The Arctic expedition has officially started! - Monday 2/8











Today I got up at 5 am — again ready to launch the morning weather balloon. The ship was shaking a lot and I was afraid that there was a storm outside — but was positively surprised when I walked out of the door: We have finally reached the Ice - the sound cam from ice breaking or ice floes scratching the ship. This was unbelievable - the scenery was just breathtaking! 

Above you can see a few photos taken from today morning: The one with the life boat is taken at 5.20 at the balloon filling station —> this will be my scenery (and hopefully even better soon!) at least twice a day when I am waiting for the balloon to be filled with Helium. The photo from the Helipad and the sun is taken from the 7th deck, where we will also spend a lot of time working during this expedition. I can not complain ! The last photo is from a small melt pond (with the blue water) —> once we get on the ice for sampling, we will go to these melt ponds and open leads and measure the fluxes of CO2 and Methane between the surface and the atmosphere. Actually, our first 24h station (stop A in the map in my first posting showing the planned track of the expedition) is planned for Saturday this week. Excited to go out on the ice!

I also hope that we will see many seals and polar bears while being in the high Arctic — actually the first polar bear was spotted last nigh, barely visible in the fog, around 00.55. Unfortunately I was sleeping at that time, but I am sure there will be more opportunities for us to spot a polar bear - as long as they do not surprise us during our fieldwork trips out on the ice.

We will start with our daily meteorology check-ups today: making sure all the instruments on the mast are logging and working, the weather station is running and collecting data, remote sensing sensors are working, no instruments are covered by ice and play around with the cloud retrieval from the cloud radar and soundings and analyse the current weather situation.

 In 1.5h it is again time to prepare the next sounding (for 12 UTC launch), filling up the balloon and release the weather balloon up in the sky, flying over the ice and and disappearing high up in the atmosphere over the Arctic, doing this while enjoying the breathtaking scenery we are surrounded with...






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