NSF Awards Arctic Research Support and Logistics Contract to CH2M HILL Polar Services

We are as thrilled and energized as this Greenlandic Husky pup! Photo: Ed Stockard

CH2M HILL Polar Services (CPS) is quite pleased to announce that the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a contract to CH2M HILL Constructors, Inc., of Englewood, Colorado on 28 September 2011 to provide research support and logistics services for NSF-sponsored research in the Arctic.

Since 1999 CH2M HILL has teamed with subcontractors Polar Field Services and SRI International to form CH2M HILL Polar Services, or CPS.  A new partner—Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation’s UMIAQ—will join the CPS team for the contract period beginning in October 2011.

CPS will deliver pre-proposal field work estimates, risk assessments, logistics and operational plans, transportation, communications, safety training, telemedicine, engineering, design and construction, maintenance, field camp operations and personnel to groups working in the Arctic.

New team member UMIAQ is a subsidiary of Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation (UIC), the Barrow village corporation established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971. UMIAQ will provide local support to researchers working in Barrow, Alaska and surrounding communities, including operation of UIC-owned facilities and the Barrow Environmental Observatory. UMIAQ understands the politics, culture, land use, regulations, and engineering and design conditions in arctic and subarctic Alaska and provides reliable local knowledge and expertise.

Visit the CPS website (http://www.polar.ch2m.com/ ) for more information about the company’s services.

For more information about the NSF arctic research program, visit http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=ARC.

Contact:

Mike McKibben, CH2M HILL Polar Services

303.885.4644, mike.mckibben@ch2m.com

CPS Program Manager

Comments (0) Oct 14 2011

2011 PolarTREC teacher, Susy Ellison, samples spruce trees for a dendrochronology study in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. All photos: Susy Ellison

Susy Ellison is the high school science teacher we all wish we’d had. With projects like designing and building an energy-efficient straw-bale classroom, installing solar panels on the school’s roof, and building a greenhouse (and growing things in it), Ellison is infusing her students with a strong sense of what she calls environmental literacy. Now in her 15^th year at Yampah Mountain High School in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Ellison spent the summer with two teams of Alaskan researchers as a PolarTREC teacher, so this year’s class will, no doubt, be in for some fun and interesting science activities.

Ellison’s love for Alaska goes back to graduate school when she spent time in Prudhoe Bay studying how arctic foxes interact with nesting shorebirds and small mammals. Her field experience served her well this year as she traveled to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for a six-day NSF-funded tree-ring study with Kevin Anchukaitis and Angie Allen (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory),  and to the Raven Bluff Site for two weeks with Jeff Rasic (UAF/NPS), William Hedman (BLM), and Ian Buvit (Central Washington University) for a NSF-supported study on early human settlement in arctic Alaska.

For the tree-ring study, field team members spent their time extracting straw-sized cores from standing white spruce trees in five sites spread over a few miles; Anchukaitis will compare annual growth rings from these cores with samples taken from fallen trees. By analyzing the thickness of annual rings, they will reconstruct North Slope climate and ultimately determine controls on the extent of arctic forest growth.

Traveling light - Ellison and Allen congratulate themselves on hauling all their gear in one trip.

“The tree-ring study was really interesting. Many scientists think that with climate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees might just grow and grow and grow, but new research says this may not be true. You can keep feeding someone, but it’s not going to make them taller,” explains Ellison. “I was impressed with how pretty simple science can provide pretty big answers. There were only three of us and we were just out there. We travelled light and fast. It was fun!”

Following a 10-day break exploring the Kenai Peninsula, Ellison joined Jeff Rasic’s team for a rainy and cool two week archaeological excavation near Kivalina.  Despite the soggy weather, the group made the best of things and worked hard to maximize their field time. In addition to searching for artifacts in one-meter square pits started during the 2010 field season, Ellison participated in a soil survey and in reconnaissance flights wherein the group looked for new archaeological sites.

“We usually hear that the first people to North America came from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge and then headed south. The Raven site is about the same age, about 12,000 years old, as the Clovis culture sites farther south. At Raven we looked, in particular, for these fluted spear points so that they can be dated and compared to similar Clovis-age points. The idea is that people may have moved back and forth between Alaska and southern North America rather than unidirectionally,” says Ellison.

“The similarity in these projects is that we were looking at old stuff, attempting to get information that can be applied to the present and, perhaps, predict future changes in the Arctic,” Ellison says. “The scientists were so passionate about their studies and the field season in Alaska is so short – they had to get it done. Everyone worked really hard to complete the work required in the short time period.”

Ellison tries to stay dry while recording soil profile data.

Now that a new school year is underway, Ellison is thinking about ways to share her PolarTREC experiences with Yampah. So far, she’s considering having students look at tree rings to determine Colorado’s long-term fire history. She would also like to take a group backpacking in Utah to see some archaeological sites close to home while considering what clues they might leave behind for future archaeologists to find.

Ellison’s school is run by the Mountain Board of Cooperative Educational Services, and serves students from four public school districts.  The school serves as an alternative to students who have been unsuccessful in other area high schools for one reason or another.

