A rain gauge will collect how much rain falls, but how exactly do scientists measure the size, shape, and fall speed of raindrops near the ground? Patrick Gatlin of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, sent us a couple photos from Iowa of the instrument that does exactly that: a two-dimensional video disdrometer. Shaped like a […]
NPOL Radar Site near Traer, Iowa
Walt Petersen is the Ground Validation Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, based at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. He manages all of GPM’s ground validation operations, the field campaigns that ensure that satellites measure rainfall and precipitation from space accurately. From May 1 to June 15, he is leading the Iowa […]
Tracking Temperatures in the Aquifer
By Clément Miège Hi there! Today I have another story to share with you! It’s about the tracking of the temperature evolution of the firn aquifer temperature by using two thermistor strings that we set up in the two holes made by Jay (see Jay’s post on drilling for details). By tracking temperatures over a […]
Back in the Office
By Lora Koenig Well, I am back in Greenbelt, Maryland, typing with warm fingers in a climate-controlled office with high-speed Internet and drinking fountain just down the hall. After fieldwork, I am always thankful for things I generally take for granted, like being able to charge my laptop by simply plugging it into an outlet. […]
Shallow drilling
By Ludovic Brucker We were on Greenland’s ice sheet for only a week, but despite the short deployment, we had to accomplish two main science objectives. The first was drilling two deep cores into the firn (aged snow) and ice (30- and 65-m deep, respectively), to insert temperature probes that will record temperature evolution at […]
Radar Days on the Greenland Ice Sheet
By Clément Miège Hi there! Today I will give you some background on the radar measurements we collected in southeast Greenland. The radar we deployed is sensitive to snow density changes and to wet snow. The main goal of the radar measurements was to provide information about the spatial variations of the top of the […]
Drilling Into Water
By Jay Kyne (Greenland Aquifer Team’s driller) At first we all talked on the phone about it. And then I saw the picture: another driller had drilled into water and, as the drill hung on the surface, there was water dripping from it. Of course that drill quickly froze. So the question was: how do […]
The (Arctic) Fury Unleashed
By Lora Koenig April 9, 2013 — I suppose you could say I got up at 3:38 am this morning, but I don’t think I ever really went to sleep. I did get into my sleeping bag around 10 pm last night, but I didn’t sleep. Yesterday we had 20-knot katabatic winds, cold air flowing […]
We made it!
By Lora Koenig I finally made it to our field site on Thursday and we’ve been working super hard since then to make up for our delays. Jay has done an amazing job, drilling 10 hours a day, and I’m glad to report we’re back on schedule. We’ll be done by the end of today, […]