Looking Back to Look Ahead

An Air Greenland helicopter arrives to return Jason Briner and his field crew to town after a month in the field studying the rocks and lakes around the Jakobshavn Isbrae. Photo: Jason Briner

As climate scientists attempt to forecast how increases in atmospheric temperatures expedite the melting of polar ice sheets, a team of paleoclimatologists is searching back in time for important clues on the effects of previous climate disruptions. Specifically, the team, led by Dr. Jason Briner (State University of New York, Buffalo), is studying Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae  to understand how climate changes during the Little Ice Age and Holocene thermal maximum—a time span of roughly 10,000 to 100 years ago—impacted the glacier’s behavior. Given that the most comprehensive data on the glacier span only about two to three decades, reconstructing the Jakobshavn’s response to climate change over a period of thousands of years will yield insights into the relationship between warming temperatures and glacial trends, said Briner.

“The intent of paleoclimatology is to see what the earth systems are capable of doing in longer time periods and in different climate regimes,” said Briner. “By looking in the past, we have the ability to know what happened when it was 5 to 10 degrees colder or warmer. We are trying to make our research relevant in the context of modern climate changes so we might better understand what might happen in the future.”

Working on the Jakobshavn also provides a unique opportunity to do paleo work on an existing glacier, said Briner.

Jakobshavn Isbrae: The World’s Fastest Moving Glacier

Jakobshavn Isbrae is considered the world’s fastest moving glacier. According to a recent article in the Financial Times, the Jakobshavn Isbrae is perhaps the fastest moving glacier in the world. It drains roughly 6.5 percent of the Greenland ice sheet, and has been documented to be moving at 13 km per year and pouring about 40 km³ per year of ice into the fjord.

In the past two years, Briner and his team conducted a National Science Foundation-supported pilot study to demonstrate the utility of analyzing the glacier’s past. Concentrating on the Holocene period, which began about 12,000 years ago, when average temperatures were about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today, they attempted to identify more precise temperature ranges as well as to understand the glacier’s activity. They also collected information from the Little Ice Age, which followed the middle Holocene warm period and marked a cooling of the earth’s climate from about 600 to 100 years ago.

SUNY-Buffalo undergraduate student William Phlipps and graduate student Shanna Losee take core samples from a big pile of mud that formerly was a lake during the Little Ice Age. As the ice sheet advanced during the Little Ice Age, it blocked a river and created a lake. Once the lake was there, the river valley was buried by silty lake sediments. In the late 1980s, the lake drained out completely because the ice sheet (the lake's dam) retreated, and all the water spilled out. Photo: Jason Briner

Their data came from isotope analysis and radiocarbon dating of lake sediment, as well from three-dimensional maps created using historical photos and an assessment of the insect remains within their lake sediment samples. Although the team’s research focuses on the glacier itself, their detective work took place on the surrounding rocks and in the many lakes on the glacial moraine.

“We work where the ice was, not where it is,” said Briner. “Our geologic record comes from the landscape.”

Will Phlipps and Nicolas Young, PhD student, SUNY-Buffalo, hike along the crest of a moraine deposited during the Little Ice Age. In the distance is the iceberg-choked icefjord, which was occupied by the Jakobshavn ice stream during the Little Ice Age. The ice margin is now about 20 km away. Photo: Jason Briner

Lakes Rich With History

These lakes serve as conservatories of glacial debris, which drained into them when the Jakobshavn melted and retreated over time. Briner and his team study sediment cores from the lakes to date the contacts, which is how they confirmed the glacier advanced during the Little Ice Age.

“Until the Little Ice Age, the lakes had no glacial meltwater input,” said Briner. “The ice margin advanced during the Little Ice Age close to pre-existing lakes, but not over them.  In fact, it advanced just barely close enough that it spilled its melt water into the lake basin and ultimately the silt particles in the ice sheet melt water were deposited in the lake, which, prior to that, just had the organic sediments. When the glacier retreated, its margin receded back out of the lake’s drainage basin.”

Shanna Losee, Nicolas Young, and Will Phlipps on a coring platform on one of the lakes in the study area. Photo: Jason Briner

Putting the Puzzle Together

The team aims to reconstruct the climate and establish a more specific temperature record that spans the Holocene period. Currently scientists have a broad understanding of the average temperatures during the Holocene, but those temperatures varied significantly depending on altitude and location, said Briner.

