Field Diary 2025 I very rarely have time to write a proper field diary, our time in the field is usually extremely hectic and filled with 12-18 hour working days that blend seamlessly together. I suspect this week …

Glacier Day in my #FieldDiary! Always a good one. Only one more to go (well, I'm writing this on the way home, but you get the point).

sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/24/f...

## Field Diary 2025 I very rarely have time to write a proper field diary, our time in the field is usually extremely hectic and filled with 12-18 hour working days that blend seamlessly together. I suspect this week is also going to be busy, but Nature has offered an olive branch in the shape of an early break-up of the sea ice, so I’m taking a moment to write a few things down. We had originally planned terrestrial, glacier and sea ice work, primarily focused on snow processes. The sea ice part though was altered and expanded when the rapid break up in April and again this month was observed. Normally, we’d have a preparation day between arrival and going into the field, but the threat of winds and high temperatures meant we decided not to risk it and we went out straight away on the first full day. Our instincts to just go yesterday turned out to be correct, we had perfect weather and with the help of Qillaq, one of the local hunters we still made it out on to the sea ice. So all is not lost. I woke up this morning to see a wide blue sea just off the last pieces of fast ice on Qaanaaq, so I’m very happy with that decision. Sentinel-2 captured this yesterday while we were out in fact. It probably looks more dangerous than it is. We were working on the stable fast ice to the east of the big flake, that stretches right into the fjord. The local topography make it very stable and our measurements yesterday confirmed it’s pretty typical for the time of year in thickness, though there was a surprising amount of snow on top, which can actually help to protect the ice from melt at this time of year. Getting around the coast was surprisingly straightforward, the fast ice has a very stable platform, though some large churned up part of the ice with cracks made for some slightly bumpy manoeuvres to get on and off the stable parts. Manoeuvring the sled through the coastal zone The dogs were I think happy when it was over. But in fact it was much more straightforward than I’d feared. The large crack we noticed earlier in the week that opened into a wide lead further extended while we were out, see below, and I woke up this morning to a wide open lagoon. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place to work and I feel so privileged, especially on days like today when the weather is also being extra nice. Happy dogs on the way home. Note the large area of open water behind that opened up while we were out. Work wise it was a successful day, we managed 2 stations, where we did very extensive work. I’d have liked a third but the deep snow made it very heavy and slow going to travel on and in spite of the early start we basically ran out of time and had to return home. Qillaq and Abraham taking a manual measurement of snow depth and ice thickness next to target for the UAV calibration flights. We flew the UAV for surface properties, did a lot of snow pits and snow surface properties work, drilled some ice cores (which I will be working on this morning) and even got our loaned EM31 working to do automated ice thickness mapping. We will hopefully start to look at the data later on today to make sure it makes sense before we leave on Thursday. Our first sea ice core of the season The reduction in ice means we can actually concentrate on the terrestrial part of the work plan for the rest of the week. And there’s a lot to do! Last year I set up a semi-permanent snow site to monitor conditions on land through the year. It is going to get a bit of an upgrade this week with some new instruments and of course we need to get the rest of the data downloaded and processed from here too. Onwards. #Arctic #ArcticScience #fieldwork #Greenland #Science #SeaIce

Glacier Day in my #FieldDiary! Always a good one.
I'm writing this on the way home, but you get the point...
sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/24/field-diary-2...

A solitary figure in a small traditional Greenlandic fibreglass kayak paddles out on calm water away from the snow covered sea ice in the foreground. In the background snow dusted mountains and glaciers

Last morning in Qaanaaq, time to go home, but first a massive clean up! Lots of notes to write up, sdata to download, and a cable repair too. May have time to update and round off the full #FieldDiary later.
But first a peaceful shot from last night, when the narwhals were in the bay

Last morning in Qaanaaq, time to go home, but first a massive clean up is due! Lots of notes to write up, still some data to download, need to go and repair a cable too. May have time to update and round off the full #FieldDiary later.
But first a peaceful […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

