End of 2nd week: Snow, Volcanoes and Reindeer

It snowed on the mountaintops on Wednesday night, and again on Thursday while I was at Alomar. When I got home that day it was sleeting outside my window, even at sea level. This was the latest in the season that I'd seen any kind of wither weather. Hopefully it will get warmer soon.

Snow on the mountaintops

Not much more has happened work-wise, since programming the data analysis routines is more difficult than I expected. The repairs for the lidar instrument I was supposed to be using are taking even longer than expected, although Trude "hasn't given up hope" that it will get here before I leave. In any case, I need a new direction for the work I'll be doing for my time here; hopefully I'll know more after Zuguang gets back from his conference, which should be tomorrow. One potential area of interest would be to study the recent  eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland. There was a rare break in the cloudy weather on Friday afternoon, allowing the Alomar people to make measurements with their big tropospheric lidars, and the ash cloud from the volcano should be visible in the lidar profiles. I might be able to use the "depolarization ratio" (how much the backscattered light has been changed from its original, polarized state) to determine what part of the signal is from hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus clouds (higher depolarization) and what part is from the more spherical ash particles (lower depolarization). 



Alomar on a rare sunny day



View of Andenes from Alomar

Arve is putting the finishing touches on his master's thesis, and is leaving on Tuesday. Today, he was going to Bleik, the village a few miles to the south of the rocket range, to see it one last time before he left, and take pictures. He offered to take me with him and I gladly accepted, not having gone there yet. The most important thing about Bleik is the fact that there's a bakery and convenience store there that is actually open on Sundays, so I'll know where to go if I completely run out of food. It's really expensive though, like everything else in this country but probably more so than in the supermarkets. I paid 15 kroner (about $3) for a donut, chocolate-frosted. The town also had the tallest trees I've seen on this island, reaching a height of about 20 feet, and a long beach which is much nicer than the one right by the rocket range.

Crab shell, at the beach at Bleik

Bleik (I'll post more pictures on the Flickr page, I'm just experimenting with putting pictures on the blog)

Since Arve is leaving soon, some of the people staying here (Arve, the Australians, another American on a brief visit at Alomar, and I) had a dinner of reindeer stew, apparently a delicacy here, if the price is any indication. This was the first time I'd ever eaten reindeer (which is an actual type of animal (also known as caribou), not a mythological creature), or any kind of deer. It tasted good but it's hard to describe. A lean meat, maybe a bit like beef.

Pictures

I've created a Flickr account to upload pictures from my time here. It's here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/63114542@N03/

There's also a link to it on the right, below the thumbnails.

I will add explanations of the pictures later. I've uploaded 87 pictures so far.

Middle of Week 2

Work's been fairly uneventful for the past few days. Zuguang, my supervisor in Trude's absence, is in the south of France on a conference this week, along with all the scientists at Alomar, and he's having Barbara, an engineer who works with the tropospheric lidar, introduce me to how it works. So I've been reading up on the instrument, and writing Matlab routines to process the raw lidar data in order to get a scientifically meaningful result. This feels more like an exercise than actual work because they already have routines for doing this. On the other hand, I'll have something that I know works on my computer (I only have Matlab, not Labview, a more specialized software for Lidar that is sometimes used by this lab), I'll also have a more thorough understanding of the data processing algorithms, and it'll be interesting to compare my code with Zuguang's once he gets back.

No actual new data has been taken at Alomar since May 3--long before I got to Norway. Using their big, expensive lidar systems requires good weather--no rain or snow, which could fall through the hatch and damage the instruments (they're not "waterproof", like Trude's instrument was supposed to be) and no low, thick clouds which would absorb all the laser light and make the measurements useless (since they're mainly interested in the upper atmosphere)--and it's been cloudy and sometimes raining most of the time I've been there. The only clear times have been at "night" and on weekends, when they normally don't take measurements anyway. This week, though, they might make an exception because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland which they want to study (which, incidentally, would've really screwed up my travel plans had I come a week later, since I had a connection in Keflavik airport which was closed). So someone has to be there at all hours of the day, waiting for any opportunity where the weather clears up long enough tomake an observation. I won't be doing it myself because I'm not trained to operate the system yet, but this might produce some interesting data for me to look at.

I've managed to adjust the seat on the Rocket Range's bike and get used to riding it, so I've been able to go into downtown Andenes by myself. It's a long trip, about 5 miles round trip, but it's the only way to get to an ATM, or grocery store (which is a little closer), and there's a bike path most of the way so it's not too nervewracking as far as dealing with traffic. The strong winds mean I have to work harder to go the same speed, but it's a really scenic ride.