“We are trying to get a record from our site and quantify the changes in ecology to get a local temperature record to see if it syncs with what the glacier was doing,” he said

The research at Jakobshavn is similar to research Briner and fellow scientists recently completed at the Sam Ford Fjord in Canada’s Baffin Island. Similar climate reconstruction efforts found that 9,500 years ago, the fjord’s kilometer-thick glacier melted in a “geologic instant” during a climate-warming period. Like the glacier in Sam Ford, Jakobshavn is sitting in a similarly deep fjord. Briner said the Baffin Island work revealed the significance of glaciers that lie in very deep water.

“When glaciers that calve retreat into deeper water, that promotes further retreat,” he said. “And that amplifies the retreat rate.”

The Jakobshavn is one of these glaciers; the calving front is in only 800 meters of water, but people who have done radar surveys discovered that most of Jakobshavn resides in a trough that is 1,400 meters below sea level. Once the Jakobshavn starts to retreat, it likely will continue retreating quickly, much like the glacier in Sam Ford did almost 10,000 years ago.

“With the Sam Ford, the glacier retreat was triggered by a warming climate,” said Briner. “This mechanism having to do with water depth was superimposed on the warming and made the response drastic. We reconstructed the relative instant disappearance of the glacier.”

That raises questions about the Jakobshavn. Specifically, when did it retreat in the past, what were the retreat rates, and were those associated with climate warming, said Briner. Preliminary conclusions are that the Jakobshavn Isbrae is tightly linked to climate change. The glacier’s fastest retreat rates occurred in the middle Holocene, at the height of the warmest temperatures. Then, when the Little Ice Age occurred, there was a rapid response and glacial growth—the glacier advanced about 35 kilometers—followed by significant retreat of 30 kilometers since the modern, 20th century warming began, said Briner.

“This tells us that when there is a climate perturbation, Jakobshavn has a really monstrous response,” he said.

Improving Climate Change Models

This information could help improve the accuracy of climate models. Currently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is hampered by a lack of models that can accurately predict complex ice flow. By incorporating long-term, historic data and reconstructed climates, modelers will have a critical baseline by which to measure what the ice sheet did then and simulate potential actions it may take now, Briner said.

And though this specific research project on the Jakobshavn was only a two-year pilot study on the feasibility, Briner is confident much more research remains.

“Our initial project is limited in scope and we’ve had great success in doing what we said we were going to,” Briner said. “The possibilities for what’s next are big.”

In fact, one of Jason Briner’s next projects is huge: he leads the U Buffalo component of a 10-institute collaborative funded by NSF and led by Darrell Kaufman (U Northern Arizona). The investigators will collect lake sediments all over the Arctic for very detailed climate history information going back about 8000 years.  Read our recent conversation with Darrell Kaufman here.

A New Type of Snowbird

Tweeting Snow Depth

Photographs of snow crystals taken by William Bentley. Click on the image to find out more about William "Snowflake" Bentley.

There was a time when “snowbird” referred to retirees fleeing the northern states for southern climes during the winter months. Not anymore. If you love snow as much as we (and our colleagues and friends in the far north) do, you’ll appreciate the Snowtweets project, brainchild of Dr. Richard Kelly. Associate Professor and President of the Eastern Snow Conference, Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

Snowtweets wants you to tweet (via Twitter) the snow depth of your home, recreation areas, or work spots. The data specialists at Snowtweets will incorporate your measurements into their data base and pass them through to a visualization package called Snowbird (an Adobe Air application). Snowbird posts the snow depth on a representation of the globe (e.g. Blue Marble). This information will help the scientists with their remote sensing and model estimates.

How deep is it where you are? Tweet your depth to the Snowbird project. Photo: Jeff Walker

It’s easy to participate. Simply go to the Snowbird site and follow the instructions to sign up. All you need is a (free) Twitter account.

And pass this post along. The goal is to reach out to long-term participants (universities, schools, research centres, community/professional groups) who have an interest in contributing for professional/academic/educational reasons.

Flying HIPPO!