“Teaching science at Yampah is very challenging,” Ellison says. “Our classes are ungraded, which means that in one class I have students from all grades with all levels of science proficiency. I teach life, physical, and earth science so I have a lot of information to distill. Then, I put my own spin on it. I like to have an environmental focus with very hands-on projects. My experiences with PolarTREC have given me so many new ideas for how to communicate climate change issues and science research  to all my students, regardless of their science background.”—Marcy Davis

PolarTREC (Polar Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and managed by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, or ARCUS. The program aims to give teachers professional development experiences conducting research in the polar regions with career scientists to boost the teachers’ content knowledge and to give them hands-on experience in scientific inquiry. ARCUS is accepting applications through the end of September from teachers and researchers interested in participating in the PolarTREC program during the 2012-2013 research season. Visit the ARCUS PolarTREC website for more information: http://www.polartrec.com/

Comments (0) Sep 23 2011

PolarTREC teacher spent his summer “under this mass of moving ice”

PolarTREC teacher Michael Lampert at the Engabreen Glacier. All photos: Michael Lampert

Buried two hundred meters below Engabreen Glacier, one of a handful of outlet glaciers that drain northern Norway’s Svartisen ice cap, is the Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory, one of the world’s most unique settings for glaciological research.  Just north of the Arctic Circle, the facility came online in conjunction with a new hydro-electric power plant in 1993. An elaborate network of more than 100 km of subglacial tunnels funnels glacial meltwater through the mountain to turbines at the Glumsfjord Kraftverk power station near the glacier base—and allows researchers direct access to the underside of the glacier.

Living quarters and a science lab are housed within barracks-like structures in a tunnel below the surface near the glacier’s origin. The only light is the eerie yellow glow emitted from sodium vapor lamps and headlamps affixed to scientists’ hardhats.

The Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory houses underground labs and living space.

Michael Lampert, a 2011 PolarTREC teacher* from West Salem High School in Salem, Oregon, who joined PI Neal Iverson (Iowa State University) and team on this year’s field expedition, describes his first impression of the lab:

“A helicopter took us up to the top of [the] glacier where we were to enter the tunnel to the Laboratory. I kept looking for a grand entrance, but when we arrived it was just a post with a doorway. We shoveled out a bunch of snow so we could get the door open then walked about 100m through a corrugated pipe that opened into a large room,” Lampert explains.  “It was a little like being in a sewer – dark, drippy, cold, humid air that is very still. You can always hear water rushing through the tunnels. It’s a very odd feeling. There was this unbelievably strange emptiness. I wasn’t expecting it.”

Svartisen's foyer...

Lampert joined Iverson on the latter’s NSF-funded project to understand how, and how fast, Engebreen Glacier moves. During underground stays of up to three weeks at the subglacial lab, the group works at the glacier-bedrock interface, measuring water pressure and microseismicity, tiny earthquakes associated with glacier movement. Data obtained at Svartisen provide fundamental information about variability in glacier movement, information Iverson hopes will translate to long-term predictions about the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, and their potential contributions to sea-level change.

Lampert mucks out the tunnel.

“The idea here, the overall goal, is to stimulate a rapid glacier movement event by pumping water under the glacier for an hour while measuring the resulting microseismicity,” explains Iverson. “We measure water pressure in pump tests and embed accelerometers in the glacier to monitor ice acceleration. We then correlate these motion data to seismicity measured in the tunnel and on the glacier surface. We manipulate the system to try to understand it better. We are trying to calibrate motion in a very large-scale laboratory so we can apply results to other glaciers.”

Melting last year's ice.

Donning rubber boots and suits to protect them from mud and water, researchers worked to free instruments left in the glacier ice last summer for maintenance and repairs. To get at the equipment, the team first had to melt free a steel door separating the tunnel from the glacier. Using relatively hot water (sixty degrees) from a fire hose directed at the door for an hour, Lampert , who has a background in physics, got his first up-close glimpse of the Engabreen’s underbelly. In a May 2 PolarTREC journal entry he wrote:

“The very bottom of the glacier is a mix of sediment and debris but there is a sudden line of clear glacier ice, often you see lines like this on icebergs that have calved into the ocean. The blue ice has a magical appearance when illuminated with a flood light.”

The glacier's base is mixture of ice and sediment.

Next, the team melted horizontal and vertical shafts through the ice to expose boreholes in the rock through which instrumentation, cables, and wiring pass from instruments embedded in the glacier to lab computers. During the year, the holes become clogged with ice that must be removed periodically. It’s a constant fight against moving ice, which can close off passageways at rates of 1-2 meters a day.

“Ice [that is] under 200 meters of pressure oozes like toothpaste. [It’s] not brittle like the ice in your freezer,” explains Lampert. “Once the sensors are in the glacier and we stop melting, the ice moves back in. The glacier is moving so the ice will ooze around you in the course of a day. You can see a difference within an hour. It’s kind of creepy. Sometimes I would sit in a space in the ice and close my eyes. I would think about just exactly where I was – under this mass of moving ice and that really put me in touch with Earth’s geology. That was one of the coolest things ever!”

Enjoying the view from outside the lab entrance.

Instrumentation includes a friction plate, a granite-topped metal disc about a foot in diameter and loaded with sensors that measure the force of the glacier as it slides over bedrock. The plate, the only one of its kind, also contains a water pressure sensor and an acoustic sensor that ‘listens’ to the glacier’s sounds as it moves past. Other sensors include accelerometers in palm-sized capsules that monitor ice motion.

“Some accelerometers have cable tethers that are fed through boreholes in the underlying rock to lab computers.  Some transmit wirelessly through the tunnel. Both types have advantages and disadvantages. There is lots of screwing around with electrical stuff in conditions a degree above freezing and 100% humidity,” Iverson says.

