Because she was able to take the place of someone else, post-graduate student Amy Macfarlane impulsively postponed her planned return to civilisation and extended her residence in the Artic by several months. That was how she was able to experience how “her” sheet of ice transformed to water once again. […]
Read MoreFieldnotes
Impressions, anecdotes and experiences from the field. Authors are beneficiaries of SPI funding. The posts present the authors’ reflections of their field experiences.
It’s an expedition after all! – Julia Schmale reporting from the MOSAiC expedition
MOSAiC Leg 3 This year, things seem to happen differently. It is true, globally, for all the changes induced by the corona pandemic. And it was also true for our leg 3 of MOSAiC, where moods of nature and covid-19 created confounding effects… Before leaving for the field study in […]
Read MoreEscaping the COVID-19 virus to find the cold – Julie Pasquier
Sunday March 8, 2020: Jörg, Guangyu, Michael and I are ready to fly to Ny-Ålesund for our second measurement campaign. We plan to analyse the aerosols from the ambient air in a container and measure microphysical properties of clouds with an instrument attached to a tethered balloon. The first campaign […]
Read MoreUncertain return – Amy Macfarlane reporting from the MOSAiC expedition
Even though the work on the ice floe is difficult and requires flexibility and perseverance, SLF doctoral student Amy Macfarlane never loses heart. She enjoys the unique landscape, is delighted about the return of light and appreciates the good team spirit. Nevertheless, she would like to be able to go […]
Read MoreAn unexpected turn of events under polar lights – Teresa Jorge
You know those days when nothing goes as you though it would? You have a plan and then life happens and everything gets thrown out of the window, but somehow you make a comeback and it turns out to be a great day? I had one of these days on […]
Read MorePeeking inside a Himalayan glacier – Evan Miles
The dramatic mountains and glaciers of the Himalayas draw visitors from around the world. ‘Himalaya’ means ‘the abode of snows’, yet many of the region’s visitors may not realize that these glaciers are themselves composed of snow, slowly transformed over time into ice. Although the compaction, metamorphism and densification of […]
Read MoreGreenland Fieldwork 2019 – Eef van Dongen
The Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology received funding from the SPI to perform fieldwork in summer 2019 on Bowdoin Glacier, an outlet glacier of the Greenland icesheet. This glacier is quite special, because despite its high flow velocity (up to 2m/day where the glacier ends in the sea), it […]
Read MoreNews from Princess Elisabeth Station in Antarctica II – Alfonso Ferrone
End of the campaign Last Saturday I packed the W-band Doppler radar (WProf), which has been measuring clouds and snowfall above Princess Elisabeth Antarctica base since early December. All the rest of the equipment was already dismounted in the previous days and stored in the base, so this moment assumes […]
Read MoreNews from the Princess Elisabeth Station in Antarctica I – Alexis Berne
Together with Alfonso Ferrone, PhD student at Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory LTE, we arrived in Antarctica at Princess Elisabeth Station on 22 November. We have been since then busy deploying a variety of instruments to monitor clouds and precipitation, with of course many expected and unexpected issues. The SPI Exploratory […]
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