Author: Konrad

You remember our plans on completing the Hilda baseline network to the nowthwest… ? – Yes, yes, Greenland.
Another year, another try – and this time with success!

Last Monday, Thomas and Konrad started again a trip to Greenland. This time, no Corona issues, perfect weather – and everything went smoothly and on time. After a great panoramic flight over nothwest Iceland and the Scoresby Sound, we finally make it to Ittoqqortoormiit, where we are greeted by Mette from Nanu Travel, who took care for our equipment through the Corona times.

While we had snow and rain in Iceland, Ittoqqortoormiit is still a winter wonderland. Meters of snow and ice, though the sun doesn’t set any longer. Temperature went up by 10 degrees since last week, so we are looking forward to comfortable consitions for setup – and plenty of woring time due to the Arctic day.

Next day we meet René and Hans from the radiosonde and telecom station up the hill, who will host our baseline measurement station for the time coming. After a short look around, we quickly decide for a suitable location and start unpacking our materials. Slowly, memories come back of the time two years ago – including the ones of all these undone things, as this station was the first one to be sent abroad. Unfinished mechanical works, an incompatible software system and non-existing remote control keep us busy for some days.

However, we have meanwhile gained a lot of experience, so it just takes time, until everything is done. Except for one thing: how to get the station online? It turns out that getting mobile data here for non-Greenlanders is close to impossible. After two days in search of possibilities, Mette saves us the day: we become commercial customers of the travel agency.
Now everything is in perfect order, so on Friday we switch on – and no more problems show up.
Konrad introduces our local caretakers in a great coffee-and-cake atmosphere to the sample handling procedures, so we can be confident that we will obtain interesting samples from this place.

Now, the Hilda network is at its maximum extension – alas, only for a few weeks.
Mýrar station will stop its operation after two years, as planned. When we finish the intensive observation period of this year in Iceland, we will take the first materials home again. Nevertheless, we have plenty of material to kep us busy in the lab for a long time!

New year, new campaign – we promised to be back. The 2022 campaign will be much smaller than the one in 2021 without most of our cooperating colleagues. And, this time, it will be focused on southern Iceland. More precisely, on Mýrdalssandur, a place from which Thomas and Konrad had collected samples last year.

This year’s team are Kerstin, Luis, Thomas, Demetrius and Konrad, from TU Darmstadt and FU Berlin. And of course, our local cooperation partners from LBHÍ.

After settling down in Hrífunes, close to our measurement area, first exploration tours reveal – snow!, result of a very humid spring in Iceland. Luckily, the snow sheet is not a persistent problem, and after two days we can start with our setup, right when some dust emission occurs. Eventually, during the next days we install a network consisting of 15 stations in the most promising source regions, as well as covering the southern outflow towards the Ocean. As also the black beaches act as dust sources, we also monitor Hjörleifshöfði and the adjacent beach, where we encounter already blowing sand and dust.

Black clouds all over. The weather in Greenland stays rainy, snowy and stormy enough to delay our the flight day by day. We travel from Akureyri to Reykjavík and back in the evening, as the airline shifts the departure airport several times, trying to find a suitable slot for flying.
But at the end, we run out of time. As the weather forecast for the weekend is rainy again and we need to return latest by Monday, we have to pull the plug and cancel the trip to Greenland – again. Next year there will be hopefully another chance.

What is remaining now is packing all our things, picking up the last samples and returning home, while hoping that the weather will play along. Autumn has arrived in Iceland, too, and besides the colored landscape, snowy mountains become a usual sight.

A busy week lies behind Thomas and Konrad, travelling to major dust spots around South Iceland and collecting samples for the comparison with our main field site on Dyngjusandur. As these spots are not easily accessible, we cross rivers, swamps and travel many barely recognizable tracks. In particular the coastal sources of Landeyjarsandur and the estuaries of Kúðafljót and Skaftá are challenging, as they are partly under water after the heavy rain falls of the last weeks. And generally, they are not made accessible by roads. The GPS track must look like an ant track in search of food.
But in the end, by car and on foot we manage to collect 20 samples – all wet by now, but when dry, they will be of similar texture to our dust spot of the main field campaign – very promising.

So, everything done for the campaign. – – Oh wait, wasn’t there something missing, still from last year? – Yes, there was a baseline station shipped to some place and still waiting there – Greenland!
As the travel restrictions were lifted recently and we fulfill all the necessary Covid requirements, we decide that we should give it a try and spent the last week in Greenland for the setup. Everything starts quickly, flights are booked, tests arranged, and the poeple in Ittoqqortoormiit helpful in arranging the transport and lodging.
But of course, that seemed to work to smooth… And indeed, after a few days, Norland Air calls us back and informs that the airport in Greenland was closed due to rain damage. But they would be confident, that they would bring us there by another route or another day – let’s hope, that it is justified and we can successfully finish our task!

The last days of the campaign finally deliver what we were aiming at: different levels of dust concentrations, wind speed, and humidities. All relevant instruments are still working, so we are confident now that we will bring home a great data set – right until the end, when the last generator dies away, choked by an ultimate dust event with the highest concentrations of the campaign. A perfect ending…

The last days are split between dismounting and cleaning, packing the boxes and last calibrations, transferring the data home and sorting the tents into broken and reusable. And let’s not forget the social activities – the wardens and rangers invite all of us for a common dinner, a great evening out. In the same night, we get amazing northern lights as a parting gift – a perfect evening.