Accelerometer maintenance is serious business.

Once instrumentation is tested and reinstalled, the shafts are left alone so that the ice “heals.” Then water is pumped through the tunnel at the base of the glacier and the team waits for data.

“We know for certain that moving ice produces seismicity and the character of our data seem to indicate motion of ice as opposed water, “ explains Iverson. “We are still working out what our data mean. The signals look like we are recording the basal motion of the glacier as it slides over rock, but we are working through the details as the data can be very noisy.”

Other sampling efforts include ice coring, sediment and geologic analyses.

Miriam Jackson takes an ice sample.

As for Lampert, he’ll bring lots of stories back to his community and classroom this fall.

“The whole thing was out of the world – so totally surrealistic! These scientists are getting at the real fundamentals of science. I want my students to really understand that applying science in the field is the best part. Then there’s the living in a tunnel – there’s a psychological effect with it that I didn’t expect. When we finally walked out from this place of 24 hours of darkness into the 24-hour day of the polar summer, it was wild…quite a metaphor to walk out of total darkness into light, from nothingness to life.”—Marcy Davis

PolarTREC (Polar Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and managed by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, or ARCUS. The program aims to give teachers professional development experiences conducting research in the polar regions with career scientists to boost the teachers’ content knowledge and to give them hands-on experience in scientific inquiry. ARCUS is accepting applications through the end of September from teachers and researchers interested in participating in the PolarTREC program during the 2012-2013 research season. Visit the ARCUS PolarTREC website for more information: http://www.polartrec.com/

Comments (1) Sep 16 2011

by Christie Haupert

CPS staff and scientists help load an Era helicopter A-Star. In the background, the Brooks Range. All photos Christie Haupert unless otherwise noted.

Greetings from Spring-delayed Toolik. A new summer season is nearly upon the remote field station tucked 350 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska, just out of reach of the Brooks Mountain Range.

Here at Toolik Field Station, winter lingers. But change is in the air – both in seasonality and to the field station.

The rivers have yet to flow, but break-up is eminent. Researchers are on hold, staged to capture the moment when the rivers break open and release their power. They have discharge instruments, empty water bottles and insulated waders ready to go. Hurry up and wait is the name of the game around these parts.

While the slush piles melt, drying puddles freeze and thaw, and fog rolls through the camp, the new dining/kitchen/station office, open for its first summer season, fills each feeding hour with hungry souls, piling their plates with salad, juicy grilled salmon, fresh baked bread and warm cookies from the industrial-sized ovens.

The Toolik dining facility, built in 2010. For more on the construction of the building, click on the picture.

The four-season structure is shiny and new; not even the old clock has been hung on the wall. It gives Toolik a different feel from the days of old – some say a welcomed upgrade, others say a sign of more “institutionalized” and “regulated” ways to come. The old dining hall is now the new community center, the old community center, the new meeting trailer and the old meeting trailer has yet to be named. But to reconnect with the Toolik the old timers have come to know and love, all one needs to do is wander down to one of the lab buildings, spend a few hours socializing in a dingy ACTO trailer room, or have a sweat in the sauna.

Helicopter operations started up this week, when two Eurocopter A-Stars arrived for the summer. A few days ago, after a day of fog, members of Linda Deegan’s NSF-funded biology project prepared a sling load for Green Cabin Lake. There, at the headwaters of the Kupuruk River, Linda Deegan’s team will begin a down-water migration study of Arctic grayling fish. Their gear was slung and researchers spent the day at the lake and at the Oksrukuyik River. Later this week, a team will be left at Green Cabin Lake to camp at the field site for three weeks documenting spring thaw.

The Deegan team prepares a sling load (the green object at left) while the helicopter readies for flight. The shiny truck center-left carries aviation fuel.

The helicopter departs Toolik, the sling load towed below.

Meanwhile, other changes coming to Toolik Field Station include renewable energy. CPS’ Tracy Dahl and Joe Yarkin erected a 45-foot anemometer to measure wind speed that will be used to determine effectiveness of wind power at Toolik. Read Tracy’s recent report on his Toolik based activities here.

An A-Star flies off, with the new wind-measuring anemometer instrument shown in the foreground.

Tracy Dahl and Joe Yarkin also installed micro-wind generators (the black-topped pole at right of the person in this shot) at an existing solar photovoltaic-powered research project called International Tundra Experiment or 'ITEX' (Steve Oberbauer, PI), near Toolik Field Station. The Brooks Range and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lie in the background. Photo: Tracy Dahl

From what was once a small tent camp, to now a year-round research station with lab space, onsite general use laboratory equipment, multiple helicopters, and a 24-hour salad bar, Toolik is a testament to change. With these changes come new routines, new faces, and in the world of science, chances for new discoveries and just possibly a better understanding of the world in which we live.

[Before joining Polar Field Services and CPS as a science project manager, Fairbanks-based Christie Haupert worked at Toolik Field Station as both a researcher and staff-member for five summer seasons and three winters.

Comments (0) May 22 2011

2011 PolarTREC orientation participants pose for a group photo after dinner. Photo courtesy of Mike League

During the last week in February, thirteen educators from across the United States convened in Fairbanks, Alaska, to participate in the 2011 PolarTREC Orientation and ShareFair. The annual orientation is the kick off for this rigorous and rewarding National Science Foundation-funded professional development opportunity. Now in its fifth year, PolarTREC improves teacher content knowledge and instructional practices through intensive two-to-eight-week research experiences in the polar regions. While working closely with polar scientists across many scientific disciplines, PolarTREC teachers share information about polar science and the polar regions with their students and communities.

