DEEP PURPLE blog

Svalbard February 2025 – In a world of ice and snow

2025-05-12T11:51:00.004+01:00

By Mirjam Paasch

28.01.2025 – A little less than 2 weeks to go and we finished packing all the laboratory equipment we need to take to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. The excitement rises the closer we get to our departure to this distant island covered in ice and snow. But from the beginning: I started my PhD at GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany not even a month ago, in the middle of the preparations for the planned field trip to Svalbard in February 2025. My PhD is part of the European Research Council ERC-funded DeepPurple Synergy grant. This will be my first ever polar field work!

Most of the heavy equipment was sent to Ny-Ålesund before Christmas, so we can travel lighter with only our backpacks full of warm clothes and a few last crucial consumable items. “We” is a small team of four people: Christoph, post-doc at GFZ and the leader of the expedition; Liane, our professor; Anirban, a PhD student in his second year and myself, the newest member of the GFZ Interface Geochemistry team. Our goal is to find glacier ice algae, tiny single-celled algae, in the ice under the snow on glaciers surrounding Ny-Ålesund. In the summer, these algae color glacier surfaces dark brown to purple – thus the DeepPurple project. However, what these algae ‘do’ in the winter and how they survive the cold and darkness is currently unknown. Between testing methods and reading papers, I’m now counting the days until our flight to the far far North, already dreaming of freezing winds, deep snow, and polar lights.

09.02.2025 – We reached Longyearbyen! Flying in-between steep mountains with weirdly flat tops, the city stretches out as an accumulation of houses in a valley shortly before we land. At the baggage belt, the first stuffed polar bear greets us. The shuttle bus to town is packed full of people, unexpected in this place so far from everything. A sign shows that we are now closer to the North Pole than to Hamburg, which is an incredible feeling. The landscape only exists in white and shades of grey, like natural color ceased to exist, the only yellow and red coming from the lights of the ‘city’. It’s 12 pm, yet it feels like late afternoon with the dim light and thick clouds, the sun will not raise above the horizon for eight more days. The hotel that we check into is cozy and full of old pictures of mine workers but the most impressive thing about the low buildings is the windows half covered in snow; drifts carried by the wind building up in front of unused doors. We are lucky as the weather is calm now, and the air temperature is not too low, though a little wind is enough to make the cold bite into hands and nose. We walk the short distance to the town center and have lunch in a lovely café before walking down to the seaside, where all you can hear is the wind and the small waves gently splashing while rolling to shore. The roughness of the landscape makes me feel tiny and unimportant and makes me remember that outside of Longyearbyen, the forces of nature take over, unimaginably stronger than me. There is not much more beautiful for me than the simplified, harsh landscape of the Arctic and here I am, standing on this island 1000 km from the North Pole, a dream come true.

Looking down to the fjord of Longyearbyen and the mountains on the other side and our hotel, covered in snow drifts but very cozy inside. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

10.02.2025 – The ‘expeditional’ character of our travel becomes obvious. While the weather was stable in the morning, colder than yesterday but only very little wind, this turned very fast into a proper snowstorm in the early afternoon. After waiting for an hour at the airport, our flight to Ny-Ålesund was canceled for today, no wonder when looking at the menacing dark grey wall coming towards the city. So, back to the cozy hotel we have an afternoon for free use, spending some time in the museum and then on a windy walk through the town. In the darkness illuminated by streetlights and a few cars, the wind gusts whirl around snow, no way to tell if it came from the sky or from the ground. The small path to the hotel is swallowed by centimeter-thick snow drifts and the mountains around that we still saw in the morning disappear in the clouds and haze of snowflakes coming from all directions at once. Hoping for good weather tomorrow so we can finally arrive at our destination!

11.02.25 – We fly to Ny-Ålesund in a tiny propellor plane with two rows of seats. My heart is beating fast when we take off and the landscape stays beneath us. The sky is clear, almost no clouds and we fly much lower than lager passenger planes. During the short ~ 25 min flight, I can’t take my eyes off the landscape: endless white plains that look like no living being ever walked over them, sharp peaks in between (now the German name of the island, Spitzbergen, makes sense), turquoise glacier ice with deep cracks at the edges of dark fjords, and, every here and there small icebergs drifting around on the water. The science village Ny-Ålesund, with its colorful wooden houses, appears on a flat area next to the shore. When we land, a van picks us and our luggage up, and we drive to the main service building where we are greeted by the AWIPEV research station leader Alex. For the rest of the day, every minute is filled, from introduction to the station, getting to know the two AWIPEV station engineers Celas and Thomas, and snow scooter training to dinner followed by polar bear safety training. In between, the view from every window takes my breath away. There is only a little snow covering a thick ice layer from the last warm days with positive temperature and rain (in the beginning of February at 79° North!). Still, the white cover allows us to see the landscape illuminated by the moon. And in the evening at the shooting range we are even treated to some northern lights!

Inside the tiny plane. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

Views from the plane on Ny-Ålesund and the glacier Kronebreen at the end of Kongsfjorden. Copyright Christoph Keuschnig.