Andenes is small town, about 2,900 inhabitants. That's more than half of the 5,600 people on the island of Andoya, which is 35 miles long and varies from 3-9 miles wide. So that should give you an idea of how sparsely populated this place is. I was thinking of visiting Tromso, the nearest relatively large city with a population of 68,000, over a weekend, but the only ways to get there are by flying or using a combination of a ferry and a bus, and it would cost a lot to stay overnight since hotels, like everything else, are expensive and there's no youth hostels in the city. So the only accessible areas to me are Andenes, Bleik (a village the same distance away as Andenes, in the opposite direction), and maybe Sortland (a larger town on a different island, about an hour away by bus). Still, Andenes is pretty compact and it's got everything I think I'll need for the next 7 weeks.

There's only a few other people staying in the "hotel" at the Rocket Range. One is Arve, a Norwegian engineering student who's just finishing up his master's thesis regarding unmanned airplanes, and who needs the facilities at the rocket range in order to fly them. He's been really helpful to me as far as figuring out how things work, since I can't read the directions for the washing machine, for example, when they're in Norwegian. There's also two Australian scientists working on a big radar array at the rocket range. And sometimes the other scientists, who have their own homes in Andenes, come to the range's dining area to work on nights and weekends when they need to get away from distractions such as their spouses. I really like the international nature of this operation, as it's made for a lot of interesting conversations about the politics, academic systems, etc. of our various countries. 

Second day of work

Went back to work this morning, but the Internet was still down, not only at the Rocket Range but also at Alomar. Still, I had a productive conversation with Trude about the Domex project, and about how to set up and run the "EZ Lidar" should it be repaired and make it to Norway before I leave.

Before lunch, Trude and I "hiked" down from Alomar to the main road (a long downhill walk, almost like a hike, but along the dirt road used to drive there), where her husband met us. We went to the sporting goods store "downtown" (if Andenes has such a thing) so that I could buy a bike helmet and a backpack. Now I can bike to the grocery store and carry some groceries back with me, and I probably won't need to drive so I'm not going to bother trying to tame the manual transmission. Then we went to lunch at a bakery, and after that to the electronics store where I bought a cell phone that will work on European frequencies, and a pre-paid temporary SIM card. Food at grocery stores is reasonably priced here (so I might stay within my $80/week budget), but everything else is ridiculously expensive--I paid $60 each for the bike helmet and backpack, and $80 for the phone, which doesn't even flip or take pictures. It does, however, have a "fake call" feature, for those situations "when you want to get out of meetings or unwanted conversations" (as stated in the manual). And I can bring these things back to the States, and the phone might come in handy on future trips abroad--it will work anywhere in Europe, I just have to keep getting prepaid SIM cards.

Trude and her family left after lunch, to head back to the US. Zuguang picked me up to go back to Alomar, where I started reading up on the lidar I'll be using. It's a really interesting instrument, involving Raman scattering as well as the backscattering at the original laser wavelength. Raman scattering is something that I've worked on at Yale with Mark Brandon, and the calibration of the polarization channels involves something that came up last year in my REU work at Oregon State University. I love how research experience builds on itself.

The Internet finally came back on when I got home, so I was able to respond to some correspondence, and I finally have the passwords for the Domex data. I had to use Google Translate to set up the cell phone and change the language from Norwegian to English. Interestingly, the first 3 digits of my Norwegian cell phone number are 911, the US emergency number. (In Norway 110 calls the fire department, 112 the police and 113 the paramedics.)

First day of work

Wednesday, 18 May was the first actual day of work at ALOMAR, the Arctic Lidar Observatory for Middle Atmospheric Research. At 8:00 I met Zuguang Guan, my supervisor for my time in Norway, and some other Alomar scientists for the drive up there. The view from the top is even more spectacular than the view from my room, which might make it hard for me to concentrate on my work.

The lidar I was supposed to be using, a "portable" lidar managed by Yale professor Trude Storelvmo (my senior thesis advisor), from a company called "Leosphere", is having problems: the supposedly waterproof laser head (the portion containing the laser) filled with water in Martinique, when it rained. The lidar is being shipped back to the Leosphere company in France, who will perform watertightness checks on the laser head. If the laser itself is not damaged, the lidar may make it to Andenes in about 4 weeks, but if the laser is damaged, then it will take much longer to repair, and will not be ready before I leave. In any caase, one of Alomar's permanent lidars (the one which studies the troposphere--the lower 10 km or so of the atmosphere--rather than the stratosphere) has the same wavelength as "our" lidar, so using them both at the same time would cause interference. So a plan B was necessary for how to occupy my time here.