## Field Diary 2025 I very rarely have time to write a proper field diary, our time in the field is usually extremely hectic and filled with 12-18 hour working days that blend seamlessly together. I suspect this week is also going to be busy, but Nature has offered an olive branch in the shape of an early break-up of the sea ice, so I’m taking a moment to write a few things down. Updates will be posted at the top so scroll down to read the first day. **Day 3** I’d originally assigned only one day in the fieldwork plan for the snow site work, but given we missed our prep day to go directly into the field, we have missed a few crucial steps, so we have been busy today trying to catch up, but mostly in the workshop here at the DMI geophysical facility in Qaanaaq with a couple of visits out to the snow site. I realised I haven’t introduced the snow site. View over towards the south west from the old ionospheric research station on the edge of Qaanaaq. Our snow site in the foreground. It has a great view, if you ignore the town dump at the coast! It is a small area on the edge of the village (unfortunately near the town dump, but otherwise perfect) where we are conducting a long-term (hopefully) series of observations – we’re currently only at the end of the first year so there are a few teething troubles to sort out. We’re installing a new logger for our snow drift sensors, adding a new snow cam and downloading data from the current one. We also have a standardised set of measurements of snow properties (density, temperature, reflectivity) that we carry out whenever time and opportunity permits, that we will hopefully use to better understand how the snowpack evolves through time. The land based side is a kind of complement to a longer set of observations I have from throughout the region – all point measurements made at rather random times so the constant monitoring site will hopefully help us to understand the wider context in space and time of those point data. Snow is incredibly important in the Arctic: it forms an insulating layer over sea ice that prevents futher formation in the winter, but also helps to stop or delay surface melt in the spring and summer. On land the insulating properties also help to preserve vegetation, insects and mammals through the winter, with specific vegetation assemblages being very much determined by the local snow patterns. And that’s without even discussing the importance of snow to glaciers and ice sheets. Do you want to do a snow pit? (I asked) Yes! said my colleague. It’s always good to get the modellers to understand just how hard observations can be. However, it turns out to be difficult to measure when it falls, difficult to work out how much blows around, challenging to model when it melts and when it refreezes and generally a larger than we’d hope uncertainty in weather and climate models. Much of the work developing parameterisations that describe snow properties has been done at lower latitudes too. High Arctic snow is certainly different in many respects to more southerly locations and that needs to be accounted for… Hence the establishment of our snow programme. Which sounds rather big and impressive, but we’re hoping to set it up sufficiently smoothly this year that it will almost run itself with minimal input from us and assistance from colleagues. Let’s see, there are still some teething troubles to sort out. The sea ice has now cleared out of a huge part of the bay in front of Qaanaaq and the hunters have been busy taking boats out from the edge of the ice so there are clearly narwhals expected soon. Although, we’ve spent most of the last two days indoors, I keep looking outside, hoping to see some of the marine mammals that visit here. There are already masses of sea birds arriving. Yesterday managed to spot a rather handsome snow goose couple on my evening walk at 11pm. On my evening walk today I went to the very eastern edge of the town to get a look at the sea ice in the fjord – it’s quite clearly retreating rapidly now; much of the area we travelled over on Friday has gone. View down Inglefield Fjord with the sea ice breaking up in the distance **Day 2** After Day 1’s rather hectic and busy time, Day 2 was assigned post-processing status. We had a slightly later than the 6am start yesterday, and put some serious effort into assessing our results from the previous day. That means downloading data, clearing up wet kit to dry it off properly, repacking stuff we don’t need further. Then there is the computer work, doing some initial processing, backing up files, writing field notes and doing some measurements (of salinity) on the sea ice cores we collected. Conductivity/salinity measurements of a melted sea ice core in the workshop, fieldwork is very diverse. And fun. We also made time to visit our snow