 8, you can follow NASA’s Operation IceBridge and ask questions about how polar researchers work and the science of polar ice as NASA’s P-3B airborne laboratory flies 1500 feet above Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers.

IceBridge will post live in-flight highlights on Twitter@NASA_ICE from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT on Monday, April 8 (weather delay date April 9). Follow along during the flight and hear from the scientists,engineers and guest high school science teachers on board. We’ll also be taking your questions. Just use the hashtag #askNASA.

Sea ice in the Nares Strait west of Greenland

IceBridge Field Work – A Project Manager's Perspective

By Christy Hansen, IceBridge Project Manager, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Field work in the Arctic is a unique and challenging experience. It takes an experienced and tough team to complete mission objectives from start to finish despite the biting cold, long days and noisy environment. Early morning temperatures are often in the negative single digits, and the IceBridge team powers through it preparing for flight each day. A typical day’s work can range 12 to 14 hours, a schedule that is repeated daily until the airport is closed or until the flight crew reaches a required hard down day.

My project management perspective allows me to take a step back and appreciate not only the technical expertise of our instrument and flight crew teams, but the masterful choreography that unwinds each day to ensure the P-3B aircraft is prepped and ready, the instruments are powered on and in working condition, and the weather and corresponding science flight plan has been assessed and defined. Being actively involved in all phases of Operation IceBridge makes for a stronger and well-versed leader better able to assist any part of the team at any time. By doing this, I can ensure we are on track to meet our mission and science requirements, assist with troubleshooting in and out of the field, better manage project milestones, and ensure streamlined communication across all IceBridge disciplines with a common goal.

IceBridge project manager Christy Hansen on the stairway to NASA’s P-3B. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen
But why do we do this? How do we do this?

We do all of this in the name of science, collecting polar geophysical data that will help characterize the health of the Arctic and Antarctic. The in-field data and derived data products IceBridge produces are helping to show annual changes in the ice. These data can be entered into models that can more accurately predict what might happen in the future in terms of ice sheet, glacier, and sea ice dynamics, and ultimately sea level rise; all of which have serious consequences for climate change.

But how do we reach these science goals? The steps and teamwork required are simply astounding. Each part of our team is like a puzzle piece and everyone is needed to complete the puzzle. All teams must clearly know their individual responsibilities, but also be able to work together and mesh where their job ends and another begins.

The choreography starts in the beginning, or planning phase where the science team establishes targets of interest on the ice in accordance with our level 1 science requirements. Then our flight planner designs survey flights, having a unique ability to efficiently mesh the science targets with the range and flight dynamic capabilities of the P-3B aircraft.

Next the aircraft office at NASA’s Wallop’s Flight Facility prepares the P-3B for deployment to some of the harshest environments on Earth and supplies the flight crew that executes the specific flight paths over our required science targets. The instrument teams provide the instrumentation—laser altimeters, radars, cameras and a gravimeter and magnetometer—and expertise in operating equipment and processing data during and after flights. Our logistics team deploys to the field ahead of time, establishing security clearances, local transportation and accommodations, and internet and airport utilities.

Finally, our data center ingests and stores the data that our team collects, ensuring it’s useable and available to the wider community. Our data is not only used by polar scientists and other researchers around the world, it is also used to help satellite missions like the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 and NASA’s ICESat-2 calibrate and validate satellite instrumentation.

A view of ice from NASA’s P-3B airborne laboratory. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

And finally, a day in the field …

Assuming a standard 8 a.m. local takeoff and eight hour mission duration, we generally have three major groups who follow different schedules pre-flight each morning.

The P-3 maintenance and flight engineer crew typically starts the earliest, heading to the airport about three hours before takeoff. They prep and warm up the plane, conduct some tests and fuel it, all in preparation for the instrument team arrivals and flight operations.

In parallel with aircraft prep, IceBridge’s project scientist, project manager and flight planner team head to the weather office. The team works with local meteorologists, reviewing satellite imagery and weather models to determine the optimal weather patterns that support our flight requirements—clear below 1500 feet, the altitude we typically fly—and final target selection.

