Well hello there!

Sorry its taken so long to blog again, Its been a very busy week. We've just finished AS101, the Arctic Safety course. Its meant being up at 6.15 every morning and hence correspondingly early nights, so I'm sure you'll appreciate why blogging was low on my list of priorities. To make up for it, heres a nice picture of the Aurora!

Anyway, the safety course. Monday was perhaps the least exciting day, with an introductory talk from the Director of UNIS, a talk about dressing appropriately for the arctic from Fred, a talk from someone from the Governer of Svalbard's office and a first aid theory lesson (it changes every time!!)

It was on tuesday that the safety course really started. In the morning my group (me, a German girl and 7 Norwegians!) had Avalanche rescue training, which taught us how to spot weather conditions which lead to an increased risk of avalanches and terrain which is more avalanche prone. After some theory it was off to the area between UNIS and the Radisson Polar Hotel to learn how to use Avalanche rescue beacons (wave them manically in the air until you get a signal!), avalanche search poles and how to properly dig out a buried victims. After lunch it was a Navigation, GPS and communications lesson with Stephan Stephan. we planned a route from and back to UNIS on a computer program, followed it using global positioning system handsets, and made radio calls and satellite phone calls back to Stephan.

Wednesday was also a good day. In the morning my group went to the rifle range with Fred. We learnt the appropriate use of the rifles, rifle safety and how to use a rifle if you have to scare away or shoot a Polat Bear. We shot in the prone position, knealling and standing. I found it really difficult because rifles are designed to sit in the right shoulder, but I struggle to close my left eye and keep the right open, so I improvised a blindfold for my left eye using my trappers hat, which drastically improved the accuracy of my shooting.

And so it was on to First Aid practical training. we spent some time improvising leg splints and neck supports with whatever we had available, like Ski Poles, rucksacks, roll mats and the upright part of a shovel. we also spent time discussing the symptoms and treatment of cold related injuries like Hypothermia and Frost bites. But by far the biggest part was learning CPR (30:2 now). we were given the obligatory dummies and spent 3 minutes each doing CPR, followed by doing CPR when there is more than one first aider, the person doing the chest compression changing every couple of minutes for 10 minutes. I think CPR for a prolonged time would be a good way to get fit!



Kristin and Eirin CPRing



Eivind and Sindre CPRing (sorry if the names are spelt wrong guys!)

Thursday morning, from my point of view, was perhaps a waste of time. first we were read the health and safety information which is available on the UNIS website anyway, then we had a tour around UNIS with Ruben, one of the student advisors. this took about 2 hours of the 4 hour slot, so we had a 2.5 hour lunch break. The afternoon was much better though. It was Sea Ice rescue. We were taught how to travel on sea ice and and what to do in the event that we ended up in the water. We also had the chance to jump in a hole the staff had cut in the ice and pull ourselves out using a pair of specially designed ice spikes we have hanging around our necks everytime we go on UNIS excursions iver sea ice. We also had a bit of help from the guy holding a safety rope around our wastes!



Kristin and Ingvild perparing for a dip

On Friday we learnt how to set up the two different typespf tent UNIS has, as well as setting up a Polar Bear trip wire around them and using primus stoves. This is only really for use in an emergency such as the weather closing in, or a member of the party needing first aid. The last lesson was Glacier safety, which again started with how to move safely on a glacier and finished with what to do if something goes wrong. We practiced setting up simple rope and pulley systems to lower people into Crevasses to rescue a person that has fallen into one.

And so we get to the culmination of the safety week, the day on Longyearbreen Glacier. last year the temperature was minus 30 something. this year it was about 1 degree! we all met outside Nybyen at 8 o'clock and walked up Longyearbreen, where the instructors had set up 3 different areas. In area one we faced two different Avalanche scenarios, and had good practice at using emergency beacons and Avalanche probes and excellent practice at digging!

