We left the field on Sunday (19th July), began preparing our equipment and samples for return immediately, and Alex, Laura and I returned to Denmark with samples in cryo-shippers and ice boxes yesterday (Tuesday, 21st). I am writing this short piece in the comfort of a hotel room at Copenhagen Airport. Eva, Lasse, Liane and Rey are finishing the packing in Qaqortoq today, and will return tomorrow. We’ve had a pretty intense four weeks, and we all need some time to recharge, but it was well worth the hardships, as I hope the following sample shows.
Alex, Eva, Laura, Lasse and Jason Box (from GEUS) literally got off the plane in Narsarsuaq on June 30th, walked into the Sermeq helicopter and were at our field site within an hour of landing. They effectively quarantined for COVID on the ice. Liane, Rey and I tested negative again before we left. We set up camp near the PROMICE (https://www.promice.dk/home.html) KAS M site.
Our camp site, near to the PROMICE QAS M weather station (which is ~200 m to the right out of sight).
I honestly thought that the southern tip of Greenland would be as warm as it could get for summer fieldwork on the ice sheet, but Jason had warned that you get a full house of variable weather most weeks. We experienced the “balmy south” for a couple of days only – beautiful weather, bright blue skies and no need for an outer jacket.
Eva and Liane dining al fresco in the (rare) warm evening sun.
Otherwise, we had camped in a cold summer with plenty of rain and lots of wind. Fortunately for Jason, he left after a few days, having installed a rain gauge on a nunataq near by. This seemed to provoke the glacier gods into an attempt to wash it away with a downpour or too. We’ll certainly know if the automatic rain recording works, and the data will be invaluable in our understanding of how the darkening ice surface evolved. The practical consequences of being wet while camping on ice are a pain. You’re cold, in takes a long time to warm up, and drying your wet things inside cold tents takes a long time. The dank smell lingers on your clothing too.
It’s hard to capture cold, wind and rain in a photo, but you get a good impression of us being cold and tired from this photo. Liane, Alex, Laura and Lasse are, what Aussies call, pooped.
Did the glacier algae care about the cold, wet and windy weather? Not a bit. They were everywhere, happily multiplying and colonising new surfaces.
A shot from a helicopter ride out of camp mid-season towards the snowline. The ice surface is black almost as the snow melts.
The black circle is a 52mm lens cap, but the clumps of black and black covering to the ice crystals are largely glacier algae. They thrived everywhere there was melt.
One of my favourite microbiologists, Alex, always happy when he’s looking at glacier algae through his microscope.
Our three Ph.D. students, Eva, Laura and Rey worked flat out and around the clock to compensate for time lost due to rain and high winds, Alex and Liane ensured that the lab tents were functioning as best they could, and did great jobs sampling and filtering, and Lasse became our key man in building and maintaining a functional camp, keeping our personal tents safe, and patrolling all hours of the night to ensure that we didn’t blow away in the storms. We all were well down on good quality sleep, but Lasse was more machine than human during the worse of the winds. We would have pulled off the ice early had it not been for his skill and calm in keeping us safe.
Rey about to retrieve his first ice core from under a 1.5m deep snowpack. We are going to learn how glacier algae “hibernate” over the winter. Microbiologists will hate this turn of phrase for sure.
Laura’s incubations basking in the sunlight.
The last week on fieldwork was something of a frenzy, with lost time being made up at the expense of sleep and breaks. Lasse did a sterling job working around us to ensure that all was packed up as early as possible, ready for the helicopter decamp.
A sample of packed up camp and trash, ready for return to Qaqortoq by helicopter.
Eva watching Lasse deal with the first sling load out of camp.
Lasse, more machine than man, after a great three weeks of keeping our bodies, souls and the camp together.
My final thanks go to Pilu Nielsen of Sermeq Helicopters (https://www.sermeqhelicopters.gl/). He could not have been more helpful, flexible and professional, and is ultra-knowledgeable about local conditions, ad who to get hold of to do what. Expeditions and holiday makers, he is top drawer and gets my unreserved recommendation.
There will be other field and science blogs to follow. The bottom line is that we learnt tons, and that we have a load of exciting samples to process. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.