The moon rising over a lead in the arctic sea ice, as seen from HIPPO. Photo by co-PI Britt Stephens, NCAR. Click the photo to visit NCAR's HIPPO Facebook page.

HIAPER, NSF’s specially instrumented Gulfstream V airplane, flew on Monday from Anchorage toward the North Pole and back.  Per the NCAR HIPPO Web site (http://hippo.ncar.edu/), a key goal of the flight was to sample high northern latitudes during daylight. The plane flew low, to avoid exposing HIAPER’s instruments to moisture droplets from clouds. As it headed north, the plane flew toward a full moon, with the sun directly below the horizon behind. 

As the HIPPO team makes its way south over the coming days and weeks, you can follow their progress via the HIPPO Facebook page. Sign up to be notified when the G-V launches on flights, and then follow the flight path via Google Earth (links available on the NCAR HIPPO Web site).

HIPPO stands for HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (“HIAPER” stands for High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research; but we’re going to follow the lead of project personnel and just call it the G-V). HIPPO will generate, from multiple sampling flights over a three-year period, a picture of the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the planet’s atmosphere.

Photo: Britt Stephens, NCAR

Food and Boos

Photo: Brian Buckley

Now that Halloween is over, what to do with those spent Jack-o-lanterns? In the frontier state, the non-profit Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) near Anchorage will collect about 10 tons of leftover pumpkins from markets this fall, according to KTUU television. The squash will feed the animals living at the center—sick or injured animals who are rescued, treated and, when practical, released back to the wild.

The AWCC is dedicated to preserving Alaska’s wild animals through public education. Their 120 acres of land, maintained in a state as close to nature as possible, is home to bears, bison, wolves, caribou and more.  Visitors to AWCC get rare opportunities to observe Alaska’s beasts close-up in a setting so scenic that parts of the Sean Penn film Into the Wild were filmed there. According to the Anchorage Daily News, the center is fund-raising to expand its bear education/treatment facilities and to build a new bison enclosure on 40 acres of land adjacent to the center.

Perhaps this is what Hugo looks like after a pumpkin feast. A female grizzly, Hugo was emaciated and pricked with porcupine quills when taken in by the AWCC. She now shares 18 acres of AWCC land with two brown bears. Photo: Gary Lackie

At Work in Lake Country

A conversation with Darrell Kaufman

Allison Lake, near Valdez, Alaska. All photos by Darrell Kaufman.

Darrell Kaufman readily admits he has been “hooked on the wildness of Alaska since my first visit in 1979.” Peek at the photo gallery on his Web site and you can understand why. Scores of images show the professor of geology and environmental science (Northern Arizona University) and his students in gorgeous Alaskan wilderness, camping, hiking, boating—in fact, working.

Kaufman has a long career of field research in Alaska. “After I graduated from college in 1982, I lived in Anchorage for three years,” he explained in a recent email, “and I worked two-month-long field seasons with the USGS on a large-scale mapping project across the Seward Peninsula.

“The hook was set firmly then, and I knew that I wanted to keep exploring the Alaskan wilderness, and to keep living the long days of the arctic summer. I’ve been exceptionally fortunate to have been supported for field work in Alaska continuously for the last 25 years. Each year, I find myself in new and remarkable landscapes, or I revisit lakes were my group has been monitoring for years to find it in an entirely new light. It’s the brief moments between the rain and the bugs, and after the back-breaking work and contingency planning are finished, when I can stop to look around and take in the exceptional beauty and to consider my great fortune to work in places where many others only dream of visiting. To be certain, field work in Alaska is non-stop hard work, but it’s good work with a purpose, and bringing new students to the field each year refreshes me and the whole experience.”

"Living the long days of the arctic summer." The Kaufman camp at Cascade Lake, 2007.

Kaufman and colleagues recently published results of a four-year National Science Foundation-funded study in the journal, Science, which summarized their collaborative work on arctic lake sediments. Kaufman, who studies lake sediments for clues about arctic climate, will begin another large project  funded by the NSF next season by coring sediments from lakes across southern Alaska, from the Aleutian Islands to the Chugach Mountains.

We recently asked him about his work.

Caleb Schiff with a surface core, Andrew Lake, near Adak.