In the meantime, the instrument teams arrive at the aircraft to power up and check their systems prior to takeoff. By 7:30 a.m., the aircraft doors close, and we take off by 8. Our eight-hour flights range between flying high and fast, to low and slow over our targets, which include geophysical scans of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice.

We typically land around 4 p.m., close out the plane, check data and meet at 5:30 for a science meeting. Many folks continue to work for a few hours afterward, processing data or writing mission reports. All of this is repeated daily, for up to 6 days in a row, which can be exhausting, but in the name of important scientific research, an amazing team, and majestic polar landscapes, I could not imagine anything else.

Crew members working on the P-3B. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

Crossing the Basin: IceBridge in Alaska

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Why does IceBridge fly all the way to Alaska when the rest of the campaign is in Greenland? It’s an understandable question considering how far away these two locations are. But when you consider the economic importance of the regions north of Alaska and how dynamic and varying sea ice in the Arctic is, the picture becomes clearer. Much like last year, the IceBridge team made the 8 hour transit flight from Thule to Fairbanks early in the campaign.

Flight path from Thule to Fairbanks.
Flight path taken from Thule, Greenland, to Fairbanks, Alaska on Mar. 21, 2013. This route and the more southerly return leg have been flown in every IceBridge Arctic campaign. The flightplan was renamed this year as a tribute to sea ice scientist Seymour Laxon. Credit: NASA

Ice on the Move

At first glance it might be easy to assume that Arctic sea ice is uniform, but the region’s geography, ocean and wind currents and the ever-changing nature of ice itself mean that conditions can vary significantly across the Arctic Basin. “There are lots of different thickness gradients across the basin,” said Jackie Richter-Menge, sea ice scientist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and co-lead of the IceBridge science team.

Ocean currents like the Beaufort Gyre continuously spin in the Arctic Ocean, driving ice cover along the coast of North America toward Greenland where it is compressed into thicker multi-year ice. The presence of multi-year ice is one of the biggest differences between the ice cover off the coast of Greenland and in the region of the Arctic Basin north of Alaska, which is recently dominated by ice that forms in the winter and disappears in the summer.

DMS mosaic of ice in the Beaufort Sea.
Digital Mapping System (DMS) image mosaic of ice in the Beaufort Sea. The lighter colored portion at the bottom right is thick sea ice, the darker blue-gray areas are thinner ice and the dark segment in the middle is open water. Credit: NASA / DMS

This seasonal ice cover is becoming more prevalent in areas north of Alaska as the thicker multi-year ice gradually melts. On the Mar. 22 IceBridge flight Richter-Menge saw firsthand how things have changed since she flew over the region earlier in her career in the 1980s. “It was notable how deep we went in the basin without seeing multi-year ice,” Richter-Menge said. IceBridge didn’t see multi-year ice until they were about 1000 kilometers from shore. In the early 1980s it could be found between 150 and 200 kilometers out.

Getting Better Data

These sorts of changes, along with environmental and economic concerns, contributed to the science communities increased desire for data on sea ice this part of the Arctic Basin. IceBridge had conducted transits of the entire basin from Thule to Fairbanks in previous campaigns, but starting in 2012, the mission started doing a temporary deployment in Fairbanks to get more data on areas north of Alaska.

IceBridge’s increased coverage is adding to the body of knowledge on ice in this region adding a new level of detail. “It gives us a more complete view of what’s going on in the basin,” said Richter-Menge. The data collected on these flights give more geographic coverage to IceBridge’s sea ice data products, especially the quick look product that debuted during last year’s Arctic campaign. This dataset came about in response to a need for near real-time sea ice conditions for use in seasonal sea ice forecasts.

Graph of Arctic sea ice volume from the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS). Credit: Polar Science Center / University of Washington

Along with data on sea ice freeboard, the amount of ice floating above the ocean’s surface, many in the scientific community have taken an interest in IceBridge’s snow depth measurements. Snow depth gives a way to measure changes in precipitation rate and differences in accumulation affect how much snow is available for melt ponds. As conditions warm in the summer, snow melts and accumulates in ponds. These ponds are darker than the surrounding snow, trapping more of the sun’s heat and further accelerating melting.