site to download data from the instruments there. Unfortunately, it was clear that we need to somewhat reorganise the site, the logger box was completely snowed in, and I was a bit sceptical there would be any data at all. So we collected in some of the instruments for testing and further data downloads in the workshop instead of trying it out in the field. In fact, fieldwork means a lot of tidying up and computer work! I used the opportunity to reorganise and standardise the way we archive all our data, including the UAV images as well as the meteorology instruments, which will also hopefully mean we have an easier time to find and use it in the future. It wasn’t all laptop work though, we did a few snow pits and some further testing of the Infrasnow system we have borrowed. I’m actually quite impressed with it – very straightforward to use and very consistent data produced. It’s also always fun to check our snowcam – this takes a photo of a stake every 3 hours to monitor the depth of the snow pack, and quite often we get beautiful views and some cheeky ravens hopping past too – I live in hope for an Arctic fox, or even a bear. Two ravens in the snow, exploring some leftovers apparently. On the subject of bears, I had heard there were rumours of one near the snow site, but sure enough there were the footprints – rather small and filled in with snow but quite distinctive and heading up towards the ice cap. We shall be extra careful when we go up on to the glacier later this week. **Day 1** We had originally planned terrestrial, glacier and sea ice work, primarily focused on snow processes. The sea ice part though was altered and expanded when the rapid break up in April and again this month was observed. Normally, we’d have a preparation day between arrival and going into the field, but the threat of winds and high temperatures meant we decided not to risk it and we went out straight away on the first full day. Our instincts to just go yesterday turned out to be correct, we had perfect weather and with the help of Qillaq, one of the local hunters we still made it out on to the sea ice. So all is not lost. I woke up this morning to see a wide blue sea just off the last pieces of fast ice on Qaanaaq, so I’m very happy with that decision. Sentinel-2 captured this yesterday while we were out in fact. It probably looks more dangerous than it is. We were working on the stable fast ice to the east of the big flake, that stretches right into the fjord. The local topography make it very stable and our measurements yesterday confirmed it’s pretty typical for the time of year in thickness, though there was a surprising amount of snow on top, which can actually help to protect the ice from melt at this time of year. Getting around the coast was surprisingly straightforward, the fast ice has a very stable platform, though some large churned up part of the ice with cracks made for some slightly bumpy manoeuvres to get on and off the stable parts. Manoeuvring the sled through the coastal zone The dogs were I think happy when it was over. But in fact it was much more straightforward than I’d feared. The large crack we noticed earlier in the week that opened into a wide lead further extended while we were out, see below, and I woke up this morning to a wide open lagoon. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place to work and I feel so privileged, especially on days like today when the weather is also being extra nice. Happy dogs on the way home. Note the large area of open water behind that opened up while we were out. Work wise it was a successful day, we managed 2 stations, where we did very extensive work. I’d have liked a third but the deep snow made it very heavy and slow going to travel on and in spite of the early start we basically ran out of time and had to return home. Qillaq and Abraham taking a manual measurement of snow depth and ice thickness next to target for the UAV calibration flights. We flew the UAV for surface properties, did a lot of snow pits and snow surface properties work, drilled some ice cores (which I will be working on this morning) and even got our loaned EM31 working to do automated ice thickness mapping. We will hopefully start to look at the data later on today to make sure it makes sense before we leave on Thursday. Our first sea ice core of the season The reduction in ice means we can actually concentrate on the terrestrial part of the work plan for the rest of the week. And there’s a lot to do! Last year I set up a semi-permanent snow site to monitor conditions on land through the year. It is going to get a bit of an upgrade this week with some new instruments and of course we need to get the rest of the data downloaded and processed from here too. Onwards. #Arctic #ArcticScience #fieldwork #Greenland #Science #SeaIce

