environmentalresearchweb blog

Shipping out

2008-06-27T07:03:29Z

On the way home from the Amundsen I take part in a whale survey. I depart from the Amundsen with mixed feelings. I'm sad to be leaving the scientists and crew on board, who have been incredibly welcoming over the last week, but I'm looking forward to being able to walk around on dry land.

Fifteen people are leaving the icebreaker today and thirteen are joining. It's an impressive feat coordinating helicopter transfers via the bleak airstrip at Cape Parry. Although it's not as bleak as it first appears - further investigation whilst we wait for the plane reveals an ungainly Arctic hare lolloping away from us and some low-lying clumps of flowers.

Before I head back to Inuvik I join Natalie Asselin of the University of Manitoba in an aerial survey for whales. At first the whales I spot turn out to be whale-shaped pieces of ice - Natalie is studying the beluga whale, which is white. But then I realize that the black rock I have been staring at absent-mindedly has a tail - it's a bowhead, a different species. Once I've got my eye in, I see another bowhead and around eight belugas, mainly in groups of two or three.

Belugas tend to hang around near sea ice, Natalie tells me, probably to feed on Arctic cod and for protection from killer whales. Belugas don't have a fin on their backs so, unlike killer whales, they can swim underneath the ice. The reduction in ice cover as climate change progresses could be a problem for belugas so it's useful to know more about how they interact with the ice. Scientists also don't have much data on the whales' behaviour at this time of year - it's hard to get here in spring unless you overwinter in the area, as the Amundsen has.

This year the researchers saw their first beluga arrive on its migration from the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska on May 9th, around three weeks earlier than expected. That could be due to the low ice conditions this year or simply because no-one has looked before. They plan to check with members of the Inuit community, who hunt belugas as a traditional food source, when the whales usually arrive in the area.

As we fly above the waves, Natalie uses an instrument called a hyperspectral sensor to measure the characteristics of the ice and water, as well as taking photographs through a glass window in the floor of the plane.

Towards the end of the flight, the cloud comes down and we duck underneath it until it feels like we are almost touching the sea. Apart from this cloud and the fog that delayed my arrival, I've seen clear blue skies all week. It's hard to believe that's not normal - on average in summer the Arctic is covered in cloud 80% of the time because of all the moisture from the ocean and melt ponds.

Although I'm heading home the Amundsen will move further north to M'Clure Strait off Banks Island, an area that hasn't been studied before. I hope the researchers have a great trip and get the data they need to tell us more about this vast wilderness - an early sufferer of the effects of climate change.

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Taking the waters

2008-06-25T20:41:09Z

Ice surface reflectivity results and a successful catch of Arctic cod larvae.

]]> So far it looks like the acupressure wrist bands are doing the trick - the wind got up to 25 knots yesterday and I'm feeling OK. Canadian coast guard crew member Marianne tells me that most people who get seasick would have started to feel it by now so I'm optimistic.

View imageThe sea is too rough for researchers to leave the icebreaker on its flat-bottomed barge. Recently they've been using the barge to collect samples away from the ship where the surface water hasn't been affected by the Amundsen churning it up or contaminating it. But today they improvise by throwing buckets off the icebreaker. Once the mid-leg crew change takes place tomorrow the engineers will have the spare part they need to fix the Zodiac that can leave the ship in all weathers.

Jens Ehn of the University of Manitoba tells me how light reflects from the surface of the ice as it starts to melt. Both snow and ice reflect a large proportion of the energy from the sun's rays back into the sky. But once the snow has gone, pools of water known as melt ponds appear on the ice, decreasing its reflectivity. On this trip Jens has found that as melting proceeds the melt ponds drain away and the ice briefly becomes more reflective again. Finally the wind and waves break up the now thin and brittle ice and expose the less-reflective ocean below.

Surface reflectivity is of great interest to climate scientists as it affects how much heat the Earth absorbs. One of the problems of climate change in the Arctic is that as air temperatures rise and more ice melts, that exposes a greater area of the darker ocean below. The ocean then absorbs more heat from the sun and causes additional warming, in what's known as a positive feedback loop.