Jackie Richter-Menge (left) and the IceBridge team before a flight over the Beaufort Sea on Mar. 22, 2013. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

Learning and Teaching

As a guest on the flights out of Fairbanks Richter-Menge got a chance to see firsthand how IceBridge collects sea ice data. Being able to witness this complicated and involved process helps give a better-rounded picture of the mission, Richter-Menge said. In addition to the data-collection that takes up each flight, Richter-Menge got to see the work it takes to choose which mission to fly each morning. “It was impressive to watch the whole decision-making process for choosing flight lines,” said Richter-Menge.

And as is often the case, the flow of information goes both ways. Richter-Menge and fellow sea ice scientist Sinead Farrell spent plenty of time on their flights sitting at a window aboard the P-3 and explaining what everyone was seeing. “We are learning a lot about sea ice with them here,” said Christy Hansen, IceBridge’s project manager.

NASA Operation IceBridge: Notes from the Field (Arctic 2013)

By Sinead Farrell, Sea Ice Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / University of Maryland

Editor’s note: This entry was originally posted on the Scientist’s Soapbox, a blog published by the Earth Science System Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

Introduction:

The NASA Operation IceBridge mission began the Arctic 2013 research campaign on Monday 20th March. The mission will survey the Greenland Ice Sheet and sea ice pack of the Arctic Ocean. The NASA IceBridge mission is now in its fifth year and continues to measure Arctic sea ice thickness and snow depth. These data continue the time series of ice thickness measurements begun with NASA’s ICESat in 2003, and will provide a link to the NASA ICESat-2 mission, due for launch in mid-2016.

Surveys are conducted using a specially-equipped P-3B research aircraft (see photo below) that flies above the ice carrying a number of science instruments including radar and laser altimeters, and high-resolution cameras. This year the first flight took place from Thule, Greenland over Arctic sea ice north of the Lincoln Sea, on Wednesday 20th March. IceBridge flew beneath the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 satellite, that carries a special radar altimeter known as SIRAL. The mission was designed to fly a gridded-survey beneath the satellite to help validate CryoSat’s measurements over sea ice. The aircraft then transited from Thule across the Arctic Ocean to Alaska on Thursday 21st March. Over the coming days IceBridge will attempt a number of sea ice flights over the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas from a base at Fairbanks International Airport, Alaska. ESSIC’s Sinead Farrell hopes to participate in the first Alaska mission on Friday 22nd March, pending good weather. Dr. Farrell is a sea ice scientist and member of the NASA IceBridge science team.

View of a sea ice lead from the NASA P-3B. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

Daily Blog Posts:

Tuesday 19th March: Arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska on Tuesday to slightly warmer spring temperatures than I had expected. After organizing a rental car, figuring out how to use the engine heating block and the all-wheel drive, I headed for the hotel to unpack and (re)familiarize myself with the locale. The last time I enjoyed an extended visit to Fairbanks was exactly ten years ago, while I was conducting my graduate studies at University College London. Back then I also participated in a NASA airborne campaign over the Chukchi, Beaufort and Bering Seas aimed at validating the NASA AMSR-E radiometer. Things have not changed much in Fairbanks over the years!

Wednesday 20th March: The first in a series of IceBridge science flights was successfully completed on Wednesday. Although the mission was conducted far away over Arctic sea ice northwest of Greenland it was nonetheless a very exciting mission to follow. I was involved in designing a set of gridded flight-lines over the ice such that our airborne survey would provide temporally and spatially coincident measurements with CryoSat-2, while it passed high over-head. This is a technically challenging flight to conduct but things worked out well. The sea ice appeared more dynamic than we had expected, but the number of cracks in the ice, known as “leads”, will actually help in the data analysis aimed at inferring sea ice thickness. While waiting for the IceBridge mission to transit from Greenland to Alaska, I will spend time visiting the International Arctic Research Center (IARC), at the University of Alaska – Fairbanks (UAF). On Wednesday I had the opportunity to meet with some of my colleagues at IARC to discuss on-going and future projects to better understand the diminishing Arctic sea ice pack. I was also able to attend a lecture by Dr. Ron Kwok of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the topic of “Recent Changes in the Arctic Sea Ice Cover: A remote sensing perspective”. Fortuitously there are many national and international sea ice scientists visiting UAF right now to participate in meetings and workshops. Some are even en route to conduct field-work on the sea ice near Barrow, Alaska. Although it’s very cold (-19 degrees Celsius this morning!) and snowing, this is a great time of the year to be in Fairbanks!

