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I'm Josh Willis I'm a climate scientist at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and right now

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I'm in Keflavík, Iceland in front of the
Gulfstream Three which we’re using to conduct

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a survey for oceans melting Greenland.

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We have a series of points laid out where
we would like to collect data and find large

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we fly over those points and drop when we're
right above them.

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However in some places where ice or clouds
are a factor we relocate our points in order

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to find open water, that's clear where we
know we're not dropping on top of a ship or

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anything and we're able to drop through an
area with out sea ice.

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So in fact when we have to change quickly
because there's sea ice conditions or clouds

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in our drop point.

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We look out the window and look for places
where we see clear open water and clear skies

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just above it and we drop in those, so the
team is sometimes targeting in real time trying

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to find places that are close to our original
plan drops but not quite there.

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We've set up for different primary locations
for collecting the observations for OMG because

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of the range of the aircraft and the way the
survey plans spreads out the ocean measurements

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we really have to operate out of bases that
are nearby and collect data that is not too

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long a trip for the plane.

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If we spend a lot of fuel flying out and flying
back then that means we have less fuel to

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actually drop the probes and collect data
so we partitioned Greenland essentially into

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four pieces north and south and east and west.

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We began by surveying the south west part
of Greenland and we operated out of Kangerlussuaq

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walk we also dropped some probes on the way
over when we flew from Bangor, Maine to Kangerlussuaq

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so we flew from Bangor to “Kanger”

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[DRUM RIMSHOT]

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So it the kangaroo stock was a very interesting
place but we were able to operate out of there

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for several days and really complete a large
chunk of the southwest part of the survey

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dropping several dozen probes of the course
of three or four days after picking up about

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50 probes from Thule we flew to Svalbard,
Norway a small island off the northeast coast

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of Greenland, from there we were able to complete
the northeast part of the survey at least

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the parts that weren't covered with ice and
then flying across the northern edge of Greenland

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and surveying along the northern coast of
Greenland, on our way back to Thule, then

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we spent several days in Thule completing
the northwest part of the survey, before yesterday

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flying right across the Greenland ice sheet
to Iceland and landing here in Keflavik.

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We've set out a very ambitious plan here with
the goal of dropping 250 probes in about a

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month we're a little over halfway right now
we've dropped 150.

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we have a 100 left to go and about two weeks
left to do it in so we're definitely beginning