Polarstern Cruise Journal
Equipment packed and ready to go (click photo to enlarge)
09:32 AM Fri Oct 09, 2003 EDT
We are off to Germany!!! On Monday Alex and I fly out to Bremerhaven on the North coast of Deutschland where we will meet up the rest of our research team from the University of Virginia. There, we will spend about a week prepping the lab on board the Polarstern, setting up our staging for the mist chambers and impactors, and trying to follow post-season baseball.
It has been a wild and exciting couple of months (and now Iím not talking about the Red Sox) getting ready for this research cruise. We found out from the National Science Foundation in the middle of the summer that they decided to fund our work. Thatís when it got busy. Between getting a new Ion Chromatograph online (see Equipment link for pictures), assembling all our equipment for shipping, and packing it all up, we had our work cut out for us. By now Alex and I are experts at International Shipping protocols. Luckily everything arrived at the warehouses in Bremerhaven and now all we have to do is show up.
I am looking forward to the work and being at sea. Iíve never been out in the middle of the ocean before. Sure, Iíve been to islands off the coast of Maine but Iíve never been IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN. For Alex, this is nothing new. Heís made a career at doing research in remote oceans. However, something tells me that even though heís been out in the deep blue before, itís not old hat and the excitement is still there. More to come...
Andy Wall - MWO Staff Scientist
10:03 PM Thu Oct 23, 2003 GMT
Group Photo (click photo to enlarge)
Somewhere just south of Cornwall England; This is our first full day at see. Yesterday we cruised out of Bremerhaven with a fleet of tugs flying along side us, almost playing in our wake. Leaving the dock was a much anticipated event not only for us, but for the entire wharf community. There were a handful of people waving us goodbye. It was nice to have a send-off, even without a band. On the way out, we moved along side a massive cruise liner that was under construction. All the builders came to the railing of their ship to catch a look at the Polarstern leaving. No waves from these grizzled men, but you could tell that they were curious. Perhaps because the Polarstern will not make it back to her home port until June.
Andy Wall in the Lab (click photo to enlarge)
We had spent the previous week in Bremerhaven working long days installing our equipment onboard the Polarstern with our colleagues Bill Keene, John Maben and Tom O'Halloran from the University of Virginia. Rolf Sander and Astrid Kerkweg from the Max-Planck Institute in Mainz Germany joined us a couple days before our departure. Now we are finally at sea and I can hardly believe it.
Earlier we got a an introductory tour of the ship led by Prof. Dr. Otto Schrems of AWI, who is Chief Scientist for our cruise. The highlight was the engine room! The ship is a true icebreaker powered by four diesel engines that together produce 20,000 horsepower. If necessary the ship can move steadily at 5 knots through sea ice up to 40 inches thick and can break ice up to 100 inches thick by ramming. Normal cruising speed in open water is 13 knots and maximum speed is 16.
More to come...(as long as the satellite connection is up)
Andy Wall - MWO Staff Scientist
06:55 PM Thu Oct 30, 2003 GMT
Just south of the Canary Islands.
Blue Water (click photo to enlarge)
This morning I woke up before sunrise to help Alex set up the impactors. As we walked up to the obeservation deck above the bridge I was shocked to find that, instead of open ocean in all directions, our view was of the large peaks of Las Palmas jutting out of the blue sea. Not since the English channel, many days and one storm ago, had land been visible from the Polarstern.
Small vessel trasfer (click photo to enlarge)
The day prior to reaching The Canaries was fabulously sunny. We finally were treated to being in the middle of what oceanographers call Blue Water. I'm told that the color of the water turns this blue only in very deep parts of the ocean and when the sun is shining straight down. Here is a picture of Blue Water. The picture only gives a taste of what it really looks like.
We cruised through the night and reached the Canary Islands to drop off some scientist and pick up new ones. The transfer was quite an adventure in the rough seas. They transferred passengers and then equipment. The small vessel that came out to meet us was bobbing up and down along side the Polarstern, crashing against her hull every now and then. It was challengíng for our crew but they did a spectacular job. Many of the scientists on board took a break from their work to be entertained by the transfer. I've included a photo.
Open ocean awaits us again and it's getting warmer.....