National Science Foundation Einstein Fellow, Laura Lukes tries a reindeer antler on for size at the UAF Reindeer Research Station. Photo courtesy of Janet Warburton

Orientation events included presentations from ARCUS staff who described the PolarTREC program, requirements, and technology. Three PolarTREC alumni and one past PolarTREC researcher attended the orientation to share their experiences and words of wisdom with newly selected teachers.

University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Katey Walter Anthony, clears snow from a small pond to try to find methane bubbles trapped in the ice. Photo courtesy of Zeb Polly

A large part of orientation is preparing teachers for the logistical situations unique to the polar regions. Robbie Score from CPS and Roy Stehle from SRI both attended to ensure teachers had a good understanding of typical procedures and the use of satellite phones. Several additional PolarTREC alumni, researchers, and other experts joined the orientation in-person and virtually to present on their areas of expertise.

ARCUS Website Developer Ronnie Owens helps a small group of teachers learn how to post journal entries to the PolarTREC website. Photo courtesy of Zeb Polly

During the orientation’s communication technology training, teachers learned to post online journals, complete with photos and video, from their field camps and stations. Participants also listened to presentations and discussed ideas for sharing the PolarTREC experience with their classrooms, schools, and communities. Between intensive training and hands-on work sessions the whole group also got outside, explored Fairbanks, and learned a little about the Arctic.

Field trips included a visit to the University of Alaska’s (UAF) Museum of the North, the UAF Reindeer Research Program, the World Ice Art Championships, and a visit to a nearby thermokarst pond where Katey Anthony Walter discussed the role of methane in a warming arctic. Teachers also visited the CPS warehouse where Polar Field Service’s Matt Irinaga performed his popular “dressing for work in the Arctic” fashion show.

Matt Irinaga actively describes methods for dressing to work in the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Mike League

Despite the long days, many teachers expressed that the PolarTREC orientation and ShareFair was one of the best professional development workshops they had experienced. At the end of the week they felt well-prepared and enthusiastic about sharing their upcoming experiences.

PolarTREC teachers take photos and record videos as they feed lichen to the reindeer at the UAF Reindeer Research Station. Photo courtesy of Janet Warburton

PolarTREC teachers venturing into the Arctic this year include John Wood, who worked with Susan Natali (University of Florida) studying carbon balance in Healy, Alaska; and Mike Lampert, who is now based at the Svartisen Subglacial Laboratory in Norway with researchers from Iowa State Unversity. Paula Dell is spending April to early June in the Antarctic studying ice fish with Kristin O’Brien from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In coming events, Jim Pottinger will soon return to Greenland to work with Koni Steffen (University of Colorado) at Swiss Camp, while Jim Miller will visit Barrow, Alaska in June to study microbial activity in thawing permafrost  with David Lipson of San Diego State University.

Teacher expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic will be ongoing throughout the year.

Comments (0) May 03 2011

Like something out of a science fiction movie...ARCLITE LiDARs shine a light on Earth's atmosphere against the backdrop of the Aurora Borealis. Photo: Jeff Thayer

In grade school, most of us were taught that Earth’s atmosphere was layered, like a parfait (as Shrek’s donkey would say).  We memorized the names of these layers and probably thought of each as a discrete entity unrelated to the others – Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, Exosphere.

Turns out, the atmosphere is a lot more dynamic and complicated than a parfait (or even an onion).  Professor Jeffrey Thayer’s (University of Colorado, Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department) ARCLITE (Arctic LiDAR Technology) NSF-funded project uses remote sensing techniques to figure out just how much more complicated the atmosphere really is. Located at the Sondrestrom Upper Atmosphere Research Facility (affectionately known as Kellyville after SRI’s John Kelly, a renowned incoherent scatter radar expert who established the facility), ARCLITE uses cutting-edge technology for studying Earth’s middle and upper atmosphere above the Arctic.

“We don’t yet have whole atmosphere models to describe how matter and energy are transferred across atmospheric layers. LiDAR technology allows us to study the atmosphere across its layers including the region between 35 and 80 km, which is difficult to study using other meteorological methods like weather balloons or satellites,” explains Thayer. “We study the Arctic atmosphere because there are processes unique to the polar regions which may tell us something about climate change.”

Operated by CPS partner SRI International for the National Science Foundation and the Danish Meteorological Institute, Kellyville is located north of the Arctic Circle near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. The facility is centered on a 32-meter steerable dish antenna. Relocated from Alaska in 1982, the radar was designed to measure parameters characterizing the aurora borealis. The large radar system drove Kellyville’s original infrastructure toward upper atmosphere research, which continues today. Thayer established the ARCLITE project at Kellyville in 1992 and served as principal investigator of the Kellyville facility for seven years (1998-2004), which continues to develop with NSF funding.

“Kellyville currently demands a year-round staff of four or five people for facility and instrument maintenance, various associated engineering projects, and ongoing data operations for about 20 universities at any one time,” explains Thayer. “Over the last several years, we have been upgrading the ARCLITE system to measure more atmospheric parameters. Eventually, the system will be more autonomous to make routine measurements from the upper troposphere and stratosphere through the mesosphere (5-90 km above Earth’s surface) with remote operations. We already have an application that allows us to control our LiDAR at Summit Station using an iPhone. We’re trying to move in that direction with our Kellyville instruments as well.”