Our location on Svalbard (yellow star, map from Google Earth), Ny-Alesund (blue star) and the two glaciers we visited for sampling: Austre Broggerbreen (green star) and Midtre Lovénbreen (orange star), map from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), website: https://npolar.no

13.02.25 – After finishing all administrative, introductory, and training courses on the first day, the next two days are for fieldwork. We are on our second tour to Austre Brøggerbreen, this time with the whole team accompanied by Celas from the AWIPEV station. We found our sampling spot yesterday by drilling some test ice cores and looking for darker layers in the ice indicating the presence of biological material – basically last summer’s bare ice surface. Today, the temperature is below -10°C, so we try to keep the time short during that our hands are out of the thick gloves to handle the ice cores. Humidity from my breath freezes on hairs that escaped from my balaclava, on the outside of the scarf, and even on my eyelashes. While Anirban and Christoph core the ice cores, Liane and I kneel in the snow, photographing and measuring the position of different layers in the ice, cutting the core into pieces, and packing the samples into sterile plastic bags and jars. Celas walks around, taking over the polar bear watch for today and in between taking pictures of us in the snow, probably looking like kids in our thick overalls digging holes in the snow. For lunch I eat my first frozen sandwich, but the view makes it all worth it. When the snowmobile sled and the trunks of the scooters are full of ice and snow samples, we drive back down to the village through the small moraine hills at the end of the glacier, with the disappearing light painting the sky pink.

The Team on Austre Brøggerbreen after a successful 2nd day of sampling. From left to right: Anirban Majumder, Liane G. Benning, Mirjam Paasch, Christoph Keuschnig. Copyright Wenceslas Marie-Sainte

One of our ice cores with a visible dark biological layer. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

15.02.25 – The days start to blend into each other. Two days of fieldwork are followed by two days of processing liters and liters of melted snow and ice for later analysis in the lab. The hours in the lab are only disrupted by the regular meals in the service building and a walk to the harbor and along the shore close to the village, where the water is incredibly clear, and a thick layer of ice covers the beach and first meters of sea floor. One of the last houses on the way down to the fjord is in the summer a bar where people are sitting outside in the never disappearing sun – not really imaginable with all the snow and ice around now. In the afternoon I am lucky enough to join a ski tour along the shore towards the small hut Gåsebu. While pushing my cross-country skis forward, I try to convince myself that this is really happening. The light in the afternoon is especially beautiful, coloring the sky in orange, pink, and purple and there are pancake-shaped pieces of ice floating on the small waves. We start a fire in the small oven of the hut, filling the room with warmth while drinking tea and eating some snacks. While the guys stay in the hut overnight, Anna and I ski back to the village for dinner, enchanted by the deep purple color that the sky has tonight. In the darkness, we use our headlamps to find our tracks in the shallow snow. On the brightest setting the cone of my lamp illuminates the meters in front of me but beyond this, the landscape disappears almost completely. Now and then we stop to look around us, both happy that we don’t have to walk alone and relieved when we make it back to the safety of the village, my heart filled with the wonderful experience.

At the beach of Ny-Ålesund during a lunchbreak walk. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

17.02.25 – After finding a path to our second glacier - Midtre Løvenbreen - with the snow scooters yesterday, we are back today to collect ice cores with as much biomass as we can get. On the way up we saw seals on the beach of one of the small islands in the fjord. The weather is wonderful again, blue skies and the first rays of sunshine color the peaks on the other side of the fjord orange. The sun will not return to the village of Ny-Ålesund for almost another month, still, it is very bright outside, due to the scattering from the snow, and by now we have an almost normal day length. After finishing our work for the day, we stay on the glacier for a while, just taking in the view: the steep drop of the glacier below us with snow scooter tracks cutting through the white, the rippled plain further down with spots of grey and black that ends in the steel-blue of the sea, the peaks rising from the water on the other side of the fjord with endless white glaciers in the valleys and green-blue ice where the glaciers meet the sea, above all the endless sky that is purple above the mountains, then turns pink and orange before the light transparent blue of winter.

First sunlight on the mountain tops. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

On the way back to the research station with the scooters full of samples. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

20.02.25 – The last days were quieter but busy, spending most of the time in the laboratory rooms melting and filtering all our samples, looking at them under the microscope, and performing the first measurements to get a first impression on the state of the algal cells. More time-consuming experiments and measurements will be performed back in Potsdam, for example to analyze the community of microorganisms in our samples and the available nutrients that they could use as energy source. In between we have smaller activities, like a science talk to the public in the village and launching one of the weather balloons. Today the sky is covered in low-hanging clouds and in the afternoon, it starts to snow, huge flakes that cover the village in silence. In the evening, we visit the dog yard, where some huskies that belong to a few of Ny-Ålesund’s inhabitants live. They are very cuddly, most of the time two or three try to climb on my lap at the same time while I’m kneeling in the snow, or lay next to me, exposing their belly as if they would not even feel the -15°C through their thick fur. With my heart full, I return to the last bits of packing, we have to fit all our collected samples into the big ice box, hoping that we make it home to Potsdam quickly enough to prevent them from melting.