What is the importance of North American lakes in understanding climate change?

Lakes are widely distributed across the Arctic and they contain a variety of evidence about past environmental and climate changes.

What information do lake sediments preserve?

For example, the primary producers in Arctic lakes are diatoms [microscopic algae], and the lake sediment preserves the remains of the diatoms that grow each year.  We can relate the abundance of diatom remains to the warmth of the summer. Warmer summers are associated with longer open-water periods, which allow more diatoms to bloom. Changes in the abundance of diatoms that grew over the last 50 or 100 years and are preserved in the sediment at the lake bottom can be compared with temperatures from nearby weather stations. We can then apply this calibration down the sediment core to infer the changes in temperature that took place prior to thermometer-based records.

How much time do Arctic lake sediments typically preserve?

Most of the deeper lakes occupy basins scoured out during the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. Some places in the Arctic were not covered by glacier ice and the deepest lakes contain sediment that extends even further back in time.

Why is understanding the behavior of the Aleutian Low important to understanding climate change?

It’s a major feature of ocean-atmospheric circulation in the North Pacific region. We’d like to understand how it behaved over centuries or millennia as ocean-atmospheric circulation was forced to change as climate itself changed.

Why is the medieval warm period important to your studies?

Studying periods when temperatures were relatively warm can provide clues as to how the Arctic system behaves under warmer conditions. It now appears that the last few decades were warmer than anytime during at least the last 2000 years, including the medieval period.

Will you talk a little about how you plan to compare and contrast records from glacially fed versus organic lakes?

No two lakes are the same. Each one reflects the unique conditions of its watershed and limnology. Lakes that are fed by glaciers are turbid and inorganic; lowland lakes in vegetated landscapes receive less sediment and more nutrients to support abundant aquatic life.

Sediment in glacier-fed lakes can often be interpreted in terms of changes in the melting of glaciers that feed the lake, which in turn reflect changes in winter precipitation and summer temperature. In contrast, the sediment in organic-rich lakes can often be interpreted in terms of environmental changes that control biological productivity, which in turn reflect temperature and other climate factors. By combining evidence from multiple lakes, we can develop a richer picture of past environmental and climate changes.

Heidi Roop and PolarTREC teacher Barney Peterson examine a sediment trap, Cascade Lake, Ahklun Mountains.

How do you choose which lakes you will study?

Accessibility, location, and suitability for a particular proxy type, among other factors. We typically core lakes in the summer when we can also survey the bathymetry and sample inflow streams, so the lakes need to be large enough to land a float plane. To capture the footprint of the Aleutian low-pressure system, our transect of study lakes extends from the central Aleutian islands in the west to the easternmost Chugach Range.

How many lakes did you sample last summer and where are they?

We recovered exploratory cores from three lakes on Adak Island, and a suite of new cores from lakes in the Bristol Bay area, and near Valdez. We also returned to our sediment and weather monitoring stations at three other lakes in the Ahklun Mountains.

Will you summarize this summer’s logistics?

We charter our most-trusted pilots and their float planes to fly us and our coring gear to the lakes, then we set up camp by the lake and use inflatable boats and platforms to take the sediment cores. It takes four or five people to do the hard work coring sediment. This summer, we also hosted a PolarTREC teacher, who was a great help.

What is a ‘typical day in the field’ for your group?

Early rise; work all day; collapse in the sleeping bag — repeat.

Removing water from the surface of a sediment sample.

Please briefly explain your methodology for acquiring lake sediment samples.

We lower core tubes three to six meters long to the lake bottom — sometimes 50 meters deep — on a cable from a floating platform, and use a hammer on a rope to tap the tube into the mud, inch by inch. Then we hoist the tube from the lake bottom and hope that the mud stays in. It’s a good day when we get tubes filled with mud.

Coring Allison Lake.

How do you get your samples out of the field?

We split the core tubes lengthwise and hope for dry weather so that any soupy mud dries slightly — enough to stabilize. We then wrap each half with bundling film, which holds the mud tightly within the core tubes. The tubes are then shipped to our lab at Northern Arizona University where they are kept in cold storage and sampled for a variety of analyses.

How do you process your samples back in the lab?