A sunny day at Kellyville. Photo: Michael Pederson at sondestrom.com

Sondrestrom houses four slightly different LiDARs. Three “green beam” and one “yellow beam” LiDARs transmit inch-wide green and yellow laser light straight up into the atmosphere. A sensitive Newtonian telescope sees and records the properties of the light reflected back to the Earth’s surface in much the same way as your eyes see (and your brain records) dust in the air in front of a slide projector or flashlight. In this way, Thayer’s group extracts a wide range of information about the middle and upper atmosphere such as density, temperature, aerosol content, and amount of the water vapor.

But Thayer says LiDARs have their limitations as well as advantages.

“Satellites can look at the upper atmosphere, but only in certain configurations. Similarly, for our purposes of looking at the middle and upper atmosphere, LiDAR systems work only in clear weather. We can measure as frequently as weather permits since the LiDARs can’t see through clouds. We schedule about 5-8 hours of observation time each week. Once in a while we get lucky and have longer observation periods in winter, often once Disko Bay freezes over and the winter weather pattern stabilizes. We provide really detailed measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere, just not as frequently as we would like.”

The green beam with the most energy characterizes aerosols, ice clouds, fine particles like smoke, dust, and volcanic ash in the atmosphere all the way to the edge of space. Two others use polarized light to examine aerosols.  The yellow beam ‘resonates’ with sodium atoms in the atmosphere and is used to study the 90-120 km region of the atmosphere where meteorites ablate and leave a shell of calcium, sodium, iron, and magnesium atoms.

Several atmospheric phenomena are unique to the polar regions and Thayer’s group studies all of them. During the winter, a powerful circulation called the Arctic polar vortex occurs in the stratosphere (~20-50km above Earth’s surface). Dynamical changes in the vortex alters the entire polar system and can modify atmospheric chemistry contributing to ozone depletion in the northern hemisphere.

The Thayer team also studies the Aurora Borealis, a natural northern latitude light show resulting from the collision of charged particles with Earth’s magnetic field about 100km above the surface of the earth. Scientists study not only how aurorae form, but also how the aurorae, in turn, might affect the middle atmosphere.

Jeff Thayer tinkers in his garage. Photo: Jeff Thayer

Thayer has been a part of a science investigation to study polar mesospheric clouds using LiDAR. These clouds, also called noctilucent clouds, occur only in the polar regions during the summer. They are the highest clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, forming at about 83 km.  Typically, noctilucent clouds are difficult to see except at twilight as the sun reflects on them from below the horizon.  Noctilucent clouds, Thayer says, may be harbingers of climate change, but their role remains unclear.

“We see clouds because of water vapor and cold temperatures in the atmosphere. It’s tough to get water through the troposphere, where we live, to the middle atmosphere because temperatures at the tropopause are very cold and cause the water to freeze out and fall back to earth.  So we don’t expect to see clouds as high as 83 km. But water can be created in the middle atmosphere, the mesosphere, by the presence of methane. At higher altitudes ultraviolet light breaks down the methane and forms water vapor which leads to cloud formation. If we see more clouds, then we may be getting more CO2 in the upper atmosphere as well. The role of CO2 in the mesosphere actually cools the region in contrast to its warming of the troposphere. The cooler temperatures can further support polar mesospheric cloud formation and we can use the clouds’ behavior as indicators of change associated with CO2 and methane. However, we still have a great deal to understand about our whole atmosphere and all of the exchange processes that occur across its layers.”—Marcy Davis

Comments (1) Mar 14 2011

Part of the 2010 UW Clean Snowmobile Challenge Team. All photos from the University of Wisconsin Snowmobile Team website

We recently spoke with Jay Meldrum, Director of the Keweenaw Research Center at Michigan Technical University, about the annual Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) in Houghton Michigan, and the conversation left us wanting to know more about what it’s like to participate in the engineering contest.

To find out more, we talked with Ethan Brodsky who participated in the Clean Snowmobile Challenge while a graduate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison during the early 2000s. Now a staff scientist in radiology and medical imaging at his alma mater, Brodsky became the “unofficial advisor” (Glenn Bower is the official advisor)  to the school’s CSC team in 2008. He offers a unique perspective on the past, present, and future of the Society of Automotive Engineers Clean Snowmobile Challenge competition.

Ethan Brodsky and the University of Wisconsin zero emissions snowmobile, the Silent BuckEV, at Summit Station.

“Participating in these student vehicle competitions was one of the highlights of my college career,” relates Brodsky. “Each event culminates in a week-long competition that is exhilarating like nothing else I’ve experienced. It’s a sleep-deprived rush that can only end in two ways: either you win and it was all worth it, or somebody else does, and those weeks of late nights in the garage were all wasted.”

Brodsky said most students participate as an extracurricular activity out of personal interest, although some receive independent study credit. Brodsky became the pseudo-advisor to UW’s Clean Snowmobile Challenge team in graduate school. The team consists of about 15 students who spend the year tweaking snowmobile engines to reduce emissions without sacrificing performance in preparation for the competition.

“Most students do it a couple of years for fun or as a resume builder or to help get into grad school,” explains Brodsky. “But some people really get into the leadership roles and stick around for their entire college career.”

Today Brodsky is one of UW’s CSC team advisors who has helped lead the team to championships for gas-powered snowmobiles in 2009 and 2010. The zero-emissions snowmobile won the 2008, 2009, and 2010 competitions.

