Hydrologists Wait for Flowing Water…

NGEE Arctic scientists have been busy throughout the months of April and May conducting geophysical campaigns, snow surveys, and sampling permafrost cores with hydraulic drill rigs at our field sites outside Barrow, Alaska. Cold temperatures, ample snowpack, and frozen ground make April and May an ideal time for these activities. June marks the beginning of spring on the North Slope of Alaska and this means warmer temperatures and pending snowmelt. This is the time when our hydrologists travel to Barrow and begin their flurry of measurements. Cathy Wilson and Marvin Gard from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Go Iwahana from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) arrived in Barrow last week, anticipating an early snowmelt. Temperatures hovering at 32^oF and signs of melting snow suggested this might be the case, but just as quickly as our team arrived in Barrow the temperatures dipped back into the low 20’s and snow began to fall. High winds created a few days with white out conditions so our science has been on hold; our hydrologists are now waiting…for water.



Photo courtesy Craig Ulrich (LBNL).



My travels to Barrow begin Monday. I plan to join Cathy, Marv, and Go in hopes of warmer temperatures on Tuesday when we will begin measurements of snowpack, snow water equivalents, and start tracking lateral distribution of water across the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO) where are field sites are located. Andy and Tristan (UAF) will also be joining us on Tuesday, along with Anna Liljedahl, also UAF, later in the week. Together the seven of us will be gathering data to better understand and describe hydrologic processes in permafrost regions. Insights from our work will be used to improve how we represent water-related processes in models, especially climate models.

This will be a busy time for members of our field research team so stay tuned…