The cores are analyzed for a variety of biological and physical properties. We typically sample the upper 100 years of sediment in two-milimeter-thick intervals to generate a detailed record to compare with historical records of climate from nearby meteorological stations. The rest of the core is typically sampled at one-centimeter intervals to analyze for the abundance of organic matter, including diatoms and pollen. Samples are distributed to collaborators who work on all types of biological materials that are well preserved in the lake sediment. Every lake that we have cored in Alaska contains multiple layers of volcanic ashes, and we are collaborating with the Alaska Volcano Observatory on studying these deposits.  For glacier-fed lakes, it’s the sedimentary layers themselves that are the focus of our analyses. Determining the age of the sediment down the core is critical, and we spend a lot of time isolating bits of vegetation for radiocarbon dating. Without good age control, it’s difficult to relate the changes in the sediment to changes that are known from elsewhere.

Surface core from Lake Leon, near Adak.

What do you hope to learn from this study?

We want to learn more about how the ocean-atmospheric circulation of the North Pacific region responds to climate change.

How do you expect your southern Alaska results will contribute to your upcoming study?

Our results from lakes in southern Alaska will be integrated into a larger network of proxy climate records from around the Arctic. In particular, the results will help us to understand how the Arctic and North Pacific climate systems interact.

What is the most challenging thing about working in the Arctic region?

Accessing the field sites takes a lot of planning and a lot of time to just get there. We probably spend ten days either preparing or waiting out the weather for each day we have on task in the field. The weather is a huge factor in determining the success of our field work. We can’t work on lakes when the wind blows.

What is the most important thing you’d like for people to know about your work?

Lakes provide an ideal focus for multi-disciplinary research, and the Arctic/Subarctic has loads of lakes, most of which have not yet been severely altered by human activities. Understanding how to interpret past climate changes from the biological and physical properties of lake sediment is not easy, but when a team of scientists work to fit the pieces together, it can be extremely rewarding.

In the Media

A group in Anchorage, Alaska, participates in the Climate Action day last weekend. Carl Johnson Photography, courtesy www.350.org

Last Saturday (October 24) was the International Day of Climate Action. Over 180 countries participated in more than 5000 activities around the globe to raise awareness of advances in climate science and to stimulate action regarding climate change. Organizers hope grassroots movements like this will encourage world leaders to develop a new climate treaty when they meet in Copenhagen this December. The day was organized by 350.org.

Greenland's Disko Bay, recipient of the speeded-up outflow of some of Greenland's fastest-moving glaciers. Click on the picture to find out what '350' refers to.

The Interior Department’s proposal last week to designate some 200,000 square miles of northern coastal Alaska and US territorial waters for polar bears met with criticism from both sides. Alaskan agencies indicated they would challenge the proposal, seeing it as an obstacle to the state’s oil and gas interests; conservation agencies, on the other hand, said it did not go far enough to protect polar bear habitat, which is shrinking due to melting sea ice.

Meanwhile, Andy Revkin reports in The New York Times that the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that Pacific walruses, suffering as a result of habitat loss, should be considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Walruses use sea ice as a “floating nursery,” Revkin says, while they hunt for clams on the coastal seafloor; shrinking ice has meant that increasing numbers of walrus come ashore. Recently, walrus stampedes have killed scores of these animals.

On his Dot Earth blog, Andy Revkin includes a dispatch from David Rothenberg, who is sailing on a Dutch schooner with other artists on The Arctic Circle cruise. They wish to explore the “nexus where art intersects science, architecture, and activism,” according to The Arctic Circle project’s Web site. Rothenberg’s description of a few of his colleague’s projects suggest they DO experience the Arctic differently than do average tourists, as Rothenberg asserts (toast, anyone?). The writing calls up bold images, such as this description of bears feasting on a whale carcass: ”Their bloody faces smile as they chew on rancid whale meat.”

Sampling While Soaring

Going HIAPER. Credit: NCAR/National Science Foundation

On Monday Oct. 26, one of the world’s most expensive jets (roughly $75 million) will depart on a 27-day expedition to survey the entire globe for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Outfitted with the most sophisticated air sampling equipment available today, the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research (HIAPER), will carry scientists from Harvard, Princeton, University of Miami, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on a 27-day sampling expedition that will travel from Colorado to the Arctic, to the Antarctic, and back.  The mission is nicknamed “HIPPO” – that’s ”HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations.”