The Silent BuckEV at competition in the Zero Emissions category of the Clean Snowmobile Challenge.

“The UW College of Engineering has had a tradition of excellence across our automotive student design projects dating back over a decade. We’ve won five hybrid vehicle competitions, taken home seven first-place trophies at the CSC, and won a number of other national SAE events.  A lot of the credit goes to Dr. Glenn Bower, the senior student vehicle projects advisor—his dedication to the projects and the students is immeasurable. He expects a lot from everyone and drives the students to do their best.

In 2008 Brodsky was invited to bring the winning zero emissions snowmobile to Summit Station, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research station on Greenland’s ice sheet summit, where it would be rotated into the station’s snowmobile fleet (The NSF has supported the zero-emissions competition for years, most recently through this NSF grant.  It was a whirlwind trip—three days in which he tested the snowmobile in the harsh Greenland environment. At Summit, Brodsky did a lot of test-driving. He also taught Summit staffers to run, handle, and maintain the retrofitted machine. In all, the staff learned how to take the snowmobile apart and put it back together, how to charge the 350 volt batteries and keep them running, and how to download data (how many miles driven) from the attached data logger. In 2009, UW again loaned its winning snowmobile to Summit Station, where it was used all summer.

“Greenland was the most other-worldly place I’ve ever been,” says Brodsky. “Just the white landscape as far as I could see against the blue sky.  It was a very lonely-feeling place, far from everything, very alien. It was an awesome trip!”

Looking ahead, Brodsky says he would like to see opportunity for riskier design in future Clean Snowmobile Challenges. When the competition began in 2000, students’ snowmobiles were better than anything sold in the market. In the interim, snowmobile manufacturers have adopted myriad changes and cleaned up their machines. Meanwhile, the rules of competition have changed very little in the last 10 years. Teams are allowed only to alter the engine but Brodsky says this is somewhat limiting now in terms of innovation as many technologies developed in the last decade may not yet be applied to competition designs.

The UW team prepares battery packs.

So, Brodsky says in the meantime, his zero-emissions team will focus on trying to build a more robust snowmobile that’s more useful in Greenland and, hopefully, Antarctica. The next step, Brodsky says, is to develop a better battery management system with batteries that can run all the way down and that can better handle Greenland’s cold temperatures.  He would also like to develop battery packs that can last five years. In any case, he’s still having fun.

“It’s funny—because of these projects, my friends seem to get younger and younger. Or, I guess I’m just getting old. We still stay up all night working together on snowmobile designs. It was the most exciting part of my college experience and of my life in general.”—Marcy Davis

For more, visit the Clean Snowmobile Challenge website.

Comments (0) Mar 01 2011

Testing 1,2,3....Natalie Boelman does a sound (recording) check after setting up the first acoustic monitoring station. All photos by Natalie Boelman.

Satellite images show that since the early 1980s Arctic North America has been “greening.” To date, most research on the causes and effects of greening have dealt with how vegetation changes affect energy budgets and how nutrients like carbon and nitrogen cycle between plants and soil. How vegetation changes influence the distribution of arctic animals and birds is less well-understood, but Ecosystem Ecologist Natalie Boelman (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University) along with colleagues Laura Gough (University of Texas at Arlington), and John Wingfield (University of California, Davis) want to change this, with NSF support, by learning more about arctic phenology—how climate warming-induced changes to tundra vegetation and earlier snowmelt dates affect the reproductive success of migratory songbirds.

Field Technician Carol Moulton and graduate student Matthew Rich haul a tripod across the tundra.

“Our overall goal is to characterize the interactions between tundra vegetation and migratory songbirds in habitats that differ in shrub dominance over five consecutive growing seasons that will differ in timing of snow melt and severity of weather events,” explains Boelman. “I think that it’s important for readers to know that we are establishing a baseline to which future vegetation-songbird interactions can be compared, for a system in which such data are virtually non-existent. This baseline will be critical to our ability to measure how migratory songbirds are being, and will continue to be, impacted by warming-induced changes in shrub cover and changing seasonality. We are testing a series of predictions related to songbird populations and communities and their interactions with vegetation and insects, to begin to untangle the complex relationships among these groups in the context of a changing climate.”

Boelman and colleagues focus on two bird species: the Lapland longspur and the White-crowned sparrow. Both species are songbirds, included in a group of more than 4000 species having specific and often elaborate bird songs which communicate territorial and mating information. Both species migrate to the Arctic each summer to breed—the longspur from the central North America and the sparrow from southern North America, and even Mexico.

Setting up a "mist net" to catch birds. Once the birds were caught, the team took blood samples and made measurements to assess their overall condition (then they let them go).

“While the White-crowned sparrow builds its nest in shrub vegetation, the Lapland longspur selects non-shrubby, open tundra for its nest. We wanted to explore how these two species, with contrasting nesting requirements, are each going to be impacted by increasing shrub cover on the tundra.”

Taking a blood sample from a White-crowned sparrow.

In 2010, the team based out of Toolik Field Station and worked in nearby Atigun Valley, near Imnavait Creek and just south of Happy Valley. Boelman’s team set up four experimental field sites, each with a “shrub plot” and an “open plot.” They also installed weather stations and acoustic monitoring stations at each site and sampled flora and fauna along 100 m transects weekly, between mid-May and the end of July.

