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Hello and welcome to a narrated tour of the 2013

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Operation IceBridge campaign over the ice sheet, ice caps, glaciers

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and sea ice of the Arctic.

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Here to tell us a little bit more about the mission are Operation IceBridge Project Scientist

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Michael Studinger and NASA sea ice scientist Nathan Kurtz. Welcome.

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Studinger and Kurtz: Thank you.

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Ok, Michael can you start us off and describe what we're seeing here?

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Studinger: Yeah, this is a typical early morning at Thule air base in northern Greenland.

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when it's still early in the year, probably some time in March.

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When the sun is low in the horizon in the morning as you can see here in these images.

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And we are following the vehicle here on the taxi ramp

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that brings us to the airfield after we made a decision in the morning

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to fly. You can see that the runway is a little icy

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here, occasionally, and also an interesting change here

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you see that the runway here in Thule is white. And this is not

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actually snow on the runway but the runway in Thule is

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actually painted with white color to keep the albedo

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down during the summer in order to avoid the permafrost melting there.

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Interviewer: Excellent, and so after takeoff there's usually some sort of a

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transit time, is that correct? To get to the place that you're studying.

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Studinger: Well, if we fly a sea ice mission we

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often have half an hour or an hour to get to the

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sea ice north of Thule which you can see here, but if we fly land ice

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mission we often start recording pretty much right away as soon as we

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are allowed to get out of the seats and walk around on the aircraft.

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Interviewer: Nice. So this is one of the early sea ice missions in the campaign,

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can you tell us why, why is it named CryoSat -- what does Cryosat

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have to do with what we do?

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Kurtz: so what this mission was trying to accomplish was to underfly a satellite called

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CryoSat which was launched by ESA in 2010.

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CryoSat is a radar altimeter, which measures the height

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of the surface above a reference level, so in this case we're trying to measure

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the height of the sea ice surface above the water level, so you can

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see water in the video, so when CryoSat flies

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near water, it gets a strong return from the water, it pretty much dominates

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what is seen by the radar, but then when

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CryoSat flies over rough sea ice, how rough

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the sea ice is, you can see ridges in the sea ice, different features in the sea ice

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CryoSat responds very differently to those features, and

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we were trying to fly a grid pattern over the entire, it's called the

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footprint of CryoSat, which is up to a kilometer and a half to cover it with

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measurements to see how the CryoSat radar return looked.

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Interviewer: Sounds good. And I want to point

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out to everybody that the video that you're seeing right now is sped up

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about three times, so the plane is, the flight is a little smoother than

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it appears from some of these, and throughout the course of this video we'll play with the time

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quite a bit, but sometimes show it at the real pace too. And Nathan,

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do we, do you care much scientifically, have much interest

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in the sea ice that is in these fjords and is sticking

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close to the coast or are you mainly concerned about the main

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kind of ice packs out in the ocean?

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Kurtz: we're mainly concerned with the ice in the main ice pack. Now,

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there is interest in the ice in the fjords

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and how it interacts with the ice shelves, because

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sea ice around can dampen ocean waves, things like that

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these are really poorly understood processes.

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So there is a branch of scientists who are, who do

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like to study the sea ice. A lot of the sea ice

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studies that are done, say at NASA Goddard, are more focused

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on the more central pack, because that's the

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larger climatological feature that we want to see changing.

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Interviewer: moving on to the next mission, there's one here called

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Laxon Line. Another sea ice mission, is that right?

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Studinger: yes, that's correct. And this is actually one out of the two most important

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sea ice flights that we have since it's

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covering the entire Arctic Ocean from an area a little

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bit north of Alert all the way down to the coast of Alaska.

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So we get a profile over the entire

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Arctic Ocean there which is a tremendous data set. And we are doing this on two

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lines. One in the north is called the Laxon Line.

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And we also fly back from Fairbanks along

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a transit or profile slightly south of it to get a second

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sample of the sea ice across the entire Arctic Ocean there.

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Kurtz: so what we see in terms of the sea ice is, around Greenland,

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the ice is very thick and north of Canada. That's where we see the

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thickest ice that stays around all year. As you head

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towards the Alaskan coast and towards the Russion

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Arctic, the ice gets thinner. It's ice that only stays around

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once season. It's called first year ice. So what we're doing is profiling

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the thick ice because the thicker that is the

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changes in the thickness of the ice determine in part how long

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it will stay around. Can it survive a summer melt?

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The thickness of the ice north of Alaska and Canada has been changing

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quite a bit we've seen it decrease in thickness by almost half, whereas

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the thickness in the first year ice areas hasn't been changing quite as much

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but again, by getting a profile we can learn quite a bit about the

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sea ice in these regions.

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Interviewer: so, we're moving in for a landing here in Fairbanks, Alaska. So is

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sea ice the reason why we're going all the way to Fairbanks?

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Studinger: yeah, that's correct. Starting last year we have expanded our

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activities from Fairbanks quite a bit, and the reason for the

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this is because we can reach the Chukchi and Beaufort

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sea from Fairbanks which we can't do from Thule

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in Greenland. And those are fairly important areas

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for the people who live in Alaska, for the

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population there, also for industry like oil companies

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so that's scientifically of course a very interesting area but it also

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really impacts people working there on the sea ice or having to deal

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with sea ice on a daily basis.

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Kurtz: and profiling the thickness, which IceBridge does over those regions is very important because

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it's those areas that used to be what's called

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multi-year ice, the ice used to stay around there all year, and

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in recent years the ice has been seasonal, so it comes and goes

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in the summer it melts away and by

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determining how thick it is, which IceBridge is measuring,

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it gives us an indication what's happening in the climate, why is it thinning, why is it going away?

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in the summer.

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Interviewer: Excellent, and so I understand this is leaving Fairbanks.

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Can you tell us what's different about this image?

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Studinger: yeah, when we take off in Fairbanks and fly back to Thule, because of the

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I think 5 or 7 hour time difference between Thule and

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Fairbanks we actually have to take off around midnight in Fairbanks

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in order to land in Thule before

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4 o'clock in the afternoon when they close the airport there. And that means we are flying

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the first almost two and a half, almost three hours in complete darkness

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Interviewer: well, here we are, we're going to close out the video here with

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the North Pole Transect, so I think we're

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leaving land here, and heading

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back out to see, so what do we have right below us right now?

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Kurtz: so below right now is some of the thickest ice that we see in the Arctic.

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Actually in the world, thickest sea ice. And that's because

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the circulation of the Arctic Ocean is such that the

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ice gets pushed down toward the Greenland coast towards Canada

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and when it gets pushed down it gets compacted. And you see those large

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ridges which are down below and that makes this ice very very

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thick. So it's this really thick ice that forms what's also called

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the multi-year ice pack. And so what we're flying here is we're

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flying up towards the North Pole, so we're sampling the thickest ice.

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We're trying to see how thick is that ice and as we get

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towards the North Pole we start to get near the boundary of where the seasonal ice

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and this multi-year ice area is and so

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we start to see a decrease in the thickness of the ice as we go out.

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And how quickly the ice thickness decreases

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out towards this area tells us something about how long can

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this ice survive? What's happening to the ice in terms of

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a changing climate? Because we've had submarine measurements

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in the past few decades which have historically

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profiled quite a bit along this region near the North Pole, and there's

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also lots of historical interest in the North Pole

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region itself, there's camps, people put buoys out

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lots of measurements around the actual North Pole itself so this transect

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is very import because it tells us, you know, how is the ice

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changing from the thickest out into that seasonal ice region.