The highs and lows of fieldwork: on the sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding process of learning new skills. Also, back to the sea ice again.
#FieldDiary updates
sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/24/field-diary-2...

The highs and lows of fieldwork: on the sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding process of learning new skills. Also, back to the sea ice again.
#FieldDiary updates
sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/24/f...

In the Arctic snow, even the tiniest blade of grass, or in this case old dead flower stalk, can make a difference. Here a combination of wind, albedo and probably emitted LW have created small pits in the snow around, and only around, tiny pieces of last year's vegetation. In the background the island of Qeqertarsuaq in Inglefield Bredning with its distinctive elongated steeply sloping spine of hills, dusted with snow, lazes away under a blue sky amongst icebergs trapped in the fast ice.

TFW you've spent ages trying to solve a tricky problem and it. just. does. not. work. Take a break, try something new, nope still noth... Wait! There it is! That's it!
🥳 #IFLscience! and in a busy day as opportunity to work uninterrupted* is so rare, *that's* why I love fieldwork..

#FieldDiary soon

Even the tiniest blade of grass, or in this case old dead flower stalk can make a difference. In this case a combination of wind, albedo and probably emitted LW have created small pits in the snow around, and only around, tiny pieces of last year's vegetation. In the background the island of Qeqertarsuaq with its distinctive elongated steeply sloping spine of hills, dusted with snow, lazes away under a blue sky amongst icebergs trapped in the fast ice.

TFW you've spent ages trying to solve a tricky problem and it. just. does. not. work. You take a break, come back, try something new, nope still nothi... Wait! It's there, there it is! That's the data...
🥳🎊

That is why we love doing #science and in an […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

View over snow covered land, sea ice with icebergs and mountains under a blue sky. A tall mast in the middle distance

Snow is incredibly important in the #Arctic: it affects sea ice growth and melt, glaciers and ice sheets, permafrost, vegetation and animal life. Today's twofer #FieldDiary update on the last few days contains quite a lot about #snow. Also #birds.
And, data […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

Field Diary 2025 I very rarely have time to write a proper field diary, our time in the field is usually extremely hectic and filled with 12-18 hour working days that blend seamlessly together. I suspect this week …

Snow is incredibly important in the #Arctic: it affects sea ice growth + melt, glaciers + ice sheets, permafrost, vegetation + animal life. Today's twofer #FieldDiary update on the last few days contains quite a lot about #snow. Also #birds and data.. ❄️🥼⚒️⛏️🧪

sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/24/f...

## Field Diary 2025 I very rarely have time to write a proper field diary, our time in the field is usually extremely hectic and filled with 12-18 hour working days that blend seamlessly together. I suspect this week is also going to be busy, but Nature has offered an olive branch in the shape of an early break-up of the sea ice, so I’m taking a moment to write a few things down. We had originally planned terrestrial, glacier and sea ice work, primarily focused on snow processes. The sea ice part though was altered and expanded when the rapid break up in April and again this month was observed. Normally, we’d have a preparation day between arrival and going into the field, but the threat of winds and high temperatures meant we decided not to risk it and we went out straight away on the first full day. Our instincts to just go yesterday turned out to be correct, we had perfect weather and with the help of Qillaq, one of the local hunters we still made it out on to the sea ice. So all is not lost. I woke up this morning to see a wide blue sea just off the last pieces of fast ice on Qaanaaq, so I’m very happy with that decision. Sentinel-2 captured this yesterday while we were out in fact. It probably looks more dangerous than it is. We were working on the stable fast ice to the east of the big flake, that stretches right into the fjord. The local topography make it very stable and our measurements yesterday confirmed it’s pretty typical for the time of year in thickness, though there was a surprising amount of snow on top, which can actually help to protect the ice from melt at this time of year. Getting around the coast was surprisingly straightforward, the fast ice has a very stable platform, though some large churned up part of the ice with cracks made for some slightly bumpy manoeuvres to get on and off the stable parts. Manoeuvring the sled through the coastal zone The dogs were I think happy when it was over. But in fact it was much more straightforward than I’d feared. The large crack we noticed earlier in the week that opened into a wide lead further extended while we were out, see below, and I woke up this morning to a wide open lagoon. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place to work and I feel so privileged, especially on days like today when the weather is also being extra nice. Happy dogs on the way home. Note the large area of open water behind that opened up while we were out. Work wise it was a successful day, we managed 2 stations, where we did very extensive work. I’d have liked a third but the deep snow made it very heavy and slow going to travel on and in spite of the early start we basically ran out of time and had to return home. Qillaq and Abraham taking a manual measurement of snow depth and ice thickness next to target for the UAV calibration flights. We flew the UAV for surface properties, did a lot of snow pits and snow surface properties work, drilled some ice cores (which I will be working on this morning) and even got our loaned EM31 working to do automated ice thickness mapping. We will hopefully start to look at the data later on today to make sure it makes sense before we leave on Thursday. Our first sea ice core of the season The reduction in ice means we can actually concentrate on the terrestrial part of the work plan for the rest of the week. And there’s a lot to do! Last year I set up a semi-permanent snow site to monitor conditions on land through the year. It is going to get a bit of an upgrade this week with some new instruments and of course we need to get the rest of the data downloaded and processed from here too. Onwards. #Arctic #ArcticScience #fieldwork #Greenland #Science #SeaIce

As promised yesterday, an update from fieldwork day 1. I'm experimenting a bit by making a #FieldDiary on my site this year.

sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/24/field-diary-2...