In area 2 we had a hypothetical accident involving 4 people on 2 snow mobiles. 4 people played victims with various injuries, some set up emergency tents, trip wires and stoves, and some, myself included, were first aiders. My patient was concious and breathing normally, but was cold and had a broken upper arm. We got her off the snow onto a sleeping bag and immobilised the arm using bandages and the wooden pole of a shovel. we then walked her to one of the tents, and She and I got in. Then, one of the other groups of first aiders brought me a patient with back injuries. So I had my favourite type of patients; conscious ones! at the debrief afterwards they seem quite happy with the treatment they had been given!

Area 3 was the crevasse rescue we had practiced the day before. We twice set up the rope and pulley system (apparently my group had more glacier and mountain climbing experience than all the other groups put together) and lower down and dragged up Eivind, then myself. The third time we lowered down Ingvild with a sling to rescue a patient (I think it was Eivind) so we had a go at pulling up a first aider and a patient together.

With all the practical training complete, it was back to UNIS for the written exam at the end of the safety course, which was followed by soft drinks and pizza supplied by the logistics department. then, at about 5 o'clock it was time to let our hair down after a hard week with a few beers! (maybe a few too many beers!) We had a gethering in the UNIS cantina, which Brendan from last year (who is up here doing some PhD work) and Margrete from last year (working up here) came along to aswell. It was a great night spent trying a encourage a drunken Norwegian friend to do the moose dansce he had told us all about! I got to bed around 1 o'clock and slept in late, a well deserved rest!

see you next time!

Ash

Back to the Frozen North

Hello!

I suppose I should really tell you all about the last few months, given that I haven't posted for about 8 months! well, I finished my degree in Aberystwyth in July, getting a First Class Honours in my Masters. I then decided I deserved (!) a break, and a bit of time to consider what I wanted to do next. A PhD is the obvious route, but theres so many titles available in so many different departments, and without the internet in my room in Svalbard last year, I couldn't really do any research into what I wanted to apply for. Hence, I took six months off and looked into some position in different Universities in the U.K.

I've always been drawn to the colder regions, I think the promise of study on Svalbard was one of the main reasons I studied in Aberystwyth. Anyway, I decided that I would like to do a PhD on the Polar regions, probably focusing on the effects of climate change in these areas. which leads me to why I'm sitting here in Nybyen, Svalbard, typing the first post of a new blog (or at least renamed old blog!) 'Return to the High Arctic'.

My degree in Aberystwyth was tailored, at least in the last two years, to Auroral and upper Atmospheric physics. But I'm looking at PhDs focusing on the Cryosphere (all the snow and Ice), so I'm back in UNIS studying 'Air-Ice-Sea Interaction' and 'Snow and Ice processes'. which has the dual purpose of perparing me for my choice of post-grad study, and allowing me to live in the arctic for another 6 months!

So, now you're up to date with the last few months. getting here was pretty similar to last time, except it wasn't new Year's eve/day, so I was able to get some food this time. Before Leaving Oslo we had to change planes because of a fault with the de-icing system, and we were delayed in Tromso due to snow on the runway, consequently arriving in Longyearbyen about 3 hours late. This time I'm living across the road in Barrack 4, which is now barrack 10 (for some reason), and everyone seems nice, but, again, theres too many names to try to remember!

The plan for today is to dig out Malibu, Brendans Snow scooter, to see whether it still works! Bren is here working on his PhD project up at EISCAT Svalbard Radar, but he goes home a week today. watch this space! tomorrow we start the safety course, which should be more pleasant this year because its nowhere near as cold as it was this time last year, only about -16 degrees celcius. just hope this weather holds.

perhaps I'll have some more exciting things to tell you next time, and some pictures too. but I felt I had to catch you up with the last few months first.

Bye for now

Ash

Kitchen2Kitchen!