The plane, a Gulfstream V, is better known for its preference among corporate executives (remember the big three auto execs’ notorious trip to D.C. last winter?), but its long-range capabilities and versatility make it a precise research vessel. Owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by NCAR, the plane can travel about 7,000 miles without refueling and can ascend and descend elevations easily. During the expedition, it will fly in an “M” pattern, dropping from about 45,000 feet to about 1,000 feet to take samples from every layer of the atmosphere. Ultimately, this project will provide the first global picture of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, said Dr. Steve Wofsy, HIPPO mission principal investigator, Harvard University.

“Thirty years ago, everyone thought the atmosphere was fixed,” said Wofsy. “It was unimaginable that humans could have affected the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. Now we know we have, and this research will take a snapshot of the earth and see how those gases are distributed over the whole globe.”

A Packed Itinerary

The flights will travel from Colorado to Anchorage, Alaska, and the Arctic Circle before heading south across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand and Antarctica.

First-Of-A-Kind Measurements

Specifically, HIPPO will measure cross sections of atmospheric concentrations from the north to south poles, sampling air at elevations that vary from sea level to 45,000 feet. By sampling a cross-section of the atmosphere, the scientists will record a comprehensive picture that satellites cannot capture, said Wofsy. The air sampling equipment makes a measurement every second.

National Center For Atmospheric Research co-PI Britt Stevens adjusts equipment aboard the Gulfstream V. Photo: Courtesy UCAR

Simple Physics and Complicated Physics

Preparing the plane’s machinery demanded dedicated focus from physicists and engineers charged with quality control and quality assurance. With powerful computers, two laser spectrometers, and other extremely advanced instruments designed specifically for the HIPPO project, scientists will be able to measure CO2 and other gases in real time, instead of collecting a number of samples in flasks for later analysis in a lab. The location of the air intake chambers was carefully designed to avoid collecting fuel emissions from the jet.

Model Improvement

Scientists on board will be able to glean insight from the data as it loads into their computers, Wofsy said. But detailed analysis and measurements will take about six to eight months. That information will be used to improve existing computer models that measure the output, location, and concentration of greenhouse gases.

“Once the models are improved, we’ll go back to see who is doing what [to send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere], and how much are they contributing,” said Wofsy.

Such information could prove relevant should a global climate change treaty emerge that calls on nations to substantially curb their emissions. In addition, the team will study how logging and regrowth in the boreal and tropical rain forests, as well as changes in the upper atmospheric winds around Antarctica, are affecting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Methane

In addition to CO2, scientists will analyze other gases and atmospheric particles, such as methane, whose concentrations have tripled since the Industrial Age and appear to be rising.

“HIPPO is the first time that atmospheric scientists can get a complete picture of over 30 trace gases and black carbon aerosols that influence climate,’ said James Elkins, a NOAA scientist working on the project.

Adventure

Bird's eye view: Looking down as the GV descends during the January 2009 expedition onto a snowy runway. Photo: Courtesy UCAR

Plus, the expedition will be fun. This is the second research flight and third journey for the aircraft, which underwent a proof of concept trial run in 2008 to demonstrate the vessel’s viability. The first expedition in January 2009 went well, and, following this trip, HIAPER will fly again in April 2010 and twice in the summer of 2011.

“Essentially, we’re taking our flying laboratory around the world and measuring as we go,” Wofsy said.

Oktoberfest

 

At Summit they call it "Bradtoberfest." Brad Whelchel hones his Bavarian culinary skills for Oktoberfest at Summit.

A few weeks ago, the Summit weekly mentioned an Oktoberfest celebration with a tremendous Bavarian meal and polka music beamed over the Internet (which was somewhat less than tremendous, according to some). We wanted to know the back-story on the celebration, so we wrote to our colleagues.

Turns out that mechanic Brad Whelchel is the Oktoberfestmeister, but not because he considers himself Bavarian (some of his folks are Pennsylvania Deutsch). “I like to immerse myself in other cultures and festivities,” Brad explained.

