Another 50:50 day

It is that time that you have all been waiting for. Anyone who was reading this blog last year will recall a lot of statements along the lines of “I’m sure we will get some data tomorrow” or “I will get some data soon. Well the time has finally come where I can say that …

Return to the glacier

We have arrived in Tarfala! We arrived in the evening on Tuesday on a helicopter, shared with a group from Minnesota University.  We were missing a parcel of inclinometer equipment from Canada, but apart from that I assumed the rest of the kit was in Nikkaluokta after a quick glance. Never assume. We spent the …

Irreparably Broken

Your equipment is irreparably broken. These are not words you want to hear 2 weeks before your shipment leaves for the final and most vital fieldwork season for your PhD research. Even though that precise phrase was not used, that was the gist of the email that I received yesterday morning. My heart and stomach …

Practice Makes Perfect

Now as I haven't done any field Geophysics since last year, I decided that the best thing to do prior to going to the field, would be to complete a practice survey. This is especially important for seismic surveys, where set-up is extremely important, AND time consuming. It also gave me and Clemens a chance …

The Science Behind the Survey

So for those who are interested, here is some technical stuff, for a more in depth description of what I plan to do in the field, and why I am doing this. The overall aim of this project is to measure the changes in the microscale air and water content stored between ice crystals. We …

The Calm Before the Storm

We have confirmed our fieldwork dates! We will be travelling to Sweden from the UK on 22nd July and returning to the UK on 14th August. We have begun collecting equipment and will soon be packing it up ready to be shipped on the 15th July. It is vital to test that the equipment works …

Storglaciären: Return of the Glaciologist

Now I am aware that last year, there was a lot of promises to collect data via this blog, and optimism that the next few days would provide this. However, it seems this was not to be. In the last few days, mother nature cut us off from the glacier, flooding the bridge and therefore our …

Sunshine and snow melt

Well, the good news is that our radar kit has arrived! We managed to get the kit out and working and set it up for a reflection survey. As we had taken the inclinometer survey in the borehole we figured it was about time we had some data to go with it! As background information, for …

Let’s drill a borehole!

Welcome to the second part of my blog! I write this on day #9 of my fieldwork. On the last instalment, we had moved all the gear into position to begin drilling, and had noticed what we thought was a sizable crevasse running almost directly under our equipment. Well, we thought it was sizeable, until …

Trekking to Tarfala

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Charlotte and I am an PhD student at Swansea University, UK.Through this, I am hoping to post about the work I am doing on the Swedish glacier, Storglaciären. Myself and my field assistant, Yoann Drocourt (also a PhD student at Swansea University) will be based at Tarfala …