05.18.12

Breaking Records And Looking Ahead

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Frozen fjord along northeast coast of Greenland as seen from the P-3 on May 14, 2012. Credit: NASA/Jim Yungel

With fewer than two weeks left in the Arctic campaign, Operation IceBridge has surpassed last year's record number of science flight hours due to an almost total lack of weather cancellations and aircraft issues. This week saw several high priority science flights, coordination with other research aircraft and the closing of the Falcon jet's first IceBridge deployment.

On May 9, the P-3 took off on a survey that continued a mapping effort begun in 2010. This survey along the coast of Baffin Bay in northwest Greenland extended a coast-parallel grid and gathered outlet glacier bed topography and fjord bathymetry using the gravimeter. This area of Greenland is of particular interest to IceBridge because of changes in the ice. "We know from GRACE measurements that the area is not only changing, but that the rate of change is accelerating," said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger.

The following day, the IceBridge team took advantage of a small cloud free area that closely matched the location and size of one of the planned high priority survey of Cape Alexander and broke the 300 hour barrier. The presence of a BT-67 aircraft working with the joint U.S. / U.K. science operation known as GROGG in the area added an extra layer of planning to this flight, requiring the two aircraft to coordinate flight plans.

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