Photo Essay: Living on the Ice in Juneau, Alaska
We’re developing a technique that uses ice-penetrating radar to measure how quickly snow turns to ice. To take our measurements, we needed to camp out in the Juneau icefields for a few weeks.
By Elizabeth Case and Jonny Kingslake
In summer 2018, we travelled to the Juneau Icefield, Alaska, with funds from Columbia's Lenfest Junior Faculty Development Fund. Our aim was to use radar to measure how quickly snow turns to ice.
Snow is gradually buried and compacted under its own weight. It is difficult and time-consuming to measure, so we are developing a technique using an ice-penetrating radar that could make it much easier and quicker to monitor this process. Compaction of snow (or technically, firn, which is Arctic snow that has survived more than one full year) is important because it impacts how we measure the mass of glaciers and ice sheets.
Heading West
The first stage in the expedition was a flight to Juneau, AK, where we spent three days packing, re-packing, testing a drone, swimming at an Alaskan beach, and we even had time for a meal at a restaurant overlooked by some huge cruise ships!
To measure how quickly snow compacts we needed to find some snow. In the temperate climate of Juneau, Alaska in summer, this means flying a short distance inland to the top of the Juneau Icefield by helicopter.
Why don't we just stay in NYC and wait for the winter, you may ask? Because in the upper reaches of glaciers and ice sheets, the snow never melts away completely and lasts for hundreds of years before turning into ice. This âfirn' behaves differently than the snow that falls in the winter and melts in the following summer. So we needed to find some firn and Juneau Icefield is one of the most easy-to-access places to do that.
We flew up to the highest place on the ice field using a commercial helicopter company that usually runs sightseeing trips. This was all organized by the amazing Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP). They have been giving young people their first experience of geoscience and cold-region fieldwork for over 70 years. Every summer, they traverse the ice field on skis (75 miles!).
The helicopter ride took us up to Camp 18, perched on a rock between two beautiful glaciers flowing out from the ice field. We were met by the JIRP staff and students and eased into a few days of camp life, with chores, packing and preparing for the ski up to our field site. After three days we were ready to head to the ice divide.
On the Ice Divide
We set up camp on the âice divide.' This is where ice flows outwards in two directions: one southwards into the US and one northwards into Canada. We started by drilling several ice cores to measure the density of the snow, firn and ice. We brought up samples from up to 70 feet below the surface. This information is vital for interpreting our radar data.
For our 10 days at the divide we had incredible weather! This is not what we were expecting — it was a struggle to keep cool in a place where we usually have to work to stay warm. We had plenty of enthusiastic JIRP students to help with the drilling, and it went smoothly (mostly) until the very end, when we barely rescued one of the parts of the core.
When we weren't drilling, we took radar measurements with plenty of help from the JIRP students. In small teams we drove around the surface of the ice on a snow machine pulling a sled, and made 182 radar measurements at 91 points over four days. As each measurement takes about two minutes, and involved a lot of standing around and talking about glaciers. Luckily, for most of the time we had incredible, sunny weather. Very unusual for this area. Eventually, the weather reverted to its usual fog and rain and treated us to a wet last day of radar. After that we were ski-towed back the Juneau Icefield Research Program Camp 18. After a few days we helicoptered back down to town.
Take a look at some of the behind-the-scenes photos in the slideshow below!
Image Carousel with 28 slides
A carousel is a rotating set of images. Use the previous and next buttons to change the displayed slide
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Slide 1: Waiting for a ride to the airport in hot New York City.
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Slide 2: Flying over the U.S. Rockies on the way to Seattle.
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Slide 3: Beach weather in Alaska? This was a beautiful spot for swimming near our base in Juneau. We just had to remember our bear spray!
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Slide 4: Packing radar and coring equipment for our flight up to the ice.
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Slide 5: Testing the drone at sea level.
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Slide 6: The van is packed with our gear for transport to the airport.
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Slide 7: On the tarmac walking to the helicopter chartered to take us up to the Juneau Icefield.
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Slide 8: Our ride up to the ice.
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Slide 9: Getting settled for the 30-minute ride.
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Slide 10: âCamp 18â from the air. This collection of huts sits on a small scrap of rock surrounded by ice, called a nunatak.
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Slide 11: The glaciers surrounding Camp 18 are spectacular. Here the ice flows steeply down to the valley below and forms stripes on the glacier surface called ogives.
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Slide 12: Elizabeth and the director of the research program Seth Campbell take in the scenery. The rocks on the nunatak have been sculpted by the ice when it was thicker in the past.
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Slide 13: The rocks on the nunatak have been sculpted by the ice when it was thicker in the past. Jonny and William Armstrong from Appalachian State University go to find a good spot to watch the sunset.
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Slide 14: When youâre out in the field, youâve got to carry your home with you. Here you can see all of our gear â tents, science equipment, food, and clothes.
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Slide 15: Camp on the Juneau Icefield â sleeping tents, a cook tent, bathroom pits⦠and sunsets that last for hours!
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Slide 16: While firn (old snow) hasnât yet reached ice density, surface melt can percolate down and refreeze in the snowpack, resulting in beautiful ice lenses!
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Slide 17: Science isnât all work. Itâs important to take breaks!
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Slide 18: After a few days at Camp 18, we set out for the top of the Juneau Icefield to set up our camp and start doing science.
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Slide 19: Snow turns into ice through a slow densification process. We used a drill to collect cores of âfirnâ â old, dense snow â to help understand this process.
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Slide 20: Science doesnât always go smoothly, especially in the field! Our core barrel got stuck 16m below the surface. It took a few hours of back-breaking work to get it back to the top, and once we did â well, you can see the damage we did! That w
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Slide 21: View of camp from the drone camera above.
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Slide 22: The view from inside one of the tents.
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Slide 23: An unprecedented streak of sunny weather allowed us to get a lot of science done over the two weeks we were on the ice. The radar we use is called a âphase-sensitive radio echo sounder.â The two white metal objects are antennae, and the cen
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Slide 24: Each radar shot needed to be optimized for the ice/water content below. Hereâs Elizabeth testing the radar at one point.
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Slide 25: We often worked 10-14 hours a day to collect all the data we needed. But with such a beautiful backdrop, who cares if days run long?
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Slide 26: Full view of the radar setup: a Ski-Doo packed with gear with Jonny on the back pulls a sled with the radar, Elizabeth and a JIRP student. It looks like Jonny is just checking his phone, but heâs actually operating a 360-degree camera that captu
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Slide 27: Good weather lasted until the last day, when a dense fog rolled in.
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Slide 28: We packed up camp, took our final radar point, tried to stay warm, and arrived back at Camp 18 totally soaked through.
Jonny Kingslake is an assistant professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Elizabeth Case is a graduate student at Lamont. Both are studying glaciers.