Andy Wall - MWO Staff Scientist
09:58 PM Fri Oct 31, 2003 GMT
Changing samples, Bill Keene University of Virginia (click photo to enlarge)
Latitude 23 degrees 12 minutes North, Longitude 20 degrees 20 minutes west.
We crossed the Tropic of Cancer this evening and---surprise, surprise---the air is really starting to feel tropical! The temperature is a balmy 74° F with a dew point of 63° F. Much warmer days lie ahead as we continue south toward the Equator.
Today's first picture shows Bill Keene, one of our colleagues from the University of Virginia, changing samples in one of our mist chamber systems early this morning. The process involves withdrawing the sample into a plastic syringe, replacing the syringe with a another one full of fresh trapping solution, and injecting that fresh solution into the chamber. The systems are then turned on for 2 hours after which samples are changed again, around the clock.
Mist Chamber (click photo to enlarge)
We usually run three systems, each with two chambers in tandem, so the whole sample change process takes 15 to 20 minutes. This gives us about 10 sample sets per day, or about 60 individual samples that keep Andy and John and the ion chromatographs busy around the clock in the lab down on E deck too. We'll show you what they do next week.
The second picture is a close-up of one of the mist chambers. There is an intricate plumbing system inside the chamber that produces the mist that scrubs the gases we are interested in out of the air that is drawn through at a rate of about 1/2 cubic foot per minute. The chambers are not "off the shelf" items. They are custom-made by a master glassblower one at a time.
Open ocean awaits us again and it's getting warmer.....
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
11:33 PM Sun Nov 02, 2003 UTC
14 degrees North 20 degrees West.
Halloween Invitation (click photo to enlarge)
Halloween Party (click photo to enlarge)
It's a quiet Sunday morning aboard the Polarstern. There is still work to be done; fresh bread to bake, decks to paint, engines to maintain and for us, samples to collect. However, the crew and scientists do know how to take a break and have fun. Especially when there is an opportunity for a party.
Last night the ships Doctor, who is in charge of social events on the Polarstern, with assistance from other crew and some scientists, threw a Halloween party.
It was a beautiful tropical evening on the starboard boatdeck, where they had set up a small bar and some decorations. Many of the crew attended including the Captain. Here are some pictures of Halloween on the high seas.
Andy Wall - MWO Staff Scientist
11:27 AM Tue Nov 03, 2003 UTC
Position 9 degrees 27 minutes North, 19 degrees 32 minutes West.
Ozonesonde... (click photo to enlarge)
Balloon Launch... (click photo to enlarge)
This morning we woke up to cloudy weather. We are finally entering the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The ITCZ is an area in the tropical atmosphere encircling the globe where the northeast trade winds and the southeast trade winds converge. When these trade winds collide the only place to go is up. This massive convection transports enormous amounts of heat and moisture upwards and produces many showers and thunderstorms.
Elsewhere on the Polarstern, there are other scientists busy with work of their own. Once daily, Ingo Beninga and Susann Tegtmeier launch an ozonesonde that is attached to a weather balloon. Analogous to the radiosondes launched daily from upper air sounding stations around the world to measure temperature and wind up through the atmposphere, an ozonesonde is an instrument that measures ozone concentrations along the entire flight of the balloon. It can reach heights of as much as 20 miles above the Earth!!! The data are transmitted back to the ship where it is analyzed. Here are pictures of Ingo and Susann preparing today’s ozone sonde and the weather balloon that carried it aloft.
Andy Wall - MWO Staff Scientist
10:58 AM Tue Nov 04, 2003 UTC
John Maben from UVA (click photo to enlarge)
Position 5 degrees 35 minutes North, 16 degrees 15 minutes west.
Overcast, frequent showers and gusty winds were our lot yesterday as we passed through a relatively active area of the ITCZ. Today the showers are widely scattered and there are breaks in the high overcast produced by the outflows of the many convective cells that characterize the ITCZ region. Another day or so and we should be out of this quirky area and well into the meteorological Southern Hemisphere.
John and Andy reviewing chromatographs (click photo to enlarge)
We will also cross the Equator sometime tonight. The ship is carrying more than a dozen people into this realm of Neptunus Rex for the first time. The old King demands that all who have not previously crossed into his realm aboard ship be properly "baptised". The shellbacks among the crew are already making preparations to appease the old King. Lowly polywogs beware!
