No sooner am I back from Rothera and the GCMS and I are off again, this time to make measurements in the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean! Myself and about 25 other scientists sailed from Immingham in the UK, via Longyearbyen, Svalbard, up to the Arctic pack ice. Once there we set up a temporary ice station where holes were made in the ice for divers to make measurements and take samples from underneath it, other experiments were carried out on the ice, and I made ice cores, incubated sea ice brine, and took regular samples of the air and water.
The expedition was lead by Ray Leakey from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), and involved scientists from SAMS, the National Oceanographic Centre in Southhampton (NOCS), Glasgow University, Aberdeen University, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), Montpelier University in France, Vigo University in Spain, and myself from BAS / UEA.
On the way north from the UK we made regular CTD casts. These involve sending intrumentation down into the water to measure conductivity, temperature and depth, and to collect water in bottles. These measurements allow ocean processes to be understood, and allow me to measure bromine and iodine compounds at different levels in the water column
More to follow on th rest of the trip, or you can check out the SAMS blog, which I helped write, at
http://www.sams.ac.uk/expedition-blogs/arctic-cruise-2010/the-people/the-journey/expedition-blogs/arctic-cruise-2010/the-people/the-journey/expedition
or hear the podcast at planet earth online at http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/multimedia/story.aspx?id=765