While most of the team is heading home now, Thomas and Konrad plan their trips for the next days. Soil sampling of the most interesting dust spots around Iceland is the task. Bad weather and worse roads may interfere, but hey, we are used to that meanwhile. And – another window may open for the HiLDA project, but this will be another story for another time…

The flooding ‘allows’ us to rethink our strategy – most instruments were carried from the measurement site to a safe storage. Some of them don’t make it back, as in case of the scintillometer, the realignment is too time-consuming. While thinking of the implementation on a new level – literally, as we have been delivered 30 cm of fresh sediment in two flooding days – a new challange creeps over the horizon: Wind.

20 m/s mean winds are predicted for several days. In the first night, we take the risk and leave the setup – our tent and equipment – unchanged, which turns out to be too optimistic. Later, we find readings up to 35 m/s in some of our stations on the mountain tops. Anyway, the tent is ripped, the poles of the wind fence broken – we need to think smaller and therefore reduce the setup to the basic experiment for a day. But as we are scientists and therefore curious, when the worst storms are over day be day another instrument finds its way back to the field site. Partly improvised, as different parts were damaged during the floods and storms.
Of course, also our sleeping tents were subject to to rearrangement – one actually took off for the next mountain (including sleeping bag and mattress), but decided 10 m above ground just to place it self outside the camping area. In view of flying pumice rocks, we decide to sleep behind strong walls – be it a car or a wooden hut.

But why fighting dust? – Well, as soon as the basin dries up, we get what we paid for – dust, more dust, way more dust – too much dust!
At 10,000 µg/m³ PM₁₀, the generators go on strike, and only the battery-run equipment survives. Lucky us, we can draw the ‘Ask Villi’-card, and after only four hours of blackout, we are provided with a working 5 kW generator from Möðrudalur for powering our field site. Yippie!
Our Hondas, having suffered dust and sand for a month now, get a treatment by the mechnic Svavar, but will be on spare from now on.

Another issue arising with the dust – well, except the impossibility to work during the daytime due to the ‘breathtaking experience’ – seems to be electricity. One by one, the digital inputs of our Rasperry Pis controlling our OPCs die away, and fastest in the places with the highest dust load. Luckily, this only affects the wind readings. But nevertheless, Konrad now checks on every service trip, whether the system has to be reprogrammed to a new input. That of course doesn’t make days shorter…

From Grímsstaðir we’re heading north towards Raufarhöfn for supplying Árdís and Magga, our local station caretakers with new material for the coming seasons. The station is working fine, and we just need to re-tension the guywires by a tad. On this occasion we meet Pedro, the new station manager of Ríf, and agree that Konrad will explain the work in Raufarhöfn to the general public during a ‘coffee talk’, a recently estasblished format.

From Raufarhöfn we head back via Húsavík and Akureyri to Blönduós, from where we cotinue after a short night’s rest via Reykjavík and Selfoss to Vík in the south. The next day wo hop on the ferry Herjólfur for Vestmannaeyjar, depositing material for the currently stopped station of Stórhöfði North. As we have electricity problems here since the begining, we intend to install a solar- and wind-powered system in August. Later the same day we go east to Mýrar and receive a warm welcome from Pálína, our host. Also here we supply sampling material. And while Thomas does a short inspection of our station, Konrad picks up an optical particle counter from LBHI, inteded to go to the main field campaign.

Eiði is perfectly working – a bit rusty meanwhile, even the stainless steel, but that was to be expected. Therefore, we leave it happily running and travel again with the Norröna to Iceland, which welcomes us with phantastic weather and summer temperatures.

The customs intermezzo is a short one, so we can head for our next goal already in the morning: Grímsstaðir. The system here had some problems in the past with connectivity. While we find the station itself working, the internet connection is weak. A replacement of the components doesn’t help, so we conclude that the provider apparently changed the coverage – clearly outside our control.

We use the opportunity of being here early for delivering a part of our equipment to Möðrudalur. From here, it will travel together with the materials from our colleagues in Spain by highland truck and trailer to Dreki, our base camp. Elisabet and Vilhjalmur from Möðrudalur will take care of that, and also provide additional ressources to our campaign.

Team Iceland is approaching, too. After the final loading – a close fit, as out of nowhere unforeseen boxes popped up – Thomas and Konrad make it onto the ferry Norröna. On our first stop Faroe we will service the measurement station of Eiði and meet Ingvard, our local care-taker.

A nail-biter between Covid restrictions and relaxations, between entry restrictions and entry applications seems to come to an end soon – and it looks like the HiLDA main field campaign can be carried out this year!

While the Iceland crew is still packing and planning for places to quarantine for these who need and means of transport for those not, the Jan Mayen crew made it already to Norway and now is waiting for the quarantine time to pass (and for good weather) to cross the Northern Atlantic Ocean with the sail boat.

Stay tuned for news from this summer!