House warming in ‘the Water Vapour Tent’

Coffee break outside in the pleasantly calm afternoon.

The camp enjoyed a normal working day for the first time in a while without any air traffic. A Viessmann cabin was brought into the drill trench and assembled at the end of the trench to be used as a heated workshop. In the afternoon, a group of four went just out of camp with the hand auger to drill an 11 m shallow core for the ETracer Project.
Later this season an ‘egg’ with wireless sensors will be installed at the bottom of the borehole to monitor temperature and pressure.

In the evening camp was invited to the ‘water vapour tent’ for a demonstration
of the newly installed tower and analytical system. The setup automatically measures the isotopic composition of water vapour at four different heights above the snow surface. Furthermore, horizontal and vertical wind speeds are measured. The combination of those measurements allows to calculate the isotopic flux of water molecules in and out of the snow-pack. The analyses will allow for an improved interpretation of the climate signal recorded in ice cores.

What we have done today:

1. Assembled Viessmann workshop at the back end of drill trench
2. Repaired borehole camera and re-installed casing at Swiss drill test site.
3. First day of continuous measurements for the surface processes program
4. Drilled 11m shallow core EGRIP 2016 EGG CORE 1 with hand auger
5. Re-sampled snow surface profile in the clean snow area

Ad. 4: The 11 m EGRIP 2016 – EGG core 1 for the ETracer Project was drilled from the bottom of a 2.20 m deep pit located some 25 m West of ‘Stapi’ at N 75.63095 W 35.99660 (position June 2016). The core will be analysed for density at AWI.

Weather today: A sunny day with very low wind speeds. Temp. -4 °C to -14 °C. Wind 8 kt from SW in the morning dropping to 0-2 kt in the afternoon from S.

FL, Anders Svensson

Hans-Christian proudly presenting the automated water vapour analytical system in 'the water vapour tent.'