Svalbard, Part II

My second trip to Svalbard was as enlightening and wonderful as the first, although in different ways. First off the weather cooperated and there was daylight 24 hours a day, making the whole campaign much more relaxed without having to constantly cancel flights and worry about getting back to the airport before dark. On the flip side, the constant daylight really throws off your body clock and with the sunshine the tourists started coming and sharing our guest house. I had the luck of being right next to the common room and drunk Russian tourists kept me up many nights. Lots of pictures are available here, although I’ve included some highlights below. Photos are from myself and my colleagues at DLR (German Aerospace Centre) and ESA (European Space Agency).

Reminder of the ever prevalent danger of polar bears:

Most of the time the weather was beautiful with blue skies 24 hours a day.



But sometimes it was still windy. View from my window one morning:


More glacier eye-candy courtesy of Bernd.


Wildlife sightings of the unique short-legged reindeer that live on Svalbard and ringed seal:


In the meantime I also managed to get a hold of a few pictures from the scientists living on the glacier in March. Again more photos are in my public gallery, but to give you a taste of what they experienced:

The white-out conditions they had to work in while setting up our ground reflectors:

The first evidence of polar bears after waking up to the sounds of one eating the fake leather on their snowmobile seat:

The polar bear itself:

Sunset at their base at Oxford Hut:

Longyearbyen, Svalbard (Norway)

I finished my first stint in Svalbard, Norway helping out with our airborne radar campaign to measure glaciers as part of the International Polar Year. The two photos below are just a preview and a full album of what I’ve gathered so far is available for viewing here. Photo credits go to the whole research team, but especially to Malcolm and to Bernd, one of our radar operators who likes to joke that he has the window seat in our tiny research-aircraft.

Svalbard itself is a very still and beautiful place. The town of Longyearbyen has colourful houses which doesn't make it seem so bleak and it's in a valley surrounded by mountains which is pretty breathtaking. The island itself is called “Spitsbergen” which means jagged peaks, an appropriate name for a place consisting solely of snow, glaciers and mountain ranges. Spitsbergen has a fascinating history (although better information is available in person in their museum), originally used as a base for whaling and trapping, then for large-scale coal mines. It was evacuated and bombed during WWII, played a strategic role during the cold war and is now focused on research and tourism.

Longyearbyen is located at 78 degrees northern latitude and during my time there in March it never got completely dark, just a really deep shade of blue. The town is surprisingly well-developed for an arctic settlement with two cafes, one restaurant, grocery store, school and airport, although milk and vegetables are only available certain days of the week.

Spitsbergen sunset from the air

Longyearbyen

Research-wise we couldn't fly the entire research program we'd planned, but hey, what can you expect from Mother Nature during March in the Arctic? The initial data look pretty good and I’m looking forward to data from our next campaign in April.

Although I myself didn’t have any crazy adventures, I lived vicariously through two scientists in our group living on a remote glacier for two weeks in a 5­ m² shipping container. During their stay they had everything from polar-bear visitors snacking on the fake-leather seats of their snowmobiles, to broken generators, to abandoning a snowmobile 60 km from their hut.