View imageToday's fishing nets prove more successful than earlier in the week - Stephane Thanassekos and Samuel Lauzon of Laval University catch several Arctic cod larvae. They're transparent with a faint pink tinge and around 5 mm long, making them likely to be about 10 days old. Arctic cod contain a form of antifreeze in their bodies that enables them to live under the ice, where they can hide from predators such as seals and seabirds. Stephane will use his data to create computer models of the growth of the fish so that he can predict how climate change will affect them. As climate change kicks in and the ice disappears they will lose their protective habitat. What's more, fish from warmer waters could move north and compete with the Arctic cod for food. On the other hand the warmer temperatures may help them to grow faster - it's not yet clear which of these factors will have the greatest effect.

Missing wildlife

2008-06-24T21:22:23Z

Researchers hit the onboard laboratories as the Amundsen moves to another sampling station.
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Whilst we're in transit many of the 40 scientists on board head for the laboratories. The Amundsen has around a dozen labs, including a clean room where the contaminants team can measure mercury levels in the atmosphere, ice, snow and water, and a cold lab for working on ice cores. The cold lab is kept at a steady -23 degrees C so that the structure of the ice doesn't change.

In order to fit as much equipment in as possible, conditions are fairly cramped. There's a "no grumpiness" sign on the door of the labs at the back of the boat. When several researchers are in there at once and the boat is rolling, it's easy to bump into someone and ruin their sample. Apparently some people react to this better than others.

CJ Mundy of the University of Rimouski, who's currently chief scientist on board, tells me how this year the ice melt is around four weeks ahead of schedule. Earlier in the season, the researchers had been planning to set up an ice camp on the fast ice attached to the land but they found the ice was too thin. Last September, ice in the Arctic reached record-breakingly low levels so there is less multiyear ice around this year than ever before. And first-year ice is more easily broken up by the wind and waves than multiyear ice.

Although the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is still in data collection mode - it will take another couple of years to analyse all the data - CJ was able to give me his initial impressions. He's been surprised how much primary production, from floating small plant cells and ice algae, the team has seen under the ice in shallow bays. There's been around ten times more under the ice than in the open water in the middle of the polynya - an ice-free area that appears across this bay during the spring.

The project is unique as it's sampled the polynya over twelve months. To do that, the boat had to overwinter here so that it was ready in position in the spring as the polynya appeared. And the Amundsen's moon pool means that the scientists have been able to take water samples while the ship moves from open water into land fast ice at the edge of the polynya. "This is probably the only ship that could do it," said Mundy.

While the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is going well, I'm not having a good day for wildlife spotting. Having missed three whales at around 6 am, I also don't hear the call on the Amundsen's PA system that there is a polar bear on an ice floe we're passing. It was quite a way in the distance, I find out later, but was a big one. The bear was wading through melt pools, with one foot breaking right through the ice every now and then.

Open water

2008-06-24T03:47:25Z

Ocean sampling takes off in earnest.
Meanwhile, Stephane Thanassekos of Laval University is searching for Arctic cod larvae by casting nets over the side of the boat but it proves to be a bad day for fishing. And Mukesh Gupta of the University of Manitoba shows me the laser kit he's using to measure the roughness of the ocean. Earlier in the season the team used the same equipment, which measures how long it takes four laser beams to travel to the surface and back, to look at the surface of the ice. Surface roughness affects heat transfer between the atmosphere and ice or water below, and it could be altered by climate change. It's the first time this prototype laser wave slope equipment - or LAWAS - for short has been used to measure ice roughness from a ship.

A tour of the Amundsen's engine rooms reveals the six 3000 horse power engines that power the icebreaker, as well as the evaporators for converting seawater into drinking water, the sewage treatment systems, and the heating and lighting generators. The propellers themselves are driven by electricity generated by the diesel engines - this means that if they get stuck in the ice they aren't mechanically connected to any parts in the engine that could break.

Not that becoming stuck in the ice is a very likely prospect at the moment. This year the ice in the Amundsen Gulf broke up around two to three weeks early. Organisms that live underneath the ice are eaten by seabirds, seals and polar cod, Haakon Hop of the Norwegian Polar Institute tells me. The early melting could affect the whole food chain. So it's crucial to know more about how the system works to predict what could happen as the effects of climate change kick in. "My impression is that the melting process is going really fast this year," said Haakon. "Not much is known about the effect of the melt on ecosystems."