Thursday 21st March: Thursday began with the exciting news that the NASA P-3 was en route to Fairbanks. Today’s mission from Greenland to Alaska was flown along what is called the “Laxon Line”. The flight is named in honor of University College London Professor Seymour Laxon. Seymour, my graduate advisor, died tragically 3 months ago. Seymour was a pioneer in the use of satellite altimeters to study sea ice and was the lead sea ice scientist on the CryoSat-2 mission. Today we measured ice thickness and snow depth along a flight line that crosses most of the Arctic Ocean. Thanks to a good tail-wind the P-3 landed one hour early in Fairbanks, right around lunch time. I was really lucky to watch the plane land with my colleagues Jackie Richter-Menge from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and Pam Posey from the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Once through customs we met our colleagues off the plane and welcomed them to snowy Alaska!

Friday 22nd March: On Friday we hope to conduct a third sea ice mission over the Arctic, weather permitting. We always need good weather to fly our surveys since clouds can potentially interrupt the measurements we make from the aircraft. We’re particularly interested to see what is happening to the sea ice in the Southern Beaufort Sea this year after the ice pack suffered a wide-spread “break out” event in mid-February. This event caused the ice pack to fragment into smaller floes and become more dynamic. Although these break-out events are not unusual in this region, they do not normally happen in February, the dead of winter. We will provide more updates as the day progresses.

The NASA P-3B on the ramp at Fairbanks, Alaska. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

IceBridge Arctic 2013 Check Flights Complete

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

On Mar. 14 and 15, the IceBridge team carried out project check flights in preparation for the Arctic campaign. After an engineering check flight earlier in the week to make sure everything is properly secured inside the aircraft, scientists and a small number of instrument operators board the P-3 to begin flights over the Wallops Flight Facility airfield and beaches near Wallops Island, Va., to test the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) and Digital Mapping System (DMS) and over the Atlantic Ocean to test the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS), the snow and accumulation radars, and Ku-band radar altimeter.

These check flights have two main purposes. The first is to test the equipment to make sure it’s all in working order and the second is to collect data that is used to calibrate the instruments. Every time an instrument is installed in a research aircraft it’s important to make sure that nothing has changed since the last time it was flown.

Flight paths for both IceBridge check flights.

Flight paths for IceBridge check flights on Mar. 14 (blue) and Mar. 15 (red). Credit: NASA

Ground tests can catch many alignment and installation problems, but the real moment of truth comes in flight tests. On the afternoon of Mar. 14, the IceBridge team took off for flights near Wallops to test the ATM and DMS systems and check other electronics. By flying a level flight at varying altitudes, the teams can collect data that ensures their instruments are properly calibrated.

Different materials reflect light to varying degrees, which can make a difference with a laser-based instrument like ATM. Because IceBridge is measuring snow and ice, highly reflective materials, the ATM team will often test over sandy areas the beaches near Wallops. This is because sand reflects light in a similar way to ice. Another test is to check areas near each other with widely different albedos, for example, the white numbers and surrounding dark pavement on the runway. If light and dark targets next to each other show the same elevation then the instrument is calibrated properly.

The NASA P-3B at Wallops Flight Facility before the IceBridge check flight on Mar. 14, 2013. Credit: NASA / Kyle Krabill

Similarly, the team tests the DMS instruments to make sure the camera is aligned properly and that focus and frame rate are set appropriately. The rate at which the DMS camera captures photos depends on the aircraft’s speed and altitude, with lower altitude and higher speeds needing a faster rate to ensure proper coverage.