Listen to a songbird recording here

Teams of 10 or so, including Principal Investigators, undergraduate and graduate students rotated in and out during the summer. Each day the entire crew would visit one or two field sites. At each they completed a long list of tasks. Boelman says, “We’d typically divide and conquer, helping each other out when need be, before heading back to camp.”

Jesse Krause catches insects using the "sweep netting" method.

Daily field chores included:
• Maintenance of weather, snow cover, and acoustic monitoring stations
• Vegetation measurements including species makeup and cover, berry and catkin abundance
• Collection of ground and flying insects
• Bird-specific measurements such as census counts, nest locating, blood sampling, and body condition assessment

Acoustic monitoring stations included a microphone set to record sound in the frequency range of 140-18,000 Hz. The team set stations to turn on four times a day – at 2, 6, and 9a.m. and 6p.m.—and record whatever was making noise (hopefully, the Lapland longspur and/or the White-crowned sparrow as well as other songbirds). Recordings helped the scientists track the presence (or absence) and numbers of the migratory songbirds as well as their activity levels from when the birds arrive on the tundra in mid-May until their southward migration in the fall.

Stations also included a camera for monitoring snow cover during the melt period between spring and summer, as well as weather sensors which measure and record temperature, wind speed and direction and precipitation. All equipment was assembled on large tripods at Toolik Field Station and driven to the field sites, which were located along a short latitudinal gradient along the Dalton Highway. From the drop off points, the team carried or dragged the tripods using a sled over the tundra to the field sites. Tripod bases were left to spend the winter on the tundra, but rented monitoring equipment will be re-installed each field season.

Sometimes getting tripods to their site is challenging.

“Because we are interested in how changing arctic seasonality is impacting migratory songbirds, we will track these parameters for five consecutive years, so that we can better understand their responses to inter-annual variability in spring snow-melt timing,” says Boelman. “Since snowmelt has been found to be occurring earlier as a result of arctic warming, their response to variation in snowmelt date from one year to the next will provide us with important hints as to how we should expect songbirds to respond to increasingly earlier spring snow melt dates.”

Getting ready to record plant species using a "percent cover" grid.

Boelman and her colleagues will be working with two teachers from Fairbanks, Alaska (who spent two weeks in June working with scientists at Toolik Field Station) and educational staff from the Alaska Bird Observatory to develop educational materials that meet science curricula standards for high school students. They will also set up a long-term monitoring site in Fairbanks where students will learn to follow the scientific protocols used in the Toolik-based field study.

The five-year study will mean a lot of time away from home, but Boelman clearly enjoys her field work and colleagues.

“Leaving my husband and children for weeks at a time is the hardest challenge for me. At the same time, it’s really great to get out of the Urban Jungle (aka New York City) and head up to the beauty of the Alaskan tundra to focus on nothing but tundra ecology,” she says. “It’s incredibly fascinating and inspiring to be up there, learning and improving my understanding of the interconnectedness within the ecosystem. To boot, I get to do all this in collaboration with a very knowledgeable and friendly assemblage of researchers, students, support staff and friends. Finally, having the luxury of working out of and living at the Toolik Field Station is something that any Arctic field ecologist can certainly appreciate, and I for one certainly do!”—Marcy Davis

For more information and photos from the 2010 field season, visit the project website.

Comments (1) Feb 23 2011

PolarTREC teacher Jim Pottinger does the hokey-pokey at Summit Station. All photos: Jim Pottinger

“Sleeping in a tent in the Arctic was a new experience for me. Temperatures dipped below 0°F and the winds were consistently blowing against the tent.”– Jim Pottinger, 2010 PolarTREC teacher

Jim Pottinger enjoys cold weather, so living at Summit Station’s Tent City on the Greenland ice cap for a week was fine by him. Camping atop 3200 meters of ice was one of several new experiences for the Pennsylvania native who travelled to Greenland last summer as part of the PolarTREC Program. Pottinger’s team, which is led by PI Konrad Steffen (CIRES), travelled to Summit to maintain instrumentation for the NSF-funded BSRN – Compatible Irradiance Measurements and the Stable Boundary Layer

At Summit Station, Pottinger worked with Karl Schroff and Hansjoerg Frei (from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and Nikko Bayou (UC Boulder).

After a long day of shoveling snow Nikko Bayou reaches the APTU at last.

Their first task was to locate and retrieve an Automated Temperature Profiling Unit (APTU), which started its mission recording high altitude weather data in 2007.

“After a four-mile bone-chilling [snowmobile] ride, we arrived at the site. It was a beautiful location in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet. The sky was blue, the terrain was white and there was nothing as far as the eye could see,” Pottinger wrote in his August 14 journal.

They located the unit by GPS. Only two feet of the ten-foot tall APTU tripod was sticking up out of the snow. It took six hours and digging down about twenty feet before they freed the tripod and data logger using snowmobiles and ropes.

Elevating the Automatic Weather Station - turns out it looks tougher than it is.

The team’s next task was to elevate Summit’s AWS, one of eighteen such stations in Greenland. First, the scientists attached cable extensions to accommodate the station’s new height. Next, they erected a tripod over the station, attached a rope to the top of the AWS, and lifted the station ten feet while inserting an extension tube to the base. Once the station was secure, they removed the tripod and later verified data transmission. The entire data transmission process only took one hour!

Next, they dug a 140-centimeter deep snow pit next to the AWS. Pottinger recorded the pit’s snow structure, making notes of density, snow crystal shape and size, layer thickness and volume  every ten centimeters. These measurements will help ground-truth the AWS and ensure that sensors were working properly over the two previous years.

