Work in windy conditions









Today was a long day, as the other days on ship: we worked basically the whole day, finished by 21 tonight. The wind became stronger (even though coming from the back), working on the 7th deck we definitely could feel the 1-2 m waves swinging the boat. It felt like you were a bit drunk, walking was slow but you still managed to keep yourself upright and work. We got the radio sounding station set up (the mast and sensors on the rooftop of the yellow container) with its GPS system, and we also succeeded in pre-processing the sounding on the ground station, so that it would be ready to be attached to a balloon filled with helium and then being launched on the helipad. On the photos you can see the white styrox-box with a metal sensor - this is the radio sounding. On the background of that photo you can see the helium tanks. These soundings are actually made in Finland by Vaisala, so really proud of that :)

We were so pleased to get the sounding station all set up today - since that will be one of our main task each day (launching it four times a day). We will try to launch a few weather balloons prior to us reaching our starting point at the ice edge in order to try out the balloons and the whole launching procedure  - Fingers crossed it will all work out well!

It got foggier towards the afternoon and the visibility dropped to less than 300 m I would say - felt like we were traveling in the fog. Also, while traveling up north I can feel the drop in the temperature - from 30 degrees on day 1 to 15 degrees today. Tomorrow it will be even colder and stronger winds - I think up to 15 meter per second! As long as the wind is with us, it will be pretty okayish, but when the wind is coming from the side or front, 2-3 m waves will definitely be noticed by us!

Wish us luck!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NorthPole Celebration (Monday eve 16th) & Ice Station B (Sun-Mon 15-16th) and Ice station C (19-20th of August)

Image
As usual, the past four days has been adventurous - and history has been made (dancing on the Norhpole to live music)! For today’s blog, I want to tell you about our two last super ice stations (station B right before the North Pole and station C, which is ongoing right now), and the big North Pole celebration. In between the ice stations we had some calm days - transit to the next stop on Tuesday, as well as transit and a few CTDs on Wednesday. The ice conditions were variable - at the North Pole we had some thicker ice and some of the planned stops on the way were cancelled due to the ice conditions, which took us also longer to transit than expected. However, at yesterdays ice station, the ice was thinner again, but with a heavy crystallised snow cover on top. The weather was variable - from cloudy to partly sunny and then back to cloudy and foggy. We also had some light snowfall the last days! Let me start with the Ice station B on the day we also reached the North Pole. We were lo...
Read more

Cancelled Helicopter flight for Friday 6/8 BUT 36h Ice Station Saturday - Sunday

Image
Friday started as usual - getting up at 5 to launch the morning weather balloon. I was disappointed by the weather conditions I was facing that morning - fog! Not only did the fog prevent us from the helicopter flight, but also the fact that we were a bit behind our schedule and had to reach our first ice station at 86 N by Saturday. Therefore, unfortunately our planned helicopter flight was cancelled and we were mostly steaming the whole day. For many of us, as all CTDs were cancelled too, it ment a more relaxed day: playing cards, doings sports, resting, watch movies, sleeping... For others, it ment intensive planning and preparation for the first ice station. In our project work, we were doing water sampling from the water 8m below the ship, measuring the CO2 concentration in the water. We aim to do several water samples per day during the expedition. It was nice to have one more relaxed day - time to breath and charge yourself - The work on a research ship can be really heavy - som...
Read more

Third helicopter station Saturday 21st and begin of fourth ice station D Sunday 22nd

Image
The third ice station (station C) ended on late afternoon on Friday the 20th (with beam net acoustics and helicopter flight, and ice trap retrievals during the day). During the transit to our next stop, we held a lindy hop dance class (Level 2) in the evening and arrived late in the night at the next stop for doing CTDs the whole night and early morning. In the photo below you can see the CTD dragged out of the container to be put in the water (the tubes on the CTD collects water samples from different ocean depths). It is important to take care of the safety when working on deck - yellow helmets and warm bright-coloured dresses to keep warm and visible. The CTD stop was just a short stop, planned to last until Saturday afternoon, whereafter we were supposed to head towards our fourth longer ice station - station D.  In the early morning on Saturday 21st, I woke up again to launch the weather balloon. There were many people awake already at 5am working on their water samples, filte...
Read more