On Mar. 15, the team took off in the morning to do final checks of the P-3B’s radar instruments. Instead of flying along the beaches near Wallops, the P-3 headed out 200 nautical miles over open water in the Atlantic Ocean. The reason for doing this test over the ocean is twofold. First, U.S. law prevents IceBridge from operating its radars inside the country, and second, the ocean surface acts almost like a mirror for the radar, making it ideal for testing. By comparing transmit and return signal strengths at different altitudes, the team can make sure the radar is working properly.

The P-3B returns to Wallops after the first of two IceBridge check flights. Credit: NASA / Kyle Krabill

Signal strength, however, is only part of the picture. MCoRDS is made up of several antennas in an array, with each antenna’s signal recorded separately. To make sure that each element is aligned correctly, the P-3B climbs to a high altitude and banks left and right while researchers measure how the return signals change during the maneuver. These maneuvers are also the reason why the radars are tested on a separate day from ATM and DMS. Once the plane banks more than 15 degrees, its wing blocks these instruments from seeing GPS satellites in orbit and both ATM and DMS need accurate GPS data to work properly.

With the check flights complete it is nearly time for IceBridge scientists, instrument team members and flight crew to make the trip to Thule, Greenland, to start the 2013 Arctic campaign. The P-3B is scheduled to make the transit flight from Wallops early on the morning of Mar. 18, and the first science flight is scheduled for Mar. 20.

Preparations for Arctic Campaign Under Way

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

An IceBridge field campaign is the culmination of months of planning and preparation. At January’s science team meeting, scientists focused the campaign’s goals and provided mission planners the details needed to finalize flight plans. With these final details ironed out the next step was to start preparing the tools of the trade, IceBridge’s aircraft and instruments. For the past several days, instrument teams and aircraft technicians at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., have been getting the P-3B ready for the 2013 Arctic campaign, which is scheduled to have its first science flight on Mar. 20.

Operation IceBridge is but one of several missions to use NASA’s P-3B airborne laboratory. After each mission, this aircraft returns to its home base at Wallops where it undergoes repairs and routine scheduled maintenance needed to keep it flying at peak efficiency and where science instruments are swapped out. This rotation of airborne science missions keeps the Wallops aircraft team busy, preparing between three and five missions per year. “Sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less,” said P-3B flight engineer Brian Yates. “We’re working on some relatively large projects, so we have five this year.”

NASA's P-3B airborne laboratory in a hangar at Wallops Flight Facility as it is being prepared for the upcoming Arctic campaign.

NASA’s P-3B airborne laboratory in a hangar at Wallops Flight Facility as it is being prepared for the upcoming Arctic campaign. Credit: NASA / George Hale

After the aircraft’s maintenance is complete and the previous mission’s equipment has been removed, the IceBridge team starts installing the mission’s suite of science instruments. This process can be generally divided into a few portions: installing the instrument and the equipment needed to control it and collect data, testing the individual instruments and checking to make sure the aircraft and instrument suite work together as they should.

The first step is installing the components that gather the data, such as cameras, radar arrays and laser transceivers. The Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) laser and Digital Mapping System (DMS) cameras are installed in bays on the underside of the aircraft. Each of these instruments looks down through windows in the plane’s belly. The Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) antenna is attached to the underside of the aircraft. Previously this has included antennas under the wings, but IceBridge is flying with a trimmed down MCoRDS instrument with an array beneath the P-3B’s fuselage.Additional radar instruments like the accumulation and snow radars and Ku-band radar altimeter are also installed at this time.

The MCoRDS radar antenna on a cart prior to being attached to the underside of the P-3B. Credit: NASA / George Hale

While this hardware was being installed on the plane, other members of the instrument team put together all of the hardware needed to operate the instruments in metal racks that are then securely bolted to the floor of the plane. Making sure everything is securely fastened is crucial because of the often turbulent nature of low-altitude polar survey flights.

ATM equipment racks waiting to be installed in the P-3B. Credit: NASA / George Hale

Once everything is in place and secured the next step is to make sure the instruments work properly. This means rounds of testing both on the ground and in the air. Ground testing involves checking instrument connections and alignment. “We’ll check on the camera to make sure it’s seeing through the window ok and not catching the edge,” said DMS field engineer Dennis Gearhart.

