The days are getting shorter and the temperatures are
dropping, but the NGEE Arctic team is once again back in Barrow. John (LBNL)
and I arrived on the evening flight and we will be joined by Bryan and Ori
(LBNL) and Keith (BNL) tomorrow. We will be here for 10 days to collect
end-of-season measurements of CO2 and CH4 flux and a few permafrost cores, and
to disassemble the energy tram and its 65 meters of supports and rails. Naama
(LBNL) will arrive on Tuesday and will help as we remove the eddy covariance
system. Its sensors and data logger will be shipped back to Berkeley for
maintenance and calibration.
We have allocated 10 days for our tasks and hopefully that
will be sufficient. The days are short with sunrise at 10:30am and sunset at
4:30pm. So, 5.5 hours of sunlight. The temperatures are hovering right at zero
with wind chills at -15F. Dressed properly that should not be a problem. While
we wait for the others to arrive, John and I will get the snowmachines ready
and with luck we can be at our field sites on the Barrow Environmental
Observatory (BEO) just after lunch.
Join us this week as we carry out our research. We should have lots of good pictures and
updates on our studies. For now, I snapped a picture just as our plane departed
Anchorage earlier this afternoon. Enjoy…