Hello and welcome to a very drunken edition of dispatches from the high arctic! hope everyone had a good Easter holiday. Apparently Easter is a drinking holiday over here! So, anyway, to leave you no longer in suspense as to why I'm wearing Bunny Ears and a milk carton and sipping from a plastic cup (with my little pinky out, classy eh?) let me tell you all about one of the greatest UNIS traditions: the Kitchen2kitchen party!

the idea is very simple, there are four kitchens in each barrack, and those that choose to participate make a welcome drink, decorate the kitchen and dress up in that theme. as most readily demonstrated by the Zoo in Barrack 4! well done to Margrete, idunn, Andrea, Laura, Jordan and the others!


but its not just us whole semester students that get in on the fun, the short termers, dressed as penguins, just added more kitchens to the crawl!

So, let me take you, as best I can, on a drinking tour of Nybyen. It all kicked of with a rave themed kitchen in barrack 11 at 7 o'clock, although the organisers of this kitchen had been drinking for much longer! then it was off to a kitchen themed 'old peoples home'. then, braving the cold to barrack 4 it was mango flavoured drinks in the playboy mansion and a drink in the Zoo.

then it was off across Nybyen to the short term barracks (beer jackets on to stay warm!) to the south pole kitchen, where they'd cleverly made a tent into an igloo, which got ridiculously crowded, so we unzipped the back, and found ourselves trapped in the corner of the room!

from there it was on to the other short term barrack, where I ended up drinking baileys from the bottle with someone from Bergen! I love international universities! i even managed to find some more Brits, although they were on their way home the next day!

by now, the majority of us students were quite tipsy and it was time to move on to the best barrack of all: 9! we had to run past the hotel, doubtlessly waking up all the tourists, who thoughtfully came to the windows to wave at us! the first kitchen in 9 was themed after a popular advert here, for tine brand milk, featuring the song, I think by Herman's Hermits 'No milk today', so we all drank cocktails that were supposed to contain milk (like white russians), but without milk! then it was whiskey and hot chocolate in the outdoor themed kitchen, and cake and vodka jelly in the kids party kitchen. going well, only one more barrack to go, think you'd have made it?


Brendan, Dayle, Sara and Judith. the boys looking a little worse for wear!

so on to Barrack 13, Austrian Alex obviously very drunk by now, judging by his dress and dancing! where it was a few more drinks and then time, at 1.30 to call it a night!

Ben finds a guitar to continue partying

recovered yet? not sure I have! Easter, otherwise, was generally quite uneventful. with plenty of work and procrastination to be getting on with! but we had gorgeous weather most of the time (except for quite a big snow storm) and we even spotted a Halo around the sun one day

I should also mention, primarily for Hannah's sake, (I was on the phone to her at the time) that Dayle's Lisa balloon (He jokingly insulted her one time too many and consequently promised to make the next day 'be nice to Lisa day' which included trying to make a hot air balloon!) managed to support its own weight, but just wouldn't take off.

I was sitting on my windowsil watching and taking pictures with my long lens, when I again heard the immortal words: "Dayle, Fire!"

Although this time it wasn't so bad!

other than that Easter was a great oppurtunity for dinner parties (mostly pizza and spag bol!) and watching films, Easter sunday was the best, as we had a giant easter brunch, with cooked breakfast and lots of cake and chocolate!

oh, and I almost forgot, we made a giant tin can phone across from barrack 9 to barrack 4, but I don't have any pictures, so I'll try to get hold of some and post them next time!

With Easter over, its back to UNIS and back to the routine, of friday gathering that is! in fact it was so nice outside this friday that we decided to have the first hour or so on the roof! which offers fantastic views of the residential part of longyearbyen

and up the valley towards the glaciers and Nybyen

what better place to sip some beers after a long week of learning than here, overlooking the mountains and the frozen fjord?

I think Ben, Jenn and Elisabeth agree!

thats it for today, i've got work to be getting on with

bye for now and thanks for reading

Ash

Hello there, sorry for the delay in blogging this time, especially to Vicky, who apparently is my most avid reader! I’m on field work at the EISCAT Svalbard radar this week, a facility that measures Ionospheric parameters (but more about that later!) so its been hard to find time to write.