Everything being used in this IceBridge campaign has flown before, but it’s important to make sure the instruments are working properly.”We want to make sure things work as well as they did when they were put into storage,” said ATM program manager James Yungel. To do this, the ATM team will bounce the laser off a ground target 500 feet away.

The MCoRDS antenna secured to the underside of the P-3B. Credit: NASA / George Hale

The real test of all this work comes with the mission’s check flights on Mar. 13 and 14. The first flight, known as an engineering check flight is carried out with flight crew only and is to ensure that everything is properly installed and secured. Scientists and instrument operators participate in the second flight, where instruments are powered on and tested. “The check flights are a final arbiter,” said Yungel.

This year’s IceBridge Arctic campaign will run from Mar. 18 through May 3. The P-3B will operate out of airfields in Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and Fairbanks, Alaska.

Operation IceBridge Featured in EOS

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

The new quick look sea ice data product released by NASA’s Operation IceBridge was the subject of a cover story in the Jan. 22 issue of the American Geophysical Union publication EOS. The article discusses the sea ice data product created by IceBridge scientists during the 2012 Arctic campaign last April and how these datasets provide new ways for researchers to measure Arctic sea ice.

Maps of survey of Arctic sea ice

Map showing quick look sea ice data from Arctic 2012 campaign

EOS article:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EO040001/abstract

For more about IceBridge’s quick-look sea ice product and its use in seasonal forecasts, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/icebridge/news/spr12/arctic-seaice.html

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/seaice-forecasting.html

IceBridge Visits McMurdo Station

By George Hale, IceBridge Science Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

A team from NASA’s Operation IceBridge recently traveled to Antarctica to conduct a site survey of U.S. Antarctic Program facilities at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. From Dec. 6 to Dec. 13, IceBridge project manager Christy Hansen, NASA P-3B pilot Matt Elder and NASA flight engineer Brian Yates met with people from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Antarctic Program’s Antarctic Support Contract (ASC) team and 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard to study the feasibility of operating NASA’s P-3B research aircraft out of Antarctica. Large airborne science missions like IceBridge are a significant logistical undertaking, requiring runways, aircraft maintenance facilities, fuel, electrical power and facilities to house mission personnel.

109th AW LC-130 at Christchurch, New Zealand
One of the 109th AW LC-130s at Christchurch, New Zealand. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

This site survey is in preparation for an upcoming meeting with NSF to discuss possible future options for expanding IceBridge’s mission into previously unsurveyed parts of Antarctica. All U.S.-based science operations in Antarctica are required to go through NSF’s Office of Polar Programs (OPP) to receive official approval and support. Because OPP and the 109th AW handle logistic and airlift operations for McMurdo and other U.S. scientific stations in Antarctica, IceBridge has to coordinate operations with them. IceBridge has a history of working with the 109th AW during previous Arctic campaigns in Greenland.

First, the team traveled to Christchurch, New Zealand, a jumping off point for travel to Antarctica. There they met with USAP ASC and 109th AW personnel to determine the logistics needed to support NASA’s P-3B, checked out cold weather gear needed for Antarctica and prepared for the transit flight from Christchurch to McMurdo. “The [U.S. Antarctic Program] and 109th guys welcomed our attendance, questions and shared some of their general flight experiences with us,” said Hansen.

IceBridge project manager Christy Hansen wearing NSF-issued cold weather gear. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

After arriving at McMurdo, the survey team got to work meeting with various people to discuss IceBridge’s needs and how the mission would fit into overall operations there. With many airborne operations going on at McMurdo, flights will need to be carefully scheduled and coordinated. This is to avoid interfering with existing takeoff, landing and fueling operations. In addition, some of IceBridge’s scientific instruments require power at all times. This would mean finding a way to route power to the P-3 or run a generator near the aircraft when it is parked.

View of McMurdo Station from Hut Point. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

The cold, unpredictable and rapidly-changing weather in Antarctica adds an extra layer of difficulty to flying and maintaining aircraft there. Elder and Yates met with 109th AW personnel to discuss the finer points of operating and maintaining aircraft in Antarctica’s challenging conditions. For instance, operating in Antarctica means that the P-3B may need a few modifications to make it compliant with existing airfield capabilities at McMurdo and meet the unique challenges of flying in the Antarctic. For example, lines of longitude converge at the pole, meaning the P-3B needs additional navigational systems.

