Earth Sciences116
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Measuring Gravity From a Moving Aircraft Requires a ‘Gravi-God’!
From: Joël Dubé, Engineer/Geophysicist at Sander Geophysics, OIB P-3 Gravity Team One of the instruments used in Operation IceBridge (OIB) is an airborne gravimeter operated through a collaboration between Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and Sander Geophysics of Ottawa, Canada. People from other instrument teams have been heard to call it a gravity…
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Switchyard Project: Melting Ice, a Fresher Arctic
The freshwater content of the Arctic Ocean is increasing as the Earth’s climate warms. Chemical analysis indicates that the source is both melting ice and the Pacific Ocean.
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Witnessing time – from 445 million year old rocks exposed in the Fjords to ~4 thousand year old small ice caps
By Hakim Abdi, LDEO. My first flight on the P3 and the scenery was nothing short of breathtaking. The science mission involved flights in the north over the Steensby glacier that passes through Sherard Osbron Fjord, and Ryder glacier constrained by the Victoria Fjord. In northeast Greenland we overflew the Hagen glacier and the Flade…
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Earth, Water and Sky –A Conversation with Pierre Gentine, a new Columbia Water Center Scientist
Columbia Water Center welcomes Pierre Gentine, Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, as an affiliate researcher. Pierre’s groundbreaking research on the way soil moisture interacts with the atmosphere has implications for many of CWCs initiatives—from developing more efficient irrigation systems, to water resource management, to understanding floods.…
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Switchyard Project: New Sampling Record
On May 10, we celebrated the sampling of our 10th station yesterday. These are more stations than we were ever able to get water samples from. Because of the ongoing good weather, we will certainly get one more station today, and hopefully many more during the next couple of days. So watch the posted video and celebrate with…
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Dealing with Mother Nature
Working in the poles we are constantly reminded of our dependence on meteorology, and this project has dealt us a variety of different weather considerations. The most obvious is the weather we experience at the base. Storm season in Thule lasts from the 15th of September to the 14th of May; in other words encompassing…
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Switchyard Project: Sampling Success
The past 1½ weeks have been very successful. Our team from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory was able to obtain water samples from eight stations, while the team from the University of Washington has already broken their all-time record of the past years of 18 stations. Today (May 7) is actually the first day we can’t fly…
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Switchyard Project: Rescue Operation
Four people who tried to ski from the North Pole to Greenland got stuck on the ice and ran out of food. Since our team was out on the ice for sampling close to their location, we stopped sampling and picked them up.
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Switchyard Project: It’s all about the weather
One can only imagine what kind of a pilot one has to be to fly in the arctic regions and land on sea-ice under weather conditions as we have experienced already – fog above the ice and clouds covering the area with very low visibility.