Today's pictures show some of what goes on in our laboratory aboard ship. The first one is of our colleague John Maben from UVA labeling plastic vials that the mist chamber samples are transferred into for analysis. Once filled, these tubes are loaded into racks and placed in autosamplers, which draw small portions from them one at a time and inject them into our ion chromatographs. Picture 2 shows John going over some of last night's chromatograms with Andy. John has almost 20 years' experience running the analytical side of field programs like this cruise. He knows pretty much everything there is to know about doing trace-level analyses under extremely trying conditions (like on a moving ship!).
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
Measuring aerosols via laser (click photo to enlarge)
11:04 AM Thu Nov 06, 2003 EST
05 November 2003, 1530 UT. Position 1 degree 55 minutes North, 13 degrees 13 minutes West.
We are exiting the ITCZ region today under partly cloudy skies with moderating temperatures (79 F currently) and a 10 knot southerly breeze. The forecast for the next 24 hours is for continued fine weather.
One of the German research groups aboard is operating a lidar that senses aerosols between about 1,000 and 20,000 feet above the ship. This instrument is similar in some respects to the GroundWinds lidar that is sited at the Observatory's Bartlett Research Facility. However, the instrument aboard the ship is optimized to measure aerosols rather than wind direction and speed. To make its measurements it uses laser light at three wavelengths, one of which is in the green portion of the visible spectrum. The beam is easily seen at night. Photo 1 shows a view looking up along the beam from just outside the portable laboratory on deck that houses the instrument.
Yellow dust on particle collector (click photo to enlarge)
A couple of days ago one of the scientists who operates the aerosol lidar mentioned that he saw signs of a layer of enhanced return signal from about 3,000 to about 10,000 feet above us. Since we were in the area where wind-lofted soil "dust" from the Sahara Desert is frequently seen we speculated that Saharan dust was the source of this signal. That evening our cascade impactor sample confirmed that Saharan dust was present even in the air right above the ocean surface. Photo 2 shows the yellowish dust deposit on one of the stages of the impactor. This stage collects particles that are about 2 micrometers in diameter. (A micrometer is one millionth of a meter, or about 0.00008 inch.)
Dust from the Sahara (and also from deserts of east-central Asia) is one of the major components of aerosols globally. This dust has important influences on climate (because it affects the transmission of sunlight through the atmosphere) and the biological productivity of some regions of the oceans (because it is a source of iron, an essential nutrient). For a technical review of this topic see Dr. Richard Arimoto's paper entitled "Eolian dust and climate: relationships to sources, tropospheric chemistry, transport and deposition", Earth Science Reviews, vol. 54, issue 13, p. 2942 ff, 2001.
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
02:40 PM Thu Nov 06, 2003 UTC
6 November 2003, 1430 UT; latitude 1 degree 48 minutes South, 10 degrees 8 minutes West.
Rosette Sampler (click photo to enlarge)
Polarstern crossed the Equator today at 0325 UT at a longitude of 11 degrees 38.6 minutes West. That's about 385 nautical miles south of Monrovia, Liberia. Several "first timer" members of the scientific party celebrated the moment by taking a dip in the makeshift open-air pool set up by the crew on the ship's fantail. The pool is nothing fancy: an empty shipping crate lined with plastic and fed with seawater discharged from the outflow of the continuous seawater feed to the ship's laboratories.
Today's pictures relate to seawater as well as air chemistry. The group aboard from the University of York in the UK is measuring halocarbon gases. The name 'halocarbon' means that these gases contain the element carbon and one or more of the halogen elements: chlorine, bromine or iodine. Some man-made halocarbons like chlorfluorocarbons (freons) and halons (fire-fighting agents which contain bromine) are notorious as the chemicals mainly responsible for the thinning of the ozone layer in the stratosphere and the polar ozone "holes". But other halocarbons are produced naturally in the ocean either directly by some species of large and small marine plants (seaweeds, phytoplankton) or indirectly as the organic matter made up of the waste products and carcasses of these organisms is slowly degraded in the water column. These halocarbons are not very soluble in seawater so they can escape into the overlying air where they can then contribute to the atmospheric halogen chemistry processes that we are out here to study.