The P-3B is only part of the overall picture though. With flight crew, scientists and instrument operators, IceBridge has a fairly large personnel footprint. This means arranging lodging for people and providing space and power for instrument teams to set up their equipment, including GPS ground stations, gravimeter and magnetometer instruments and various computers.

Building that could serve as a location for gravimeter and ATM GPS equipment. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

Another objective of the visit was to observe 109th flight crew operations first hand. The IceBridge team achieved this by riding along on a flight to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. There, the team observed the condition of the South Pole ski way, in the unlikely event the P-3B had to land there. “The 109th and Antarctic Support Contract reps have been treating us well,” said Hansen. “We did not expect the South Pole opportunity.”

The IceBridge team and members of the 109th AW strike a pose at the South Pole. Credit: NASA / Christy Hansen

With the site survey completed, IceBridge mission planners will prepare for a Jan. 3 face-to-face meeting with NSF to discuss future plans. IceBridge is looking forward to continued work with the USAP teams to break new ground on operating NASA aircraft out of Antarctica. “NSF, ASC and the 109th provided the IceBridge survey team with excellent support and feedback during their visit,” Hansen said. “This could not be achieved without the team work and support of the National Science Foundation.”

Q&A: Michael Studinger

By Maria-Jose Viñas, Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory Outreach Coordinator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Michael Studinger is Operation IceBridge’s project scientist. He trained as a geophysicist in Germany, his home country, before moving to the U.S. to take a position at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and then transferring to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2010. Studinger has been studying polar regions for 18 years, expanding his initial focus on the geology and tectonics of the Antarctic continent to the overall dynamic of polar ice sheets.

IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger

Operation IceBridge Project Scientist Michael Studinger. Credit: Jefferson Beck / NASA

Studinger recently returned from Greenland, where he was leading Operation IceBridge’s 2012 Arctic campaign.

This was IceBridge’s fourth Arctic campaign. How different was it from previous years?

We flew more than last year: During the 75 days we were there, we only had to cancel a single flight because of weather, something I’ve never seen before. Regarding sea ice, we have expanded coverage in terms of area. For the first time we went to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to collect data there. But the biggest change this year is that we published a new data product that we had to deliver to the National Snow and Ice Data Center before we even returned from the field. This product is being used by modelers and other scientists to make a better prediction of the annual sea ice minimum in the summer. We can now feed ice thickness measurements from March and early April into these predictions and see how they improve them.

What are the benefits of improving Arctic sea ice minimum predictions?

There seems to be enough people who have an interest in finding out how thick or thin the sea ice will be. People who live in the Arctic and shipping companies…they want to know, they want to prepare. It’s like long-range weather forecast: People who grow crops would like to know if they’re going to get a wet season or a dry season.

Also, it’s a relatively short-term prediction, so we’ll soon find out if the models are working or not. It helps building better models because you can compare the results to the reality in a few months.

This Arctic campaign, you teamed up with CryoVEx, ESA’s calibration and validation campaign for the CryoSat-2 satellite. How did it go?

We did two coordinated flights with them. We were in Thule, Greenland, and they were in Alert, Canada. We both took off at the same time and made sure we were over the same point in the Arctic Ocean with CryoSat-2 flying overhead. It was quite a bit of a coordination effort. We measured the same spot along the satellite track within a few hours. The CryoVEx team has instruments similar to ours, but also some that we don’t have. IceBridge has unique instrument suite for sea ice that includes the world’s only airborne snow radar. By combining all the data from all the instruments, we can learn a lot about what each instrument is seeing and what CryoSat-2 is actually measuring over sea ice.

How’s your average Arctic campaign?

We start in Thule because we want to get the sea ice flights out of the way early on, as long as it’s cold over the Arctic Ocean. It’s still fairly dark there, that far north [Thule is 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle]. We have just enough light in the second half of March to fly the sea ice missions, during the first three weeks of the campaign. Then we go down to central Greenland while it’s still cold there and start doing ice sheet flights, for three or four weeks. Then we go back to Thule because it’s getting too warm in southern Greenland, and we finish the ice sheet flights in the northern half.

