Adventures in Greenland: Day 19

This morning, everyone got up early since it was Rebecca’s birthday. It is a Danish people to wake people up on their birthday by singing. So at 7 in the morning, we all snuck into her room and woke her up. It was fun, but I’m not sure if I would like this tradition in America. I think I would get kind of scared. After breakfast, we got a talk from Major Paul Bernasconi from the Air National Guard. He told us about some of the logistics that goes into transporting people and supplies across Greenland. The New York Air National Guard who flew us here operates in Greenland from March to August and in Antarctica from October to February. They have over 1,295 people and 14 aircrafts. Some of their LC-130s are actually ones they got from the bone yard in Tucson and renovated. It was incredible hearing how much work and planning goes into just planning this one part of these projects. It was also kind of interesting to hear about how the deal with landing and taking off in the snow. He described landing in the snow saying that it is like driving blindfolded since the pilot must rely on the copilots for spotting. He also told us about how they sometimes use Jet Assisted Takeoff. This involves attaching JATO bottles to the side of the airplane during takeoff. When fired, these provide 15 seconds of extra boost. It is equivalent to having an extra engine for that time and can increase the speed of the plane by 5 knots, which is just enough to overcome the drag and get the nose ski off the ground. While all this might not have been the most reassuring thing to hear the day before we were supposed to leave for the NEEM station on the ice, it is clear that they are very experienced when it comes to these flights. They have been operating in Greenland for 32 years and have had no major accidents. They spend a lot of time training at the Raven base on the ice and also attend “Kool” School where they learn cold weather survival skills.

That afternoon we picked up some pizza and headed out towards the glacier to visit another scientist’s field site. Today we met with Asa Rennermalm from Rutgers University. Somewhat similar to the work being done by the researchers we met from Colorado, she is doing work to monitor glacial runoff. To start off, she showed us some of the equipment they use to monitor the rivers. They set up monitoring sites that can be monitored remotely after they leave. These monitoring stations use a pressure sensor at the bottom of the river. The pressure measured can then be correlated with a water height and flow rate. While they are in the field, they survey the different rivers in the area to get a cross section of the river. They then measure the flow rate. They can later use these measurements they take in the field as a standard to compare their remote measurements later on. After this introduction, we went off to one of their test sites to try our hand at doing the measurements. I found it really interesting to see how simple their instruments were. As Asa told us, simple instrumentation can be really advantageous since if something stops working while you are in the field, you have to be able to fix it or you might lose all your research. The first thing we did when we got there was assemble all the instrumentation. This was apparently much more difficult than it sounds since both Vince and Emil cut their fingers in the exact same place while trying to assemble the flow rate meter. After we got everything together and found some band-aids for the boys, we started by measuring the depth of the streambed at different intervals across the channel. Luckily the site we were testing had a bridge across it and wasn’t very good. Asa said they have to go out in a boat for some of their test sites to get measurements. Once again I got stuck being the one to record all the measurements. It’s an important job but it started to get pretty cold after awhile since we were near the glacier and there was a really strong wind. Sadly, I also forgot to grab my fleece that morning so I was only wearing a light wool layer and my rain shell. My hands were pretty much frozen after writing for awhile. Hopefully my experiences on the ice will go better. Once we finished mapping the channel, we measured flow rate. It ended up being a lot of fun despite the chilly weather.

After we got back, we had thirty minutes to pack our bags for NEEM so they could get put on the pallet. It was a bit of a rush but since we didn’t have much to pack it wasn’t too bad. Our bags basically consisted of our sleep kits and some extra socks and underwear. We have to wear all our cold weather gear onto the plane and can just pack our other small things in a carry-on bag. Over dinner Vince and I tried to explain the American governmental system to the others. I realized how long it has been since I’ve done American government and history but we were able to give a basic explanation of how things work. All the others couldn’t believe how complicated it sounded. They were especially confused about the electoral college. Once we got back to the school, Rikke, one of the teachers here, gave us a presentation on the work she did with sediment cores. It was interesting and acted as a nice introduction for the ice cores we will see at NEEM. We also enjoyed some Danish birthday cake for Rebecca’s birthday. It consisted of some things Vince and I decided were like giant, soft Vanilla wafers, topped with preserves, a kind of vanilla custard, and whipped cream. It was really good. As we were finishing up, Robbie came in with the unfortunate news that our flight to NEEM the next day was cancelled. While this was rather disappointing, we were once again reminded that this is all part of the polar field experience. It was at least nice finding out then rather than when we would have had to get up at 5 in the morning. We ended up staying up for awhile talking more about our different cultures and trying to learn some more Danish and Greenlandic. I’m getting a little better but it is still pretty bad. I’ve been told I sound a bit like a four year-old speaking Greenlandic but that is still an improvement from where I was before. We also learned that no one actually owns property in Greenland, which I found to be pretty interesting. We also learned more about the Danish and Greenlandic school systems.