Trude was visiting her family in Narvik, Norway for the past couple days and arrived in Andenes today, hiking from the Rocket Range (where I'm staying), at sea level, up to Alomar--at 1000+ foot elevation--on foot because she got here after all the carpools. The Plan B we came up with was for me to learn to run Alomar's permanent tropospheric lidar, and analyze the data the same way I would've done for the Yale lidar. If the Yale lidar does come in midway through my time here, I'll set it up at the Rocket Range rather than at Alomar to avoid interference. That should provide some interesting additional information as we can see how different the measurements are between the two different instruments.

I also tried to get back into the analysis of the data from the Domex field campaign in Martinique, which I started for my Cloud Physics and Dynamics class final project. The final project produced very interesting and counterintuitive results but only included some of the Domex research flights. I wanted to add the rest of the flights now that the field campaign has concluded, but I found that access to the data has now been restricted. I'm now awaiting the password.

After returning to the Rocket Range, Trude, along with her husband and toddler son, took me first to the grocery store (where I bought some much needed items, and really appreciated Trude's guidance because I couldn't understand the Norwegian packaging), then out to dinner in Andenes, in a restaurant called "The Arrest" built in the old jail. This was really nice as it was the first real meal I've had since getting here, and it was very good food. Andenes seemed to be a really quiet, sleepy town. After returning to the Rocket Range, I went with Trude's husband to try to drive a stickshift car, which I'll need to learn (along with 4WD training) in order to drive the Alomar cars so I can go to the grocery store myself. My first attempts failed miserably but after a while I vaguely started to get the hang of it. Still, this is too difficult to learn in one day and I'll have to find someone else to teach me once Trude and company leave.

Tomorrow, Trude will take me to the wireless store to get a temporary cell phone, if possible (since American phones operate on different frequencies than European ones; this time the problem is different frequencies rather than the same frequency), and also to the sporting goods store to buy a bike helmet. Biking is the only way besides driving or walking 3 miles to get from the Rocket Range to town (to buy groceries, etc.) I won't ride without a helmet even though it's not required here.

I meant to post this on Wednesday but there was a system-wide Internet outage that affected both the Rocket Range, where I'm staying, and the Alomar observatory where I work. So I had to copy it to a file and wait.

Constitution Day

I safely made it to Norway with no cancellations or missed flights, and got to Norway around 10 PM last night. Today was the Constitution Day, Norway's equivalent of the 4th of July, but I missed all the public festivities because they ended before I woke up. So the only practical impact for me was that everything was closed, and I've had to subsist on apples, crackers, ham sandwiches, and water until I get a chance to go to the grocery store tomorrow. I'd post a lot more but I have to be ready at 8 AM for my carpool to work (a 2.75 mile drive). This seems to be a country of early risers. Much more to come soon.

Embarcation

I'm leaving for Norway in a few hours. It's a really long trip, involving 4 planes (New York to Oslo via Iceland, then 2 more domestic flights within Norway to get to Andenes). Here's my itinerary, for those interested (particularly family members):

• Icelandair fl. 325: leave N.Y.-JFK 8:35 PM (May 15); arr. Keflavik, Iceland 6:20 AM (May 16)
• Icelandair fl. 318: leave Keflavik 7:50 AM, arrive Oslo, Norway 12:20 PM
• Scandanavian Airlines fl. 4122: leave Oslo 5:15 PM, arrive Bodo 6:40 PM
• Wideroe fl. 638: leave Bodo 8:40 PM, arrive Andenes 9:59 PM

I'll also be taking the Long Island Railroad Montauk Branch from Montauk, NY, where I'm staying now, to Jamaica, in order to pick up the AirTrain to JFK. This is something I've never done before. My LIRR train leaves at 3:35 PM.

The time difference from U.S. Eastern time to Norway is 6 hours, so 9:59 PM when I arrive on May 16 is 3:59 PM at home. That brings the total time for the trip, including the LIRR train, to about 24 hours.

The return trip, on July 11/12, will be even longer, since I'll have longer layovers--I'll be spending a night in a hotel in Iceland--and since I'll be taking a 5th flight, from NY to Charlotte, NC to meet up with my family who'll be on vacation there.

Anyway, I'll be making periodic posts about my trip for the 8 weeks. It would be extremely expensive to call the US with my cell phone, but the Internet is free no matter where you use it, so if you want to talk to me, email me, or use Gmail chat, Facebook, or Skype.