“Two of my favorite holidays have to be Oktoberfest and St. Patrick’s Day.  They are not the most traditional/religious of holidays, but they sure are fun!”, he wrote. Brad has celebrated the festival for years, often in Helen, Georgia (whose European settlers were Bavarian), near his home in Tennessee, so he knew a thing or two about Oktoberfest.

“My original plans were to tour Europe in the autumn, with the centerpiece of the trip being Oktoberfest in Munich.  But I got the call for the mechanic job in August, and took that instead,” Brad wrote.  “Around the middle of September I started thinking ‘I should be in Munich right now,’ and began to formulate my own Oktoberfest celebration up here.”

Giant soft pretzels with hot mustard lead the food parade. Then, slow-cooked kielbasa and sauerkraut, German potato salad and spaetzle dumplings. Later, rouladen (slices of flank steak stuffed with hot mustard, bacon, onion, and pickles), jagerschnitzel (thin, breaded pork chops simmered with mushroom-and-onion gravy). And finally, hoernchen, horn-shaped pastries filled with preserves, cinnamon sugar, fruit, etc.

How did he manage some of the more exotic ingredients at Summit? “The food inventory is quite varied; previous crews have requested different specialty items, so now we have things like Japanese Nori wrappers for sushi, cèpes for French mushroom dishes, and this year I brought up my FAVORITE barbecue sauce of all time, Rendezvous!  It comes from the best rib joint in America, The Rendezvous in downtown Memphis.  We’ve put it on basically everything, and I have another bottle to leave for the rest of the winter crews.  I also brought Thai iced tea leaves, Indian spice chai, and beignet mix from Cafe du Monde in New Orleans.”

Brad admits that most of his cooking experience, beyond barbeque, has been gained in Summit’s well-stocked kitchen.  He chose well-rated recipes off the Internet with ingredients compatible with Summit’s food stores. “The salt used on the pretzels wasn’t as large as the true German pretzel salt, but it was still coarse and chunky.”

We got to thinking about Summit and how the population up there on the world’s roof loves a shindig. Summiteers honor all kinds of occasions with food, games, parades, costume parties, and so on. In addition to the traditional holidays, Summit celebrates the equinoxes and solstices, of course—and also such things as completion of major science milestones or operational efforts. Since long-time Summit manager, Kathy Young, was in Denver last week attending our annual meeting, we cornered her and asked about the penchant for social gatherings.  “We celebrate because it’s something for us in an isolated community to do,” She explained. “It’s really nice for us to acknowledge the effort it takes to make Summit run and to do science here—plus, it’s a nice way to pass the time.”

And time is passing. The crew keeping Summit’s experiments running during this first phase of winter can now measure their time in isolation in days, as the incoming crew is due on the ice next week. Clearly, that’s another occasion for celebration.

A Special Homecoming

Sitting with researcher Aaron Fox, Iñupiat elder Martha Aiken peruses a photo from 1946 and recognizes her husband, Robert, at a young age. Photo: Chie Sakakibara

When Iñupiat elder Martha Aiken first laid eyes on the digital rendition of the aged photograph, she squinted her eyes and examined the teenager in the image. From her kitchen table in Barrow, AK., with the assist of a magnifying glass, the proud native woman, then 81 years old, nodded her head in confirmation. “That’s my Robert,” she declared as her eyes welled with tears.

Her Robert. Robert Aiken, left, circa 1946. Photo: The Boulton Collection

The Robert under the looking glass was the man who became her husband. Preserved in a photograph taken in 1946, his youthful smile and good looks mesmerized their observer, and Aiken momentarily lost herself in remembrance.

That was 2008, several months after researchers Dr. Aaron Fox (Music, Columbia University) and Dr. Chie Sakakibara (postdoctoral research fellow, The Earth Institute, Columbia University) first traveled to Barrow, Alaska, to conduct fieldwork for their NSF-supported project: “Community-Partnered Repatriation of Iñupiat Music.” They arrived bearing roughly 130 photographs and about 120 recorded songs collected more than six decades ago by Laura Boulton, an American ethnomusicologist.