A full laden wooden sled pulled by a group of Greenland sled dogs follows a man walking in front of them on snow covered sea ice under a blue sky

Will do a proper #FieldDiary tomorrow but suffice to say, today went even better than hoped. Instruments behaved, weather cooperated + our local hunter friend got us smoothly into the field. Looking forward to seeing what it all means now...
(Background: sternaparadisaea.net/2025/05/20/f...)

A full laden wooden sled pulled by a group of Greenland sled dogs follows a man walking in front of them on snow covered sea ice under a blue sky

Will do a proper #FieldDiary tomorrow but suffice to say, today went even better than hoped. Instruments behaved, weather cooperated + our local hunter friend got us smoothly into the field. Looking forward to seeing what it all means now...
(Background […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

A blue mug on an old weather bleached wood pallet..in the background snow covered landscape with distant mountains under a blue sky

And so to bed. Or maybe not. Always difficult to force myself to sleep with the midnight sun blazing away. So first, a nice cup of tea and some view appreciation...
/Fin #FieldDiary

Man standing in the snow pulling a makeshift sled with a long boom like instrument in it through the snow.

An even more hectic afternoon than usual. preparing. We have 2 new + complex instruments we've never used before. It's been quite the introduction for my colleague Abraham who has never been to Greenland before, but who seems at home practicing with the EM to measure sea ice thickness. #FieldDiary

Sentinel 2 optical satellite image showing a large flake of white sea ice breaking away into the dark sea, snow covered mountains are covered with clouds near the town of Qaanaaq

I was doubtful about if it can happen but local hunter who will take us is extremely knowledgeable & sure it can work. We'll see, it's hard to beat that kind of knowledge + experience + we supplement with satellite photos + analysis from my @dmidk.bsky.social ice service colleagues. #Fielddiary

Sentinel 2 optical satellite image showing a large flake of white sea ice breaking away into the dark sea, snow covered mountains are covered with clouds near the town of Qaanaaq

I was in fact very doubtful about if it can happen but the local hunter who will take us out is extremely knowledgeable and is sure it can work. We'll see, its hard to beat that kind of knowledge + experience, which we can supplement with satellite photos + […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

View from research station over sea ice and icebergs to mountains on the other side of the fjord. In the middle distance a reflective band is a wide lead in the sea ice where it is breaking into large flakes

Time for a #FieldDiary update. We made it to #Qaanaaq, 1000+km north of Ilulissat + it's a wonderful sunny "evening". The ice has started to break in big flakes close to town, so we made decision to do sea ice programme tomorrow as probably a last chance.

View from research station over sea ice and icebergs to mountains on the other side of the fjord. In the middle distance a reflective band is a wide lead in the sea ice where it is breaking into large flakes

Time for a #FieldDiary update. We made it to #Qaanaaq, 1000+km north of Ilulissat + it's a wonderful sunny "evening". The ice has started to break in big flakes close to town, so we made decision to do sea ice programme tomorrow as probably a last chance.

Map of Arctic centred on #Greenland showing red where it is warmer than usual and blue where it's colder. Arrows overlaid indicate wind speeds. There is a big red spot with large arrows over hIceland indicating a big low low pressure system

As previous picture but no arrows and yellow and green colours indicate drier or wetter than usual. A big green-blue blob over SE Greenland shows a large amount of snowfall.

Map of Greenland, land is light brown, ice sheet is white with blue colours indicating increased ice gain, mostly in SE and NW and red colours mass loss, mostly in west

Map of Greenland, the ice sheet is white where there has been no melt and red, mostly around the edges, where melting was predicted by the model yesterday

Some exciting weather in #Greenland as we set off on fieldwork -> a pretty typical pattern: low pressure in SE brings large amount of snow + rain, but also warmer temperatures, wind + melt. On the other side of the ice sheet there is a föhn wind driving melt + ice loss via @polarportal #FieldDiary

a person is standing on a beach looking at the ocean waves . ALT: a person is standing on a beach looking at the ocean waves .

POV: You try to write in your #fielddiary everything you have seen and heard

#anthropologist problems...