OIB successfully completed the Seelye* Loop mission today. The weather was variable (as usual for the large geographic region covered by today’s flight), with areas of clouds, clearer skies and areas of low level ice fog. The southernmost “cross leg” was particularly foggy/cloudy, causing some issues with all the optical instruments for about 20 minutes, but otherwise the OIB remote sensing instruments collected good data for about 7 hours over the sea ice today.
As usual, we hope to fly again tomorrow, weather permitting.
* Named in honor of Dr Seelye Martin for many (and continuing) contributions to sea ice science.
Wikipedia Notes:
The Weddell Sea is part of the Southern Ocean and contains the Weddell Gyre. Its land boundaries are defined by the bay formed from the coasts of Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula.
The sea is named after the Scottish sailor James Weddell, who entered the sea in 1823 and originally named it after King George IV; it was renamed in Weddell’s honor in 1900.
The Weddell Sea has been deemed by scientists to have the clearest water of any sea. Dutch researchers from the German Alfred Wegener Institute, on finding a Secchi disc visible at a depth of 79.86 meters (262 ft) on 13 October 1986, ascertained that the clarity corresponded to that of distilled water.
Today’s flight path
Low level ice fog from sea ice leads early in the mission
Low level ice fog from sea ice leads early in the mission
Clearing conditions a bit later
Large sea ice lead
More sea ice leads
Sea ice and a iceberg
A large sea ice lead
Iceberg in sea ice
Brunt ice shelf off in the distance after we emerged from a clouded area
Broken coverage of sea ice
Another iceberg in sea ice
ATM T6 wide scan elevation map of sea ice
ATM T6 wide scan and ATM T7 green narrow scan elevation map of sea ice in areas of low level ice fog and smooth sea ice leads. The narrower T7 green lidar tracks the water surface and handles most of the ice fog better than the wide scan T6 system.
Detail of ATM T6 wide scan elevation map of sea ice showing 10,000 laser elevation measure coverage, and the ATM conical laser scan pattern
Detail of ATM T6 wide scan elevation map of sea ice showing 10,000 laser elevation measure coverage.