Iñupiaq elder Fannie Akpik and Iñupiaq educator Jana Hacharek reading through Laura Boulton's account (Music Hunter) of Barrow, Alaska. Photo: Chie Sakakibara

They sought entry into the lives of the tribal elders. Wanting to respectfully return the music and the images to their original owners, the two academics (Fox is an anthropologist of music and Sakakibara is a geographer) often found themselves in the kitchens and sitting rooms of the likes of Aiken, painstakingly reviewing each image, provoking memories, and collecting a rich and deep oral history.

An alternate copy of the photo reproduced in Laura Boulton’s 1968 book The Music Hunter (Doubleday). Pictured, from left to right, are Rodger Ahalik, Otis Ahkivgak, Willie Sielak, Guy Okakok, and Alfred Koonaloak. Photo: Smithsonian/Folkways Records FW00044, 1955)

“Many of the elders we interview were young when the recordings were made and have knowledge of these art and verbal traditions,” said Fox. “When they hear the recordings of their ancestors or see the pictures, it stimulates their memory in a really powerful way.”

Fox and Sakakibara have delved into the controversial world of repatriation with the goal of creating a new model that promotes collaboration between institutional archives and Native communities. By working closely with members of the Iñupiat community to describe, interpret, translate, and identify the historical features of Boulton’s material, they aim to gain insights into the geographical, historical and ethnomusicological problems and questions that extend beyond the materials. By treating the archives as a basis for building relationships and developing dialogues with members of the native communities, they hope to develop a ubiquitous model to assist in other repatriation projects.

“Photographs, like music recordings, are duplicable, so the underlying object is replicable and the repatriation is straightforward,” said Fox. “But it’s important the rights to the archives be restored to the community, and that we help the tribe develop consensus of how to maintain jurisdiction.”

The disbursement of heritage resources can be political and contentious, but reaching agreement with the Iñupiat has been “remarkably successful,” Fox said. To that end, the material has already begun working its way into the school curriculums and local cultural events. Fox and Sakakibara have presented the recordings to numerous schoolchildren and are working with teachers to develop future uses for these materials in the classroom.

Visiting Ipaalook Elementary School in Barrow to talk to pupils about Laura Boulton and historical recordings. Photo: Chie Sakakibara

And a group of young people formed a traditional dance group to learn and perform the songs on the recordings.  This group, called Taġiuġmiut dancers, which means “People of the Sea,” includes Riley Sikvayugak and Vernon Elavgak, two descendants of Joseph Sikvayugak, one of the primary performers on Boulton’s recordings. So far the group has had success, including winning first place at the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics.

Dancers re-enacting the 1946 songs at Nalukataq (Whale Feast), June 2008. Photo: Chie Sakakibara)

“There is no cookbook or single prescription for how to do this kind of thing [repatriation],” Fox said. “You can set goals, but the important thing is to treat this as a relationship not a transaction. It’s a restoration of cultural resources rather than just a return of something.”

The archived music recordings date back to Boulton’s visit in 1946, during which her assistant John Klebe also shot photographs. However, some of the images are clearly not from the season she visited (October, 1946), and Fox said he believes it is likely those photographs were taken by Marvin Peter, a local, respected Iñupiaq photographer of the period.

“We presume he would have given them to Boulton, as that would be a very Iñupiat thing to do,” said Fox.  “We don’t know this for sure. We do know he was among the people she and John Klebe photographed while they were there.”

Fox and Sakakibara will return to Barrow at Thanksgiving to continue their field work, which has NSF funding for two additional years. They also hope to hand over the publication rights to the Iñupiat recordings to the tribe within the next year.

Tapestry waving in the wind

While trying to catch up on everything we missed last week, we just noticed that John Whiteman posted another in his series, “Polar Bears of Summer,” for Exploratorium’s NSF-funded outreach project, Ice Stories.  As ever, Whiteman delivers the goods from the USCGC Polar Sea, where the Hank Harlow-led team of University of Wyoming researchers are tracking and re-examining a set of bears they collared last spring.

US Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea navigates pancake ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The ship ran into some heavy seas, leading to all personnel being restricted from going on deck. Whiteman writes that the sea ice responding to the swells was ”like watching an enormous tapestry waving in the wind.” If you haven’t checked out Whiteman’s dispatches, you’re missing the boat (and the bears).