Pottinger becomes an old hand at snow pit measurements.

Pottinger also assisted in elevating and calibrating BSRN instrumentation and learned about ongoing NOAA weather experiments.

Pottinger’s visit coincided with Summit’s transition between seasonal crews. This meant a busy couple of days while winter preparations were made. Following a great end of season dinner, Pottinger spent his last night in the Big House and flew out with a jubilant summer crew the next morning.

Summer crew kicks back at the end of the season party at Lake Fergueson.

Pottinger, who has a background in geology, coordinates the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program at Gateway High School in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. He acts as an academic advisor, making sure students are on an academic path consistent with their post-secondary goals, and as a science teacher, giving periodic guest lectures in science classes.

Pottinger hopes to return to Greenland’s Swiss Camp next May with Steffen. He will again be involved in systems maintenance and hopes to learn more about how the collected data is being used in various science projects. In the meantime, he’s keeping busy sharing his experience with students, teachers and community. Pottinger hopes he can begin to correct some of the misconceptions people have about climate change, the Arctic, and the people who live there.—Marcy Davis

Comments (0) Jan 20 2011

A female polar bear walks along the shore of Canada's Hudson Bay, waiting for ice to form. Photo: Steven Amstrup, Polar Bears International

A significant reduction in greenhouse gases could preserve enough Arctic ice to promote polar bear survival, according to the results of a study published in the journal Nature in December. Polar bears were designated as “threatened species” three years ago by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service in part because rapid melting of arctic ice threatens polar bear habitat.

Fewer Greenhouse Gases Means More Arctic Ice

Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce the loss of Arctic sea-ice--and polar bears. Photo: NOAA

In the study, scientists from several institutions, including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the University of Washington, found that if humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly in the next decade or two, enough Arctic ice is likely to remain intact during late summer and early autumn for polar bears to survive.

“What we projected in 2007 was based solely on the business-as-usual greenhouse gas scenario,” said Steven Amstrup, an emeritus researcher at the USGS and senior scientist at the Montana-based organization Polar Bears International. “That was a pretty dire outlook, but it didn’t consider the possibility of greenhouse gas mitigation.”

Arctic sea-ice continues to melt. Year by year, its extent is shrinking. Photo: NASA

Amstrup is the lead author of this week’s Nature paper. Co-authors are Eric DeWeaver of NSF, David Douglas and George Durner of the USGS Alaska Science Center, Bruce Marcot of the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon, Cecilia Bitz of the University of Washington and David Bailey of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Polar Bears Listed as Threatened in 2007

Two male polar bears playfully spar near Hudson Bay, where sea ice melts in summer and reforms in autumn. The bears need the ice to reach their prey, such as seals. Photo: Steven Amstrup, Polar Bears International

In 2007, scientists projected that only about one-third of the world’s 22,000 polar bears might survive to the middle of the century if dramatic ice decline continued in the Arctic. Eventually, they concluded, polar bears could disappear completely. However, slowing or reducing emissions could result in a better outcome, said Dr. DeWeaver.

The Tipping Point

Arctic "pancake" ice consists of round pieces ranging from inches to feet in diameter. Photo: NOAA

“We looked for Arctic sea ice tipping points in a climate model in which sea ice is known to be very sensitive to global warming, and we didn’t find any,” said DeWeaver.

Specifically, the scientists looked at whether there’s a tipping point beyond which seasonal ice could not recover. Not finding a tipping point indicates that the ultimate outcome for the bears “depends on how much greenhouse gas we add to the atmosphere in the future,” said Blitz.

Higher Temps, Increased Emisions Spell Trouble for Ice, Polar Bears

Previous work by Bitz and others showed that unchecked temperature increases, along with natural environmental volatility, could result in the loss of vast areas of Arctic ice in less than a decade. It also showed that with continued business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions, the ice did not recover and largely disappeared altogether in following decades.

Solution: Reduce Emissions

Last of the polar bears? According to new research, the answer may be no. Photo: Environment Canada

However, the new Nature paper indicates that if greenhouse gas emissions were reduced substantially in the near future, rapid ice losses would be followed by substantial retention of the remaining ice through this century–and partial recovery of the ice that disappeared during the rapid ice loss.

Polar bears depend on sea ice for access to ringed and bearded seals, their primary food source. During seasons when they can’t reach ice, the bears mostly go without food and can lose about two pounds a day.

The periods when they don’t have ice access have increased, and are expected to continue to do so with the current level of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study’s results indicate that increased retention of sea-ice habitat because of greenhouse gas mitigation would allow polar bears to survive in greater numbers throughout this century, and in more areas of the Arctic, than would happen with no mitigation.

Arctic Ecoregions

Amstrup divided the Arctic into four separate ecoregions according to the nature of ice typically found there.

The 2007 study showed a very high likelihood that polar bears would become extinct in two of those regions given current trends in greenhouse gas emissions.

“There’s still a fairly high probability in both those regions that polar bears could disappear,” Amstrup said. “But with mitigation and aggressive management of hunting and other direct bear-human interactions, the probability of extinction would now be lower than the probability that polar bear numbers will simply be reduced.”

“With mitigation, conditions for polar bears might even improve in the other two ecoregions,” he said. “The benefit of mitigation to polar bears is substantial.”

Funding for the research was provided by the USGS, with additional funding from the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Energy and NSF. — Rachel Walker

Comments (0) Jan 12 2011