HiLDA

In order to better understand how dust suspended in the atmosphere is dispersed, we use mobile optical particle counters (OPCs). Mobile implies a kind of a mobility in the sense that they can be easily transported by car or in a backpack, which is extremely helpful when mounting them in rugged terrain somewhere and nowhere – as on Dyngjusandur. In a nutshell, the OPC is a device that sucks in some air and optically counts particles suspended in that air volume. Combined with some meteorological parameters measured at the site as well, we are able to infer information on the path dust plumes travel through the atmosphere eventually leaving the Dyngjusandur source area towards the north.

During the last days, we mounted the first OPCs in the Dyngjusandur area mainly in the middle and lower part. And they already provided us with some first data! Nevertheless there are still some failures we have to figure out. A healthy mix of hiking, walking and driving brought us to 10 out of the 20 locations we identified for the OPCs. At some sites it was quite challenging to strap the tripods on which the OPCs are mounted to the ground. The soil was as diverse as the weather: from rocks to pebbles to sand, from sunshine to drizzle to showers. However, looking back, I think we found some quite creative ways to tie the tripod. Fingers crossed, all tripods (and poles “drilled” into the soil) will stand high wind speeds we expect to see at some point.

How to ship two tons of equipment into a desert? There are some great guys doing that, and we are quite happy that our boxes made it safely to Dreki today. Many thanks to Villi and his team! We now feel ready for having the campaign starting soon – “just” need to decide on the final ground zero …. but that’s what we will sort out during the next days.

Just the moment when Carlos, Konrad and Kerstin have unloaded the trailers, rain starts pouring down – enough to be soaking wet (persons and cardboard box) in a minute. Welcome to the desert!

After finishing playing Tetris with the boxes in the container, and having a brief lunch break, the crowd arrived from Akureyri. The most pressing question now is: setting up the tents before, during, or after the rain? In the end, after the rain is before the rain … But in the end, everything worked out … except … well, sleeping bag apparently didn’t made it to Dreki! What next? Carlos and Konrad decided on very short notice to go back towards Möðrudalur with Villi meeting half way. Thanks again! Rice and camping-ratatouille finishes the day.

Did you ever wonder how odd names make their way onto maps?

After three long (!) working days, all snow samples on Beerenberg are collected. The first trip has already been mentioned in a previous post, when we reached the summit of Beerenberg. The second trip went to Nunataken, where we collected snow in a snow pit. Lucky for us, the weather was on our side, with almost no wind during collection of our snow-pit samples.

The third trip was to carry around 120 kg of snow down from the snowline. Tor and Stine carried this in two trips down Ekerolddalen.

Yesterday Adolfo, Andres, Angesh, Cristina, and Xavier arrived in Keflavík and are currently on their way to the north. We are looking forward to welcoming them here in Dreki on Monday!

One very important task is still open: Doing the shopping for the outback! Equipped with a (super) long shopping list, the group currently staying in Akureyri is now doing the grocery: Feeding 10+ people for 10+ days some where in the desert …

Will there be an answer in the end? Does the perfect dust spot exist? These are the main questions keeping our minds busy since the last three days. Although the Dyngjusandur area has seen quite a lot of dust and sand storms earlier in July, large parts are flooded or wet at least since we arrived end of July. We literarily can see how these spots will emit dust once dried up and wind is blowing, but when and where will this start? Having eventually identified four potential dust spots for our main measurement site (in-officially named “paradise”, “pond”, “shore”, and “island”), we now visit all places again and again at different times of the day ultimately trying to anticipate how the interplay between water, sediment deposition, crust forming and dust emission will work. It’s a challenge as the decision on the location of the main measurement site is key to the entire campaign. However, it’s a challenge we are ready to take – and to be honest, it’s exciting!

Regularly flooded or staying dry? This is one of the key questions that need to be answered before defining the spot for the main measurement site. The flood, caused by the glacier melt water discharge, occurs in the afternoon and evening. To see if, where, and how deep and how often the area will be flooded, we briefly considered staying in the source area the entire night, but eventually decided on mounting one of our OPC devices which has a camera. Hopefully, this will help us getting towards a decision on where the main measurement site will be mounted in the next days!

Besides the main measurement site, we will have smaller measurement sites scattered around the main site aiming at reflecting the conditions over a larger area. While exploring the area and visiting potential dust hotspots, we also check for potential locations where additional measurement devices shall be mounted. Eventually, we were able to identify them over the last few days.

Eventually, the second bunch of people (Carlos, Martina and Kerstin) has arrived in Keflavík and the group made their way up to Dreki in the Highlands.  And, yes, of course we took the chance to visit Fagradalshraun on our way to Akureyri. It still shows some eruptive respective emissive activity – even from safe distance quite impressive!

Via Akureyri and a visit at Möðrudalur seeing Villi and Elli (and our equipment which is kindly stored on their premise), we drove up to Drekagil, which shall be our base camp until mid-September. We were warmly welcomed by the camp site wardens and the national park rangers and we are looking forward to our stay here in Dreki –  our hub to the dust sources located in the Dyngjusandur area.

After 5 days on the sailboat, we safely arrived at Jan Mayen – Many thanks to Ragnar and Rune! We got a warm welcome at the station, and are very grateful for all the help.

We have already collected the first samples on top of Beerenberg, and the vicinity of the station. From today, the filter sampler is running and we are very happy with the progress.

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.