Can you describe your daily routine while in Greenland?

We get up at 5 a.m. In Kangerlussuaq, we try to be in the air at 8:30, and in Thule we try to be flying at 8, when the airport opens. Eight hours later, we land. After that, we have a science meeting where we talk about how the flight went and the plan for the following day. Then we eat dinner, check email, look at data… all that before we go to bed and do it all over again the next day.

How do Arctic and Antarctic campaigns differ?

We use different aircraft: a P-3B for the Arctic and a DC-8 for Antarctica. In Greenland, when we fly out of Kangerlussuaq or Thule, we start collecting data pretty much right away, except for the sea ice missions. In Antarctica, we “commute” from Punta Arenas in southern Chile, which takes a few hours. Then we can only collect data for a few hours before we go back home to Punta Arenas. Typically, in the DC-8 we fly for 11 to 11.5 hours, much longer than the about 8 hours of flight with the P-3.

We actually fly more instruments on the P-3: the accumulation radar and the magnetometer (which is much easier to install on the P-3 than on the DC-8). We don’t really have the room in the fuselage to mount the accumulation radar antennas and there’s not really much of a need to use it in Antarctica. The snow accumulation in Greenland is higher. We can actually see annual layers with the accumulation radar but it’d be far more difficult in Antarctica because less snow falls there.

Personally, do you prefer one campaign to the other?

No, they’re just different. It’s a different airplane: the DC-8 is much more comfortable, less noisy. You don’t have the vibration of the P-3, so you can actually get a lot of work done on the transit flights. But the flights are very long.

And scientifically, is one campaign more interesting than the other?

Not for me. Most of my work I’ve done in Antarctica, but I’m getting more and more interested in what Greenland has to tell us. If you look at the two biggest glaciers we study, Jakobshavn Isbrae in Greenland and Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, the kind of mechanism through which both glaciers are losing ice is similar — warm ocean water is melting the ice from underneath. So we’re studying similar processes. Antarctica is far more challenging to get there and collect data, but from a scientific point we need to do both, otherwise we’re missing part of the picture.

What’s the 2012 Antarctic campaign going to look like?

It’s going to be shorter for a number of reasons, mostly because the aircraft has already been committed for an international multi-aircraft experiment in Thailand, and it’s also committed afterward. We’ll try to fly as much as we can, we’ll be using two aircraft: a G-V from the National Science Foundation, flying at high altitude, and NASA’s DC-8 flying low.

What will the future bring for IceBridge?

The plan is we will start using unmanned aerial vehicles and we’ll probably be doing it mostly over sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, but we don’t know the details yet. We will be doing some test flights over the Arctic Ocean later this year with the Global Hawk, either with the radar or laser altimeter onboard. I don’t think we can replace manned aircraft completely over the course of IceBridge.

After ICESat-2 launches, will IceBridge continue to some extent?

There will always be airborne campaigns to some degree, because there are some datasets that we can only collect from planes, and we will also need to calibrate and validate the satellite data. We need a variety of different scales, wavelengths, different types of measurements in order to really answer the science questions that we have, such as what is the contribution of Greenland to sea level rise in the next 20 or 30 years. For example, if we only have ICESat-2 collecting measurements of how the surface elevation is changing, we’ll know a lot, but we’ll never be able to answer with certainty what is causing these changes. It’s almost like you’re taking the pulse of a patient; you’re only looking at the symptoms of the illness without understanding what’s causing it. In order to find out why the ice sheet is changing its surface, we need to understand what’s beneath the ice sheet because that’s what’s driving a lot of the dynamic changes. And those are datasets that you can’t collect from space, you need an airplane to go in there and get the greater picture of what’s below there and other things, like snow accumulation, which can be done much better from airplane. It’s not a single satellite that will provide us the answer, not a single airborne measurement – it all has to come together.

A Spanish version of this post is available on National Public Radio’s Science Friday blog.