I’ve been at Summit for over a week now. I’m getting used to camp life and finding that I am enjoying it here very much. There is a really great group of people up here. The station staff in particular have been enormously friendly and helpful. The heavy equipment operators and carpenters have done an amazing job getting the ICECAPS building (called the Mobile Science Facility or “MSF”) prepared and helping us move in.
What’s the coolest thing about MSF? MSF is on skis! It will be moved from time to time (maybe twice per year, we don’t know yet) between two “permanent” locations so that it can maintain a level orientation and be kept free of the drifts which would otherwise bury the building in snow. The other day MSF was moved to one of these locations by being towed behind a bulldozer (see photo below).
Now that MSF is finished and in place, we are in the process of assembling the instruments which include three lidars, a radar, and several sophisticated infrared sensors. Using this suite of instrumentation we will be able to build a picture of the atmospheric state over a very important, yet poorly understood region of the planet, the Greenland Ice Sheet. We are interested in answering questions related to the surface energy budget, the processes involved in the development of clouds, surface-atmosphere-cloud interactions, and precipitation. This research is very important to understanding and modeling the surface energy budget and mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet, processes that are closely coupled to the global climate. In the next few days we should be receiving the first data streams. At that time we will begin to launch radiosondes twice every day.
Having an interest in the atmosphere and being in the Arctic offers some rare treats. In addition to the aurora borealis which is observed during the long polar night, the Arctic summer offers some pretty neat optical phenomena. Today, while walking between buildings we noticed a particular type of halo called a parahelic circle.
A parahelic circle is a colorless halo that is parallel to the ground. It passes through sundogs (bright spots to the side of the sun), the sun, and runs a full 360 degrees around you. I couldn’t take a picture of the whole circle, but a portion of it is shown in a photo below along with another halo that appeared the other day. The halos are formed by the refraction and reflection of light through small ice crystals in the air.
That’s all from Summit for now. Thanks for reading!
They don't call it the Mobile Science Facility for nothing!
A segment of a parahelic circle behind the Big House.
ICECAPS PI Matt Shupe from UC Boulder and CIRRES on the MSF and in front of a halo.
Me in front of the Big House at 10:30 PM this evening.