Deployment of Rosette Sampler (click photo to enlarge)
The York scientists, Jim Hopkins and Carl Palmer, sample air from a location adjacent to ours up above the ship's navigation bridge. They also take seawater samples from the ships' lab supply (before it empties into the pool!), but this only gives them samples from very near the ocean surface---about 15 feet below the ship's waterline where the intake is located. Knowing how abundant the halocarbons are at greater depths is also of interest so, at certain locations, the ship stops to lower a so-called "rosette" for collecting seawater samples far below the ship. Photo 1 shows the rosette sampler just prior to use. The gray cylinders are the sampling bottles. Each one holds 5 liters of seawater. On each end of each bottle is a spring-loaded cap that is held open by a lanyard. You can see the insides of the top caps and the outsides of the bottom caps in this picture. The lanyards lead in to the center of the assembly where they clip into trigger releases, one for each bottle. The package is sent down through the water column with the bottles open like this so that the seawater they pass through rinses them out. Photo 2 shows the rosette on its way down to collect samples yesterday afternoon.
When the rosette reaches the maximum depth from which a sample is needed a trigger signal is sent down through wires inside the winch cable to release the lanyard on the first bottle (or more than one if desired). The caps snap shut and trap a 5-liter sample of water inside. The rosette is then hoisted up to the next sampling depth and another bottle is triggered shut. This process is repeated until all the bottles have been triggered, after which the rosette is lifted back onto the ship. Jim and Carl then carefully draw off some of the seawater from each bottle into special glass syringes, which they take to their onboard laboratory for analysis. Photo 3 shows them with the gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer they use to analyze the samples. The instrument can measure extremely small amounts of individual halocarbons: less than one part in a trillion. (That's a 1 followed by 12 zeroes!)
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
09:18 PM Fri Nov 07, 2003 UTC
Cast off (click photo to enlarge)
7 November 2003, 2130 UT; latitude 6 degree 48 minutes South, 5 degrees 58 minutes West.
Zodiac approach (click photo to enlarge)
We continue on a southeasterly course towards Capetown, which is now only about 2,100 nautical miles away. The weather has been very nice since mid-day Tuesday. Skies mostly clear, winds southerly at 5 knots on Tuesday increasing to about 20 knots today, and moderating temperatures (73 F at the moment).
On Tuesday when winds were light, and we were a little ahead of schedule, the Captain ordered the ship stopped for a few hours for "small boat ops". Two Zodiacs were lowered over the side and took anyone who was willing to brave the climb down the ladder out away from the ship to take pictures.
Today's first picture shows one boatload, including Andy, casting off. The second picture shows the other Zodiac approaching to put people back on the ship. The Zodiac is 18 feet long. This picture gives you a sense for how large the ship is: almost 400 feet long and displacing nearly 17,000 tons.
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
09:10 AM Sat Nov 08, 2003 UTC
Klaus hard at work (click photo to enlarge)
08 November 2003, 0900 UT. 8 degrees 40 minutes South, 4 degrees 25 minutes West.
Weather is very important today, as King Neptune is due aboard at 1400 to officially "welcome" all those who crossed the Equator for the first time into his watery realm. The forecast is good: partly cloudy, low 70s F, and winds around 15 knots.
Weather Wall (click photo to enlarge)
Weather is as important to people at sea as it is to our friends who staff the summit of Mt Washington back home. Forecasts, satellite pictures, and a variety of other information arrives several times daily by satellite link and weatherfax. Polarstern also has its own state-of-the art meteorological instrument and data system that provide continuous readings that are available for viewing in real time on the ship's computer network. The data are also archived and made available for use after the cruise by any of the scientists who have been aboard.
Responsible for all of this effort is the ship's meteorological technician, Mr. Klaus Bastigkeit, seen hard at work in photo 1. Photo 2 shows the ship's version of the "weather wall" that Klaus organizes every day.
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
08:45 PM Sun Nov 09, 2003 UTC
09 November 2003, 2000 UT. Latitude 14 degrees 8 minutes South, longitude 0 degrees 15 minutes East.
Winds were up near 20 knots today with periods of clouds alternating with periods of sun. Temperature is 68 F now, even though we are still deep in the tropics, and a slow cooling trend continues as we move south into the cooler waters of the South Atlantic.
