NPEO Near Completion

When oceanfront property isn't a good thing. Photos: Jim Johnson, U Washington

Research is winding down at the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO), the suite of Arctic Ocean measurements collected by National Science Foundation-funded scientists (Jamie Morison, U of Washington, lead).  In fact, the entire Russian ice camp, Barneo, is also winding down—or breaking up, as the photo above shows. 

At a camp known for unique logistics challenges, this has been an outstanding year. Weeks ago, just as the first NPEO researchers arrived at Barneo, the ice floe cracked; a good chunk of the runway broke off as researchers, adventure seekers and wedding parties alike all rushed to relocate the camp’s infrastructure before it drifted away.  Later, the eruption of the Iceland volcano disrupted travel for several NPEO researchers.  While flights from Svalbard to Barneo north of the ash plume continued, the journey to Svalbard was more complicated. Principal scientist Kelly Faulkner’s trip to Barneo had something of the quest about it—a long journey beset by troubles, her trip lasted a week and involved planes, trains, automobiles, and boats—but no dragons (other than the volcano). 

NPEO researchers were able to complete much of their work: They recovered a mooring that had been anchored to the ocean bottom for two years, dropped new buoys and serviced old ones, and completed many water sampling stations. Though they were not able to recover an acoustic bottom pressure recorder, they were able to “ping” it to recover several years worth of data.  Information from the NPEO gives scientists crucial information about the Arctic Ocean’s temperature, chemistry, sea-ice, circulation, and more. 

Men hustle an NPEO tent to safer ice.

Visit the NPEO Web site for the latest news on field activities.

Read the Barneo Chronicles.

If the weather holds, the NPEO group should complete work and clear off the ice camp this week. Turning homeward, they will grapple with whatever travel delays last week’s air travel disruptions from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano still may present. 

North Pole Environmental Observatory

A winch at the National Science Foundation's North Pole Environmental Observatory is used to retrieve a mooring that has been collecting oceanographic data from the Arctic Ocean for a year. Photo: Peter West/National Science Foundation

American research teams returned this week to ice station Barneo, a Russian logistics hub floating on sea-ice covering the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole. There, they continue some baseline measurements of oceanic and atmospheric conditions collected since 2000. With National Science Foundation funding, the University of Washington’s Jamie Morison leads the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO) effort, an international collaboration.

“Six personnel flew to Barneo on 10 April over the course of two flights,” wrote Tom Quinn (Polar Field Services), who is now positioned at Longyearbyen, on Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago, through April. Tom in Longyearbyen and Andy Heiberg at Barneo are coordinating NPEO logistics from both locations.

The armchair North Pole scientists among us will recall that the true course of work at ice camp Barneo is always a challenge, and so far, this year is no exception.

“During the evening/early morning a large lead opened up across the runway and through camp,” Tom wrote over the weekend. “The runway was 1.8km in length but it is now unusable. The field staff at Barneo have marked out a new runway and taken several passes on it with a bulldozer to groom it. The field staff are also moving structures such as the galley and berthing tents across the lead to consolidate the camp in one place.”

Over the next two weeks or so, NPEO researchers will pass between the Longyearbyen staging point and the ice camp Barneo, approximately 700 miles away. They will fly to the ice camp via a chartered AN-74, a Russian STOL jet airplane. (The An-74 gets its nickname, Cheburashka, from the large engine intake ducts, which resemble the oversized ears of the popular Russian animated creature with the same name.)

Members of the team will recover an instrumented mooring that has been fixed to the ocean floor some 2.5 below the surface since 2008. The mooring holds instruments that capture baseline measurements—ocean temperature and salinity, current strength and direction, and sea-ice conditions, for example. Other NPEO researchers will fly hydrographic surveys in a Twin Otter, deploying instruments that will collect similar information as they sink slowly through the water column. In addition, a MI-8 helicopter will land near individual instruments previously deployed; researchers will send a radio signal and the instruments will release their data payload, sending atmospheric, weather, sea-ice and upper ocean water column information to the team on the sea ice.