CryoSAR Arctic 2024

Day 12 Terrestrial snow and CB departure. Today the weather was back on our side and we set out to complete the curtailed airborne surveys of the MOACC intensive monitoring area north of Cambridge bay. The map below shows the flight track from two days ago followed by the survey completed today. Survey coverage from Day 10.   Survey coverage from Day 12 (today) The flight over the MOACC site completed another successful terrestrial survey. We now have multiple lidar, high res digital camera, snow radar and CryoSAR observations of TVC and MOACC sites where field measurements have been ongoing, but also many EM bird acquisitions over sea ice where SmartICE has been conducting in situ surveys. This is turning out to be a super significant campaign with a large amount of surveys conducted over study sites. After we landed, the Polar 5 was packed up and readied for a transit flight from Cambridge Bay to Resolute for our next leg. Before we departed, we had a chance to show a couple of r...

Day 11. A weather day at Cambridge Bay (CB). Today was a welcome down day and an opportunity to catch up with a few things. It also provided an opportunity to chat with the team working on the IVORI project and on the MOACC project. We were also given a fascinating tour of the CHARS facility by Dr. David Hik, the President and CEO of the CHARS facility. First up, the CHARS building is an impressive federally funded building, about 10 years in the planning and making and a central part of Polar Knowledge Canada . It is a core part of Canada's Arctic research capacity and is home for scientists and researchers for short or longer periods of time. It has a staff complement located in CB but also in other parts of northern communities who help and assist in its operations.  The building itself is a LEED Silver designated building, no mean feat given the remoteness of the site. It facilitates research by providing infrastructure and logistical support for funded projects but it is also...

    Day 10: From Cambridge Bay to Queen Maud Gulf, McClintock Channel and the MOACC site (CB). Today was a sea ice day. There is a significant shear zone in the sea ice just to the west of Royal Canadian Geographical Society Island which we wanted to observe, along with a SmartICE site near the Finlayson Islands and then back to the intensive monitoring area on land north of Cambridge Bay where the MOACC project (Multidisciplinary Observatory for Arctic Climate Change and Extreme Events Monitoring). The photo above is of the CHARS facility (5 buildings in a group at the lower half). We arrived at the airport and were ready for a long science flight on the Polar 5.   Photo of the Icebird instrument stowed beneath the aircraft   The Polar 5's home in Cambriodge Bay [with contributions from Jeff] Today’s survey flight was the first without Arttu which left Jeff to operate the UWBM radar by himself for the first time. Thankfully Arttu left very detailed instructions on a...

  Day 9: Transit from Inuvik to Cambridge Bay. Today we flew with a very full Polar 5 from Inuvik Airport (YEV) to Cambridge Bay (YCB). At Inuvik we said farewell to Arttu who set off on his two and a half day journey back to Helsinki. From now on, we are to rely on Jeff's knowledge of the UWBM radar system and the geodetic camera - no pressure Jeff!   Arttu's view of the Polar 5 departure The aircraft was pretty jammed but the flight to Cambridge Bay was not long.      Inside the cabin full of equipment and spares     View from the cabin We arrived in good time to get dinner and settled in. Our accommodation is the Canadian High Arctic Research Station ( CHARS ), a federally-funded research station serving the community of Cambridge Bay and Nunavut, researchers from government, provinces/territories and Universities conducting Arctic studies, and international researchers. It was cold and sunny when we arrived but the temperature was dropping and the ...

    Day 8. Beaufort sea ice and a terrestrial survey home. Today we spent a long day out over the sea ice. The goal was to under-fly Sentinel 3 and Sentinel 1 tracks with the Icebird (EM bird) and the CryoSAR, and to aim to survey a SmartICE site just north of Tuktoyaktuk on the ice (more about SmartICE in a later post). Sentinel 3 has an interferometric radar altimeter which measures sea ice thickness from space with some uncertainty which the EM bird can help to resolve for different ice types. Sentinel 1 is an imaging radar system that is great for characterizing ice types. We are interested in using the CryoSAR observations at Ku and L-band to help resolve snow thickness on sea ice and the underlying ice properties. The image below shows a map of the day's coverage.   Map of the flight track for day 8. The flight took us directly over the Mackenzie River delta which we saw the day before. It is an amazing place in the winter with an incredible number of branching and...