The weather here has been pretty much fantastic lately, except for a huge snow storm on Thursday night/Friday morning that prevented us from getting EISCAT for our introductory look round. Its still pretty cold though. The temperature is about minus 20 still. Today is the last day that we have ‘night’ and in about two weeks time, on April 19th the sun is still above the horizon at midnight; the midnight sun! The transition between 24 hour darkness and the midnight sun has come so quickly. So I was right, the Aurora from the previous blog is the last we will see.

To take advantage of the beautiful weather and rare time off, Me, Colin and Dayle went on a short scooter trip to the other side of the airport, but we couldn’t go any further because of the lack of a rifle and the potential presence of Polar Bears in Bjorndalen valley, not much further on.

We luckily (unluckily?) didn’t see any Polar Bears despite the optimism we exhibited by bringing telephoto lens and binoculars! We did however see a curious and friendly reindeer:

Other than EISCAT, that concludes my escapades beyond Longyearbyen since my last blog! We did however engage in the very British tradition of going on a pub crawl! This, of course required a warm up session by Me, James and Colin at Friday gathering!

On Saturday night a large group of us headed down to Barentz pub in the Radisson SAS hotel for food and the first drinks of our pub crawl (I had a cider that wasn’t Kopparberg, but it was £4 a bottle!) most ate giant Pizzas, the Italian one looked fantastic, covered in rocket, there was a beef pizza and the one I had, a taco pizza which had beef and tortilla chips on it! Its probably the best food I have eaten this year, which is not so much a compliment to the chef at Barentz pub, but an indication of the below par food available in the supermarkets here (especially on a student budget!)

Kjersti, Sarah, ‘Shirley’ and Ben

‘The Cave’ – James, Colin, Matt and Ben outside the Radisson

So it was off to the next pub on our crawl, Karlsberg pub, which must have the largest collection of whiskeys and cognacs I’ve ever seen. Using my immense knowledge of scotches (!) I selected (little better than closing my eyes and pointing really!) an Isle of Jura scotch, a double of which setting me back over £10! The rest of the party was similarly ripped off for drinks.

Savouring the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought!

And so it was on to the ohh so comically named Svalbar, I bet someone is still congratulating themselves for coming up with that. The last bar on the crawl. Okay, admittedly it wasn’t much of a pub crawl, but this is the Arctic, so we did the best we could!

And so on to my fieldwork at EISCAT. EISCAT (European Incoherent SCATter) is a European scientific organisation that operates incoherent scatter radar dishes up here in Longyearbyen (EISCAT Svalbard Radar), and UHF and VHF system in Tromso, northern Norway, as well as receivers in Sodankylä, Finland and Kiruna, Sweden.

A powerful beam of radar waves is transmitted into the Ionosphere (the part of the atmosphere between about 90 and 600 km up) where solar radiation dissociates ions and electrons and the Aurora occur. The interaction of the waves with these charged particles causes a weak backscattered which is detected by the receiver. Some complex maths is done (which we have been learning about in the ‘Radar diagnostics of space plasma’ course) and a spectrum is produced from which the electron density, Ion and electron temperatures and the bulk flow of the ionosphere can be obtained. Typical results look like:

Which are the real time analysed data plots for the experiment we are running at time of writing.
The facility here on Svalbard has two huge dishes, a steerable 32m antenna and a fixed, magnetic field aligned 42m antenna.

The fixed 42m antenna looks directly up the magnetic field line.

While the steerable 32m antenna (seen from below the 42m antenna) can be pointed anywhere or can be used to scan different portions of the sky.

Its all operated from a modern bank of computers

Which have the best office view in town!

But all this luxury couldn’t last. In return for antenna time we had to go into the 42m antenna to dig out snow!

But being inside the big dish did make for some good group pictures!

Kjellmar (lecturer), Nils, Dayle, Brendan and Halvard (EISCAT engineer), seated Colin

And we had a bit of fun after too, Colin taking his turn at supporting the big dish!