As Haakon explains, the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is multidisciplinary, bringing both physical scientists and biologists together. Large teams have been working together out on the ice taking cores, measuring light levels, and collecting zooplankton and ice fauna. This combination of biological and physical samples can help scientists put together a better story to explain what's going on.

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Fuelling up

2008-06-23T01:55:13Z

The icebreaker refuels and the researchers move their equipment ready for the move into open water. ]]>
The captain has issued strict instructions for the scientists to tidy up their labs onboard. They need to tie down all their glassware ready for when the ship goes out on the open water. The refuelling means there's no data collection going on today so it's an ideal time for a clean-up.

Yves Gratton of the University of Quebec is also taking the opportunity to move his rosette - a piece of kit for taking water samples - into place for the open water. Until now, the rosette has been operating through the moon pool, an opening in the ship's hull that enables scientists to put instruments into the water even when the ship is surrounded by ice. With its cylindrical arrangement of twenty-five 12-litre sample bottles the equipment is strangely reminiscent of bullets in a revolver chamber. From now on it will be winched over the side of the boat into the sea to the required depth.

The rosette is one of the most important pieces of kit on the boat as many of the project teams need samples of water. They'll use them to look at factors such as nutrient levels, contaminant concentrations, the amount of plankton, and the levels of gases dissolved in the water. Gas levels could provide information about how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide the ocean is currently removing from the atmosphere; there are concerns that climate change itself is reducing the amount that the ocean can absorb.

The teams share samples from the rosette and there are strict rules for who gets to take their water from the sample bottle first. The scientists looking at gas levels are first in the pecking order as once water is taken from the bottles, oxygen gets in and could affect their readings.

Meanwhile, entertainment on board the ship continues - last night was one of the three nights a week the bar is open, and this morning saw a yoga class in the officers' mess.

Wading through melt pools

2008-06-22T15:28:31Z

Today researchers take measurements out on the ice, perhaps for the last time this trip. Last night we were surrounded by coastal fast ice attached to the land. But that ice has begun to break up and we're now drifting along with it towards the north-west.

The low winds forecast for tomorrow make it an ideal day to refuel the Amundsen from the barge that was moored nearby last summer and has been trapped in the ice all winter. So today is likely to be the last chance for heading out on the ice this trip as soon it won't be thick enough to walk on safely.

It's an eerie feeling wading into the melt pools that are starting to appear on the surface of the ice. Somehow it doesn't hit you that you're standing on the sea, on ice just a metre thick, until you start stepping through water.

I spend the afternoon with a team investigating whether the melt pools change how much light passes through the ice. Light affects both what type of organisms can live below and also how much energy enters the water, Andrea Rossnagel of the University of Manitoba tells me. The scientists drilled two holes in the ice on either side of a melt pool and passed a rope between them. Then Haakon Hop of the Norwegian Polar Institute dived under the ice through a hole that a seal created earlier and measured the amount of light getting through at metre intervals along the length of the rope using an ocean colour radiometer.

Having spent more than an hour in sub-zero temperature water, Haakon sprinted around the ice to warm up before returning to the depths to take samples of water for his own work on zooplankton - tiny sea creatures that feed on algae and floating plant cells. Not much is known about the concentrations of zooplankton just below the ice as it's hard to sample that close to the surface without diving. Although the Amundsen has a "moon pool" that researchers can use to access open water from inside the boat when it's surrounded by ice, they can't start to take measurements until a few metres below the surface.

Meanwhile, Debbie Armstrong of the University of Manitoba drilled cylindrical samples of ice to measure the amount of harmful substances such as mercury present while Stephane Thanassekos of Laval University cast a net about 20 m down through the seal hole to look for fish larvae. He didn't find any today but a few weeks ago they were plentiful.

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Breaking the ice

2008-06-21T04:44:02Z

After waiting for the fog to clear, today I join researchers on board the Amundsen.
I'm travelling now with fellow journalist Maria Maggi from

Italy

and researchers Zheng Shaojun and Chen Zhihua from the Oceans University of China, who I meet up with in Inuvik.

This morning our journey hits a snag - it's too foggy for us to fly out to the Amundsen for the first part of the day so we wait at Inuvik airport for about six hours.

