Ice blog regulars will remember my trip to Zackenberg station last summer, in high Arctic Greenland.

(Zackenberg station summer 2009)

The ecological monitoring station has been manned for the past few summer months as usual.
I’d like to recommend a look at the blog from deputy station leader Lars Hansen.

(Lars in the field at Zackenberg summer 2009)

You will find some of his stories fascinating and his pictures are fantastic.The latest entry is all about a polar bear visiting the station on Lars’ birthday, October 7th, so very recently. Belated many happy returns Lars, you have some unusual party guests!
Blog from deputy station leader Lars Hansen

I left Ny Alesund having seen most of the mesocosms deployed and everything running well.
The local Arctic fox – who apparently lives under the 1912 houses which have become the Dutch Arctic station – appeared to see me off.

I found Longyearbjen in a state of great excitement because a polar bear had drifted in on the sea ice a few days ago. I was hoping he’d come back, but so far he hasn’t. It was a big attraction, because although they are said to be all around, understandably they don’t come into town that often. The authorities were happy as long as he snoozed on his iceberg, but when he started to move around, they zapped him with a tranquillizer dart and moved him off to a “safer” location.That left the ice floes clear for the Eiders.

Longyearbjen is called after American John M. Longyear, who established the first mine here in 1906. The mining history of the settlement is in evidence everywhere, old coal shafts and the pylons which carried the rope line used to transport the coal to the port.

Coal is still mined here today. It’s controversial, Greenpeace staged a protest here last year, which has made them quite unpopular with the locals, worried about their jobs. That’s presumably one reason why up in Ny Alesund, somebody threw a seal’s head onto the deck of the Esperanza. The local newsletter ‘icepeople’, self-styled as “the world’s northernmost alternative newspaper” reported on the return of the environmentalists saying “This time Greenpeace is promising – it seems – to be good”, i.e. because they are supporting scientific research rather than protesting. The newsletter people are clearly still wary, though.
There is a test project running here for carbon capture and storage. I went to the site of the borehole with the director, Gunnar Sand.

They are testing whether the underground storage site would be safe to store 90% of emissions from the local coal-fired power plant. He says they could be up and running by 2015. But he also stresses the need for much more intensive testing, as safety is paramount. He says Longyearbjen is ideal for a pilot plant, as they have a small community with a closed system. He thinks the world will be dependent on coal for the next fifty years at least, given especially the developments in China. More later on DW radio and the website.

There’s supposed to be a population of 2000 here. I don’t know where they all are, it makes a rather empty impression most of the time. Most people I’ve met have been incomers, who tend to come for a short time, fall in love with it and stay as long as they can. Margrete Nilsdater Skaktavl Keyser is one.

Margrete came here for a short course and went on to do a full degree here. The student residences at the far end of the town show the two main attractions that seem to bring students to the uni here : snow mobiles in winter and nature all around, all year round, with plenty of potential for field work on all aspects of Arctic sciences:

Margrete came here as a student for a short course and stayed on for a longer degree, writing on polar bears. You need a job to stay here, so she takes whatever she finds and goes home to the Norwegian mainland in between.In the season, she guides people on snowmobile trips. At the moment she’s working with the Svalbard authorities compiling a data base on encounters between humans and polar bears, trying to work out guidelines for avoiding “incidents”. I’ve been keeping that in mind walking around here. You can’t leave the town area safely without a rifle, flares etc. People have been killed around here, although it’s a good few years ago.
Glaciology Professor Doug Benn, a fellow Scot who taught in my old university St. Andrews, invited me to join him and two junior colleagues for a look at the local glaciers yesterday. He’s also an active researcher into a glacial area of the Himalayas. More on that next time.
As you can see, no hikes outside town without the rifle. Doug is the one in charge of the party’s safety here:

We didn’t get the usual 7.30 morning wake up knock on the door this morning, a Sunday treat.
Still, when I looked out onto the pier, Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, the coordinator of the whole EPOCA project, was out there in a shower of sleet preparing test samples.

When I looked up the fjord to the huge glaciers, there was some floating ice to be seen in the distance. The mesocosms will be placed at the other,more sheltered end, but the one thing that could cause a problem, the scientists have told me, is if the wind changes and blows the icebergs down this way. The frames for the mesocosms are very stable, but the ice could damage the plastic sacks.I\’m told there will be some kind of barrier put round to protect them, still this is the main factor causing a little apprehension as the actual deployment comes closer. The team would like to start the experiment as soon as possible, but logistics have pushed the deployment back a little, probably to start tomorrow.

The world\’s most northerly post office (open once a week I believe!) looks picturesque even in a shower of sleet.
Meanwhile, the sun has been putting in the odd appearance, although it still keeps snowing or sleeeting, which gives a lovely light to the place. I think so anyway. The place is very quiet so far, probably a mixture of Sunday and the weather. Seems a shame to me not to be out and about.
Our resident Svalbard reindeer seems to think the same. Here he’s heading across the snow:

And as the summer comes in, he’s finding more and more tasty greenery:

The weather seemed much the same as yesterday when I woke up in Longyearbjen this morning – but there was a surprise when I went out to the airport, which is close to the water. The bay was full of chunks of sea ice which had wafted in during the night. It completely changes the panorama and reminds you you are indeed in the Arctic.
The weather is calm but cloudy, so picture-taking was difficult. This gives an impression of the area we were flying over, though:

The plane to Ny Alesund in the far north – just 1,000 miles from the North Pole – is a small one – there were 9 of us on it this morning – reserved for scientists and people with official business in Ny Alesund – the world’s most northern permanent settlement.

Once a coal mining village, Ny Alesund is now a scientific research centre, with the world’s most northerly marine laboratory. Clearly an ideal choice for a project looking at marine life. There’s only a very small group of people here over the winter, but at the moment, the staff are preparing for the challenge of having around 60 extra people here, working on the EU-sponsored EPOCA programme, looking at the effects of ocean acidification on marine life. More details later.
Some of the locals were out to greet us:

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza was also waiting in the harbour.

This will be my home for the next few days, as the team of scientists headed by Professor Ulf Riebesell from the IFM-Geomar Institute of Kiel University and the technical experts get the mesocosms ready to be deployed in the fjord and set up the equipment to do the monitoring in the marine lab.

These ‚’medium-sized worlds’ are around 8 metres high, the ‚floating frames’ have what look like rolled up plastic sacks inside, which will capture sections of the ocean complete with ecosystems inside, where scientists will change the acidity of the water to different levels in the different mesocosms. ´
They will stay in the water here for five weeks, during which time the experts on all different aspects of marine life will check what effect this has – weather permitting. More soon when I talk to the Professor himself.

(Pictures taken in Hamburg last week)
With the snow still high and temperatures down to a chilly minus 15 (cold for these parts) again last night, I have been hearing a few of those comments about global cooling again over the past few days…
But Professor Hartmut Graßl from the Max Panck Institute for Meterology in Hamburg has been putting the story right in interviews with news agencies: It’s a long winter and a cold one, he says, but nothing out of the ordinary.In fact some northern parts of the globe are experiencing unusually mild temperatures.
And the long cold spell in our part of the world is definitely not a sign that global warming is not happening, he says, and refers to a study indicating the decade from 1997 to 2007 was the warmest decade ever.
The geese who live near my office hear in Bonn are still a bit sceptical. But if you look carefully, there is a bit of green coming through the melting snow..