Paul with particle sizing instruments (click photo to enlarge)
There was a faint haze in the air today. This is first day since leaving the English Channel that visibility has not been unlimited, other than when it was raining. Haze is caused by aerosol particles in the air that scatter light. In New England the haze we see, mainly in the summertime, is caused primarily by sulfate particles that form in the atmosphere from the sulfur dioxide that is emitted by power plants that burn fossil fuels (coal and oil). Aerosols composed of organic compounds also appear to contribute significantly to summertime haze in the Northeast. (Organic aerosols are a major research focus of the AIRMAP program, to which there are links elsewhere on the Observatory's web page.)
Out in the middle of the ocean, however, we are far away from the urban-industrial areas where most fossil fuel is burned, so we have to consider other possible sources for this haze. We saw some Saharan dust in the air a few days ago, but we are now well south of the region where that occurs. Smoke from agricultural burning and domestic cooking fires in rural Africa or even South America is a possibility. Aerosols from this "biomass burning" usually include a lot of soot particles, which would turn our air filters black. Today's filters show only the faintest trace of darkening so biomass burning aerosols are almost certainly not responsible for the haze.
Another possible cause of the haze is sea salt particles. When waves break on the ocean surface they entrain some air and produce patches of bubbles called whitecaps. Eventually these bubbles burst and in so doing throw tiny droplets of seawater up into the air. Most of the water evaporates from these droplets leaving behind the salts and organic matter that were in the seawater. These are sea salt aerosols. If you have ever parked your car near an ocean beach with a stiff breeze blowing onshore you may have noticed that after a while your windows glazed over with a whitish film. That film was caused by sea salt particles hitting and sticking to the glass.
On board Polarstern we have with us Paul Williams from UMIST in the UK who is operating two instruments that count and measure the sizes of aerosol particles very accurately. Today's photo is of Paul with his instruments, which are located in a laboratory just behind the navigation bridge. One is called a differential mobility particle sizer and measures particles from 3 to about 800 nanometers in diameter. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) The other instrument is an optical particle counter and measures particles from about 300 to 20,000 nanometers in diameter. Together the two instruments cover almost the entire range of typical aerosol sizes. Today Paul saw relatively high concentrations of particles in the 1,000 to about 8,000 nanometer size range, which is indicative of sea salt.
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
10:27 PM Mon Nov 10, 2003 UTC
Susann Tegtmeirer (click photo to enlarge)
10 November 2003, 2200 UT. Latitude 17 degrees 59 minutes South, longitude 4 degrees 36 minutes East.
Very nice though windier (about 25 knots) weather continues as we move deeper into the Southern Hemisphere. At 1614 UT today for an instant our latitude was exactly the same as the declination of the sun: 17 degrees 19.1 minutes South. Had this happened at local solar noon the sun would have been exactly 90 degrees above the horizon, or directly overhead of us. (This can only happen in the tropics, which are defined by the extremes of the sun's declination over the course of the year (about 23.5 degrees north and south).
Tracking Sun Photometer (click photo to enlarge)
The average temperature at the Earth's surface, where we all live, is the result of a balance between the amount of solar energy coming in through the atmosphere and the loss of energy through that same atmosphere out to space. Measurements that reveal how much solar energy is absorbed or scattered in the atmosphere versus how much is reflected or radiated back to space can therefore tell us something about climate and whether or not it is changing.
Today's pictures are of Susann Tegtmeier of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research making measurements of sunlight intensity with a tracking sun photometer. This instrument measures the exact intensity of sunlight at 17 wavelengths in the visible and infrared portions of the solar spectrum. Optical depth and other parameters that describe the transmission of sunlight through the atmosphere can be calculated from these data. The instrument package includes an optical homing device that keeps the aperture pointed directly at the sun despite the motions of the ship and the sun's course across the sky.
The sun photometer is one of several instruments aboard that are making measurements along a path from the ship all the way up through the atmosphere into space. The data from all of them will be used to validate measurements made from satellites looking down from space. In fact, making measurements for satellite data validation purposes is one of the major scientific goals of this cruise.
Alex Pszenny - MWO Chief Scientist
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