So what else is there to say? Well, there a big Avalanche risk at the moment. On the way home from EISCAT on Monday, Dayle was in the front car with some EISCAT engineers and our lecturer Kjellmar, whilst me, Brendan, Colin and Nils were in the second car. Dayle says as they approached the road below Mine 2b, 5 minutes walk from Nybyen, the engineers started swearing and saying ‘Avalanche’. The snow had fallen all the way down the mountainside on to the road, making it impassable. My barrack mate Jennifer had been walking along the road at the time and ran out of the way. Its a good thing we hadn’t been on the road a minute or so earlier.

Big blocks of snow on the road below mine 2b

Passersby survey the avalanche.

The avalanche just makes it to the road, preventing traffic getting through.

In an attempt to avert further avalanches, the Sysselman (governor) carried out a controlled explosion of the cornices (snow overhangs) near mine 2b, another avalanche in the same are occurring just before the explosives were detonated! We have now been told to avoid walking along the bottom of the mountainside at Nybyen, and to move the snow scooters from behind barrack 9 into the valley and not to use the scooter track along the valley side. Evidently the Sysselman thinks there is a danger of further avalanches in the area, but isn’t taking very direct action. There were reports that the Larsbreen glacier was closed but these turned out to be false.

I guess we all just have to be extra careful from now on, makes me glad my room is on the valley side!

Bye for now

Ash

Drinking Jenga, Arctic BBQ, High School Musical and the last Auroras?

Hello there! i've been a proper little tourist this week and walked down to the Polar bear sign down by the docks, with my tripod on my back to take the customary picture of me standing by the sign. Apparently Polar Bears "concern all (Gjelder hele)" of Svalbard. other than that its been work as usual, learning about reconnection of the Interplanetary magnetic field with the geomagnetic field and the large scale structure of the Earth's magnetosphere, as well as discussing our up coming trip to Eiscat Svalbard radar with our lecturer.

On thursday night a contingent of barrack 9 ventured to barrack 4 (my favourite watering hole!) to put James' drinking Jenga through its paces. this was followed by another heavy night at friday gathering. which brings us to the weekend.

Sunday started with Dayles idea to go skiing as it was such a lovely day, but there were very few skis and even fewer boots left, so whats the next best thing to do on a sunny day in the Arctic?...ARCTIC BBQ!!!

thus the men, in keeping with traditional gender roles headed out to hunt for some meat (which was conveniently killed, processed, frozen and sold by Svalbardbutikken supermarket), on returning to barrack 4 we left the women to prepare the food (chopping onions, defrosting the bread and microwaving the frozen meat) whilst men make fire, ugg!

Unfortunately, we had to use disposible BBQs in lieu of real fire! (how much of a market is there for disposible BBQs in the Arctic?!)

Colin with nicely cooked burgers and burnt sausages, it wouldn't be a BBQ without burnt sausages!

Me, now fully fledged beef eater (through necessity!) munching on a beef burger

Colin, Lisa, Judith and Dayle around the BBQs

the same group moments later, included solely because its such a flattering picture of Lisa and Dayle scoffing their faces!

Judith and Brendan

Colin posing with a burger.

Apparently me and Colin's singing around the 'campfire' reminded Judith and Lisa of High school Musical (not sure whether thats a complement or not) and that we simply must go inside and watch High School Musical 2 and 3, with ice cream. By this point it was so cold and the offer of ice cream so tempting (don't point out the obvious stupidity of that sentence, I haven't had ice cream for nearly 3 months!) that we were powerless to refuse.

Paul and Hannah would have been proud of me, watching 2 and 3 back to back. in the necessary break between the two, it was decided that what we really needed to cap off a day of unhealthy eating was a cake, so I quickly through together a chocolate sponge mix, which the girls filled with chopped up toblerone, delicious!

sounds like a good day so far? hmm, maybe some Aurora to finish it off, eh? so with the Sun barely down (still quite light on the western horizon) out we went for what could be the last Aurora I'll see because polar day is pretty much here.

Nybyen and Longyearbyen at 11 o'clock

Barrack 11 in the twilight

Green Aurora over Sacrofagen

Longer exposure, Green (and maybe some red) Aurora over Sacrofagen.

bye for now

Ash