Mission success, NSERC takes to the Arctic

Flying in a four-engine DC-8 jet aircraft at just 350 feet above a sheet of ice, for over 11 hours in one of the coldest regions of the earth where the weather and terrain is unforgivable may not seem like your average job, but for Rick Shetter and his team, it's just another day at the office.

The UND operated aircraft recently returned to its home base in Palmdale, Calif. after a nearly three-week mission to the Arctic where it flew five science missions to study sea ice formation and melting. In cooperation with the University of Colorado, NASA, NOAA and several members of the National Suborbital Education and Research Center (NSERC) team, the plane took off on August 7 enroute to its base of operations in Sweden.

The NSERC aircraft flew missions along the sea ice shelf in the Arctic where several instruments aboard the plane took measurements of radiation, atmospheric conditions, and other readings to determine how these factors contribute to the formation and loss of sea ice.

The mission took place in August, as it is a period of climate transition in the Arctic region. This, coupled with variability in temperatures and varying atmospheric conditions has a dramatic effect on the sea ice coverage that the team aimed to study.

"This is a mission funded by NASA and other grants as a part of the International Polar Year activities … to see what happens in the Polar Regions and the atmospheric happenings that have affected that area of the globe," said Shetter, director of NSERC. "We studied the formation and loss of sea ice and the effect of radiation on the ice. In the airplane, we had radiometers, particle detectors, microwave radiometers and other instruments that can actually look into the water and ice in various forms to understand what has formed as well as see how old the ice is."

Shetter said that the research was to see what effect, if any, global warming and climate change has had on the ice shelf in the Arctic.

A day in the life

For Shetter and his team, a mission of this caliber takes months of advance planning and extensive collaboration with all parties involved. For this particular mission, the team aimed to complete five science flights to take measurements in different areas of the arctic as well as at different times and with various atmospheric conditions.

For three weeks in advance, the aircraft was outfitted with instrumentation and measuring equipment. The NSERC's payload integration engineer completed the fabrication and analysis of external probes that would take measurements.

Once in Sweden, each person involved in the mission would meet to discuss the flight and experiments to be completed.

Along with the airborne side of the mission, the DC-8 aircraft flew in conjunction with a Swedish ice breaker, the Oden, which sailed in the ice below. Together the airplane and vessel took measurements and relayed information.

"We completed four out of the five missions in conjunction with the boat both upwind and downwind of the vessel to compare our readings. It was a great collaboration with the Swedish and American scientific communities," Shetter said.

On a mission to the Arctic

While each mission is different, Shetter said that in general, the team schedules fly days and no fly days. On the no fly days, as he described, the team, which includes scientists, payload engineers, pilots and flight engineers/navigators talk about the flight itself in terms of objectives, altitudes to be flown, time of flight, weather and other meteorological conditions as well as the completion preliminary flight plan.

Shetter said that much of their work is based heavily on the Internet where the team gathers the most up to date meteorological data and weather models which can drastically change the characteristics of a given flight.

When it is determined that the flight is a go, ground crews move the plane out of the hangar, scientists and mission specialists turn on the instruments, a brief is given and a final call out of mission objectives, altitudes, flight plan and measurements to be taken is announced.

Once airborne and the plane is cruising in stable air, the instruments are powered up and begin taking data.

The airplane flies at an altitude of 27,000 feet to get a general profile of the humidity, temperature and winds in the atmosphere below. Then, the aircraft descends to 5,500 feet, then below the clouds to 350 feet where it rendezvous with the Oden.

"We fly at these different altitudes to get a good reading of the different radiation levels and to see how much radiation penetrated the clouds and reached the surface."

That level of radiation is important to these scientists. According to Alexandra Novak, education and public outreach director for NSERC, "less ice means less radiation is being reflected off of the surface … it completely relates to global warming and climate change," she said. "This is exactly the kind of information needed to predict how atmospheric changes could affect sea ice formation and melting. With melting sea ice, we get more, darker colored areas and so there is more absorption of radiation and less reflection."

This phenomenon poses a problem, as melting sea ice could have a dramatic effect on the overall sea level.

"Rising ocean levels could mean that the millions of people that live in coastal areas could be affected," Novak added. "This mission collected a lot of data on how the atmosphere, the ocean and the sea ice are all connected."

While Shetter said that the measurements taken during the mission are still being analyzed, he expects the NSERC team and the cooperating scientific partners will be provided with "a rich set of data that has never been taken before," he said. "We now have a coordinated set of data that is going to provide some very interesting information to scientists studying global climate change. The fact that we were there before the ice freeze-up and then after the ice freeze-up will offer an interesting look into that period of transition."