By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

We have now bid farewell to the Chukchi Sea and are in the northern Bering, working north of Saint Lawrence Island. Most fantastically, the ice is coming with us! Winds have been from the north, bringing cold air south and also blowing the ice south so that we are still in ice. Right now the ship is rumbling and bouncing up and down as she cuts through the ice. The ice consists of pancakes cemented together with new ice. In the image from the “aloft con”, or “happy”, camera the ice is clearly visible in the flood and ice lights from the ship. We are heading to a station to the east of St. Lawrence Island and should arrive there at around 11 PM.

View of the bow of the ship and new ice in the flood and ice lights from the "happy cam".

Yesterday we worked across Bering Strait.

By Liz O'Connell for FrontierScientists

“Take a look around at the American Geophysical Union conference, there are a lot of old people there---potentially you can replace them,” was the advice relayed by a student attending the APECS Association of Polar Early Career Scientists meeting sponsored by ARCUS, Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S.

The advice, somewhat blunt, gave rise to additional suggestions for students not only overwhelmed but perhaps shy or tentative about networking at the AGU conference

NASA: Astronaut Andrew Feustel: Shuttle docked with the International Space Station

By Laura Nielsen for FrontierScientists.

FrontierScientists is attending the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2011. Anticipate more updates as the week progresses. December 5 - 9

NASA: Astronaut Andrew Feustel: STS134 badge, Endeavour Spacecraft

"Earth really is our home."

Astronaut Drew Feustel was part of STS125's mission repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. His flight team

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

We are heading south towards Bering Strait and the Bering Sea beyond. As we go, we are moving through young ice, with smallish pancakes ahead of the ship. The ice lamps illuminate the pancakes. The ship rumbles as she plows through the loose pancakes, with a constant crunching. This ice is relatively thin. Gone is the screeching as the ship pushed through thick, hard ice. Gone is the backing and ramming as we try to get through an especially hard ridge. Now we are going to face the Bering Sea, the sea of “Deadliest Catch” lore. One huge, low pressure system after another has been rolling through the Bering for the last month. We cannot hope to escape completely. Working will be hard, much harder, there.

All of the locations at which we have sampled in the Chukchi Sea. Despite the ice, the cold, and the wind we conducted nearly all of our planned sampling activities and reached all of our planned sampling locations.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

We are moving further south. As we go, the ice is filling the Chukchi Sea, filling that sea with us still in it. A few days ago, there was sea ice only in the northern part and along the coast. Now, as we go south, the ice extends almost all the way across the Sea and down through to the Bering Strait. It is remarkable, being here while the ice is forming. The ship moves easily through this new ice, only bumping a little as she easily knocks aside the newly formed pancakes.

A close up of pancake sea ice. The big floe in the middle of the picture is probably 10-15 feet across.

So far we have completed work near Barrow, near Point Lay, and we are now going south to work in the southern Chukchi Sea.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

There is a sense of anticipation in the air. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and we will be observing it, even though we are at sea in the Arctic. As luck would have it, we have a couple of long transits between stations to accomplish tonight and tomorrow so everyone will have a chance to relax a little and catch up on samples, record keeping, and data analysis, and watch football.

We just finished sampling along the “DBO line”. This is a line of stations located in the Chukchi Sea just to the south of Barrow, AK.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

We are in the thick of winter now. We have reached our furthest northern point, at 72 27.18 N, over the slope-basin in about 2000 m of water. As we moved north, the ice became thicker and more resilient. Sometimes moving is easy, sometimes we claw our way forward onto the ice, then shudder to a stop before backing down to get some space and make another run forward. We gain speed and momentum with a great roaring of the engines and vibrating of the stern. I watch mesmerized as we move forward over the ice.

by Liz O'Connell for Frontier Scientists

A Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory

Cool games, weather forecasts, space simulations, and graphic visualizations all use supercomputing systems or techniques. Behind the supercomputing curtain or under the supercomputing hood are the 10,000 or more scientists, mathematicians, and engineers who attended SC11, the Supercomputing Conference 2011 in Seattle November 12-18.

Dr. Greg Newby, the director of Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in Fairbanks Alaska explains the synergy of this annual event in this Super Computing Conference 2011 video by Frontier Scientists.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

Today the sun did not rise. We have come so far north that we have reached a latitude where the sun did not come above the horizon on this winter day, where night lasted for 24 hours. We were treated instead to a few hours of incredible pink sky that turned the ice blue and rose. The colors are magical.

Our not quite sunrise.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

We are now, finally, in ice. The ship is shuddering along, not breaking ice but rather pushing floes of pancake ice aside. When occasionally we break into a lead of open water, the ship glides unfettered, seemingly not moving because there is no irregular bumping and jostling by the ice floes, no shaking and vibrating. This is not ice breaking, with its crashing and banging but rather we are moving through an ice field rather as a human walking through a tall field of corn, pushing aside the stalks easily but still not walking a straight, smooth path. It is a relief to finally be in the ice, where the seas are dampened. We are heading to a station near the Alaskan town of Wainwright where we will start sampling along a line that extends from the nearshore 58 miles to the NW.

Moving through pancake ice. Note the ice all over the bow and foredeck of the ship; this is from freezing spray as we moved north through the Bering and Chukchi. The crew has been busy breaking it up and shoveling it overboard.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

This morning at around 10:30 local time we passed through Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea. As we go, the air becomes colder, the water becomes colder, the sea is gray, and the winds are howling at 30 knots from the NE. We are heading into the teeth of early winter. The ship is pitching, with each crashing descent sending seawater cascading across the foredeck.

By Carin Ashjian for The Arctic Winter Cruise 2011

We have decided to make a run for it. After remaining south of the Aleutians in the Gulf of Alaska for an extra day or so in order to avoid the huge Bering Sea storm, we are making a strike to get through the Bering Sea as unscathed as possible. We see more low pressure systems coming into the Bering Sea and so are trying run between storms. Although I cannot hear the engines from my room (I am four decks up from the main deck), I can feel the ship quivering as she cuts through the waves.

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