ASP Young Sound 2014 Campaign

It was a bumpy ride when Bruno De Lille was dragged over the ice sitting on the mobile tower battery box, but someone had to prevent the battery box from sliding when the tower was pulled from Daneborg Marine Research station to the research field. The research team has now installed micrometeorological instruments and CO₂ sensors for measurements of air-sea ice/snow exchange of CO₂ at two towers; a mobile sled tower and a fixed tower.  The team measures the exchange of CO₂ between the air and the snow covered ice. The air-surface fluxes are assessed by eddy covariance but this method requires some wind, and this week has been calm and foggy and only small fluxes of CO₂ can be measured over the sea ice. The eddy covariance method measure the flux from an area upwind of our towers – called the ‘footprint’.  To understand what the instruments are reading researcher Geoff Gunn has used an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to photograph the footprint without disturbing it and altering the carbon flux measurements.

Submitted by Lise Lotte Sørensen and Geoff Gunn