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Director's NoteFred Best |
A significant portion of our work here at SSEC involves supporting research in the field. Our field programs span a wide range scientific inquiry, and our geographical footprint in support of this research brings us to the far reaches of the globe. Here is a brief summary of some the field work being conducted by SSEC.
Ice Drilling Design and Operations
In February, IDDO (formerly ICDS) completed its twelfth year of providing ice drilling support to NSF-funded science projects in Antarctica. The 2011-2012 field season saw the completion of coring of the WAIS Divide borehole using the ICDS-IDDO designed DISC (Deep Ice Sheet Coring) Drill. The IDDO crew completed drilling the final 74 meters of core on 31 December; a total of 3405 meters of almost perfect ice core was collected during the 5 seasons of drilling at the site. Upon completion of the main borehole, IDDO engineers spent the remainder of the season testing the replicate coring subsystem of the DISC Drill. This subsystem is designed to allow core to be collected in branches off the main borehole using directional drilling techniques. While the shortness of time available to conduct the testing did not allow the collection of any cores, a great deal was learned and should allow the successful collection of replicate cores during the 2012-2013 field season. The field crew also assisted the scientists in logging the borehole. The IDDO crew involved in the WAIS Divide Project included lead drillers Jay Johnson and Kristina Dahnert and SSEC engineers Nicolai Mortensen, Chris Gibson, Josh Goetz, Paul Sendelbach and Chuck Zander and contract drillers Elizabeth Mortensen and Mike Jayred.
Former IDDO Engineer and current contract driller Tanner Kuhl completed coring of “blue ice” on Taylor Glacier in Antarctica during the 2011-12 field season. He used the IDDO designed and constructed Blue Ice Drill (BID), which is capable of collecting 9.5-inch diameter cores to depths of 15 meters, to recover over 900 meters of core. The core was melted on site by the science investigators to measure trace gases trapped in the ice.
IDDO also provided a small hot water drill for two seismic studies on Whillans Ice Stream. The investigators, using the drill, drilled over 280 shot holes and collected more than 9 km of seismic data.
Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC)
The Automatic Weather Station (AWS)/Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (AMRC) groups field work was conducted from November 2011-February 2012. The goals for the last field season were ambitious. The season included moving data telemetry from Argos to 900 MHz radios for some local McMurdo automatic weather stations; building and deploying three five-watt power systems for an ozone monitoring project based out of the University of Colorado-Boulder; upgrading some stations in the network with the new data loggers; and the usual repair and raising of stations. The field team included Jonathan Thom and Lee Welhouse from the Space Science and Engineering Center; and John Cassano and Alice Duvivier of the University of Colorado- Boulder. The upcoming field season will continue with station upgrades, replacement of telemetry from Argos to 900 MHz radios, and the usual station raises and repairs. The 2012-2013 field season crew will include Matthew Lazzara, Lee Welhouse and Dave Mikolajczyk.
Scanning HIS
From mid-August through October, the Scanning HIS team will support the NASA Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission out of Wallops, Virginia. HS3 is specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. For this mission, the Scanning HIS instrument will fly on-board the NASA Global Hawk aircraft at an altitude of 55,000 to 65,000 feet, with a duration of about 24 hours for each flight. Last year the instrument was integrated to the Global Hawk and a series of test flights were conducted to demonstrate compatibility and performance. This summer the Scanning HIS field support team will include: Denny Hackel, Nick Ciganovich, Dan LaPort, Joe Taylor, Jon Gero, Dan Deslover, Palo Antonelli, Dave Hoese, Hank Revercomb, Bob Knuteson, Elise Garms, Ralph Kuehn, Bill Smith, Claire Pettersen, Steve Dutcher, and Dave Tobin. The HS3 mission will have similar field seasons the next two years to continue the hurricane study. Following the HS3 field campaign there are plans now underway to conduct validation flights of the CrIS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite.
Planetary Atmosphere Studies
This July Larry Sromovsky and Pat Fry will travel to Kamuela, Hawaii (on the big island of Hawaii), where the Keck Observatory remote observing facility is located. There they will make observations of Uranus and Neptune using the Keck II Near Infrared Camera. The Keck II telescope, located on the top of the 14,000-ft Mauna Kea, has a mirror that is 10-meters in diameter and is coupled to the world's best adaptive optics system, which removes most of the blur caused by atmospheric density fluctuations. These new observations should provide the best images yet of the north polar regions of Uranus, which is now coming into better view as Uranus proceeds into its northern summer season. The north polar region is interesting because its cloud morphology and wind structure is very different from other regions on the planet. The observations also make use of a new procedure that improves signal to noise ratios and reveals more subtle cloud features. This is a continuation of long-term studies of the atmospheric circulation and composition of these planets.
High-Spectral Resolution Lidars (HSRL)
The SSEC-developed GV-HSRL recently flew its maiden scientific voyage on-board the NCAR GV aircraft as part of the Tropical Ocean tRoposphere Exchange of Reactive halogen species and Oxygenated VOC (TORERO) experiment. The instrument collected about 150 hours of data during the mission and worked well the entire time. Ed Eloranta and Igor Razenkov supported this mission in the field. The scientific objective of the TORERO project is to study the release and transport of halogenated gases and oxidized VOCs in the Eastern Tropical Pacific during the season of the high biologic productivity. The project used the GV aircraft at several altitudes for collecting remote sensing and in situ data.
The Lidar team also developed and deployed two HSRL ground-based systems for the DOE ARM program. One system was delivered to Barrow, Alaska, and the other to the ARM Mobile Facility that was integrated in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and that was most recently deployed to the Maldives. Field support for these efforts was provided by Ed Eloranta, Joe Garcia, and Ilya and Igor Razenkov.
Instrument Support at Greenland Summit
Claire Pettersen was recruited to travel to Greenland Summit Station to repair a cloud radar instrument run by Matt Shupe of the University of Colorado (CIRES). This radar is part of a powerful complement of instruments now collecting weather and climate data in support of NSF’s Integrated Characterization of Energy, Clouds, Atmospheric state, and Precipitation at Summit (ICECAPS) experiment. Claire was chosen for this task through Dave Turner, who was familiar with Claire’s Antarctic field work for the IceCube program as well as her significant instrumentation background. The repair was successful and the instrument is back on-line making measurements.
All this travel requires proper authorization, coordination, and the filing of expense reports. For this we thank Marlene for all of her efforts in support of our travel.
