polar
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27 July 2014 - Ships passing in the night ...
The small icebergs brought to the shore have fallen silent with the evening. The sun is currently hidden behind the 500-metre mountain just behind the base, and the beach is in shadows. What suddenly made these icebergs silent? Curious, of...
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26 July 2014 – No birds, please …
After the last days, we have plenty of field data to analyse and more experiments to run and test different theories. Is the noise coming from the bubbles? From the cracking? What influences how loud it is? Is it the...
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25 July 2014 – Fifty shades of blue
We do not do as much field work as I expected at the beginning, because of the weather and because we need to do laboratory experiments to check different theories. But today I am happy: the weather is cooperating, and we...
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24 July 2014 – Glacier ice cubes and glacier work
Yesterday saw another successful deployment of DAB, the Directional Acoustic Buoy to track where underwater noise comes from exactly. Each survey starts in the same way: zooming in the boat to the fjord with the glacier, jumping on the beach...
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23 July 2014 - Hump day
A few days ago, it was already “hump day”. This is a custom taken from long surveys on ships, where people use the analogy of the camel hump to mark the days “up”, toward the middle of the survey, or...
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22 July 2014 – Pulled under by a mini-tsunami
7 am: The weather has cleared up and we can start field work again. According to Internet, we are in the sunshine. According to my own eyes, the clouds are still very low and all grey from one end of...
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20 July 2014 – The wild side of Arctic life
Conditions in the Arctic vary rapidly, and local ecosystems are very simple (no rodents or hares, for example, in this part of Svalbard) (no worms, no slugs, but a few insects). There are many other animals around, though, and they...
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16 July 2014 - More about the experiments
Last time, I talked at length about the science, and why we are here. But it's not all work in the field. Arctic weather changes fast, and even the best forecasts (using data from the weather station 100 m away)...
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14 July 2014 – Starting the science
The last two days have been very busy, starting with the first experiments and really testing our equipment for good. Being in the field is always very nice, although life back home carries on as usual. The deadline for submitting...
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11/12 July 2014 – The Polish Polar Station
We arrived late last night … or was it already the morning? At this latitude (77°00.0’N), the full polar day lasts from 24 April to 18 August, and we cannot see any difference between night and day. This means it...