Apparently the large amounts of open water around the ship at this time of year can lead to fog. But in Inuvik after a cloudy start it's bright, sunny and around 10 degrees C. Tomorrow brings the solstice and the town will be hosting a half-marathon that kicks off at midnight, making full use of the current 24-hour long daylight.

Jim from Aklak Air, a company owned by the Inuit community, stows our bags inside the Twin Otter, carefully avoiding the glass window in the floor which can be used to take pictures through during aerial surveys.

And then we wait.

When it finally comes round, the trip out to the Amundsen is amazing. As we head further north, there are fewer and fewer trees as it becomes too cold for them to thrive. The landscape looks increasingly barren before finally becoming bare rock near the coast. We see the ice that's still in place along the coastline before flying out over a stretch of open water to get our first glimpse of the Amundsen, moored in ice in Franklin Bay. A few hardy scientists are visible out on the ice nearby.

Earlier in the year planes could land next to the ship but the ice is now too thin for that. So we head to a bleak gravel airstrip at Cape Parry. The strip was built to service a DEW station - part of an early warning radar system set up during the cold war. There's basically nothing there other than a runway and the DEW station hidden behind a hill. The wind makes it feel pretty chilly even though it's about 3 degrees C.

From the airstrip the Amundsen's helicopter whisks us to the icebreaker in just a few minutes. It's great to meet the 40 scientists on board at their nightly planning meeting and to sample the ship's excellent, and much commented on, carrot cake. And it's the first time I've been able to see ice and seals from my bedroom window.

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Heading north

2008-06-20T15:40:37Z

Just one flight into my epic six-flight trip to join the Amundsen icebreaker in the Canadian Arctic and I had already seen a polar bear. Admittedly it was made of plastic and a little closer than I'd like to get to any real ones I come across during the next week, but I'm taking it as a good omen.

]]> I'm heading north to join 40 researchers on board a ship that's on loan from the Canadian Coast Guard. In a project for International Polar Year, the scientists are investigating the effects of climate change off Banks Island. I'm joining the trip thanks to a competition run by the World Federation of Science Journalists.

The project is focusing on the circumpolar flaw lead - a region where gaps form between the fast ice that stays fixed to the coastline and the more mobile sea ice. The presence of open water brings the flaw lead unique properties. It's a great habitat for wildlife and an ideal place for scientists to study the effects of climate change on both ecosystems and the ocean itself.

But before I can find out more about the science, I must continue my journey to Inuvik - a town of 3,000 people in Canada's far north. Following a spot of souvenir-browsing at Edmonton's departures lounge, where the specialities are moose fur slippers and jewellery made from fossil mammoth ivory, I fly to Yellow Knife and then Norman Wells. The seemingly-obligatory airport polar bears become more realistic as I head north: the one at Yellow Knife is stuffed and pretending to catch a seal, while Inuvik's bear is both stuffed and standing on its back legs roaring threateningly.

In Inuvik I meet with Liz Gordon, regional coordinator for the Amundsen project, who tells me about some of the signs of climate change she's experienced. It's hard for Inuit people to predict the condition of the ice these days, which makes travelling across it difficult and dangerous. "We can't take chances on that ice any more, it doesn't go as solid as it used to," she said. Indeed, according to Liz's colleague Stephanie Meakin, some communities have gone back to using dogs for transport rather than snowmobile as dogs will sense where the ice is dangerously thin and refuse to cross it.

Last summer the extent of sea-ice across the Arctic reached record-breakingly low levels, and predictions for this year aren't looking too promising either.

Liz says the wildlife is changing as well as the ice - last summer grasshoppers arrived in Inuvik for the first time ever. And a polar bear was seen on the Dempster Highway, 600 km further south than its usual coastal habitat.

In a part of the project dubbed "the two ways of knowing", Inuit communities are sharing their traditional knowledge about wildlife and ice conditions with scientists. In return, the researchers are providing predictions about how the climate will change in the future. This could help the communities to plan how they can try to adapt to climate change.

Tomorrow I'll get to join the scientists on board and find out how well the acupressure wrist band I've bought to combat seasickness really works.

http://www.ipy-cfl.ca Circumpolar Flaw Lead project

Coming soon

2008-06-13T14:24:26Z

Research news straight from the Amundsen, a Canadian icebreaker where scientists are investigating climate change in the Arctic Ocean for International Polar Year.