Purple sky on one of the evenings. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

Someone ever build a snowman inside? Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

Cuddles with the cutest dogs. Copyright Christoph Keuschnig.

21.02.25 - After breakfast, we take one last walk to the harbor, and then suddenly our time in this magical place is over. The wind is bitterly cold, and snow swirls around on the street. Despite the cold biting at my cheeks, I don’t want to leave; this frozen place has stolen my heart. There’s something about the quiet and the expansiveness of the landscape - harsh but with soft colors, wild and beautiful. And the people who welcomed us warmly, spending either short or long periods here to facilitate our research or pursue their own. When the small propeller plane takes off, the landscape is visible only for a moment; the village shrinks away and the mountains rush past, and then we find ourselves above the clouds. Perhaps this makes saying goodbye to this special place a little easier, which hopefully is more like a “See you soon”. We depart with a considerable number of samples waiting to be analyzed in the coming months, hopefully providing us with new insights into the microscopic life on glaciers after a long and dark winter. And with phones full of pictures and memories of moments I will never forget

Thank you to Liane, who brought us to Ny-Ålesund, Anirban, and Christoph for making such a good team, and the AWIPEV staff Alex, Thomas, and Celas, for all their help.

The AWIPEV blue house, our home for 10 days. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

Hello and Goodbye in the lobby of the Kings Bay service building. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

Last view on Ny-Ålesund. Copyright Mirjam Paasch.

Exploring how Deep Purple results can be communicated using a dialogue-based approach

2023-10-24T11:54:00.008+01:00

In January 2023, we packed a lot of warm sweaters and settled in Sisimiut, the second largest town in Greenland. We wanted to explore how the research of the Deep Purple Project can be communicated using a more engaging dialogue-based approach instead of the common format of a lecture during which it is only possible to ask a few questions after a PowerPoint slideshow.

During two months, we lived, worked in Sisimiut and participated in the very active local community. During our stay, we transformed a PowerPoint presentation by Alex Anesio into an interactive installation, which was based on different images from the Deep Purple Project.

With the installation, we wanted to initiate and facilitate dialogues about the research of the Deep Purple with the citizens of Sisimiut. In February 2023, we exhibited our installation at the Ilisimasat Science Festival, and at the local upper secondary school, GUX, in Sisimiut. We had many insightful dialogues about ice, ice algae, albedo, and life with citizens (see picture below). Prior to events, we could not foresee what would happen, or if anyone would talk with us, but there was a great interest, and we learned a lot from dialogues we had.

We are very grateful for all the people participating and who we have met along our way during the process of writing our thesis.

One of the activities within the installation was a large image of Greenland which people could paint on using their fingers and purple paint.

Persons gluing and arranging images within the installation.

Looking for the Window during Fieldwork

2023-09-22T11:02:00.009+01:00

DEEP PURPLE postdoc Katie Sipes has written a blog post for the Cryospheric Sciences (CR) Division of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), reflecting on the 2023 DEEP PURPLE fieldwork in Greenland:

https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/cr/2023/09/15/looking-for-the-window-during-fieldwork/

On the ice sheet, the topology is carved with purple ice algae. Persons pictured: Alex Anesio, Christoph Keuschnig [Credits: Katie Sipes]

Discovering the world one molecule at a time: 42 scientists on a metabolomics adventure

2023-01-23T12:07:00.004+00:00

DEEP PURPLE PhD student Elisa Peter has written a blog post for the European Association of Geochemistry, reporting back on her experience attending the EMBO Practical Course on Metabolomics Bioinformatics for Life Scientists in Wageningen, the Netherlands:

https://blog.eag.eu.com/news/discovering-the-world-one-molecule-at-a-time-42-scientists-on-a-metabolomics-adventure/

Diversity in action

2022-07-05T16:55:00.005+01:00

By Rey Mourot

How going to the Greenland Ice Sheet to study glacier microbial communities, their impact, and their diversity … teaches us quite something about our own!

“Do we have everything ?”

The kitchen is full of stuff as I’m making sandwiches for the day on the ice sheet. Gluten-free bread and lactose-free spread cheese for Helen; this amazing vegan-feta thing for Katie, cheese and all the crappy food that fuels my motivation daily … thanks god Liane eats pretty much everything. Sandwiches packed, and here we go. Helicopter, ice sheet.

Helen, our GFZ postdoc. Fascinated by eukaryotic algae, she’s the “culturing” part of our team – although, as she says, she’s not able to keep a pet plant alive 😊

While they dig snow pits, the American Katie gently pokes on Helen’s British/Scottish accent and they try to imitate each other. I’m coring in silence, enjoying that my French accent is not brought up in the conversation. Liane is a few meters upwards from us, collecting air and snow samples; as a “European citizen” as she likes to say, her accent is from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Liane, GFZ Professor and the PI on this trip. Here to supervise, keep us alive and sample aerosols; although not necessarily in that order. Picture by Katie Sipes.

And as it should be, there’s no fieldwork in Greenland without Greenlanders – and our helicopter pilot Pilu, from Sermeq Helicopters, who has seen it all and way too cool to describe, completes our joyful team of small human-ants on the ice. In-between the jokes, our little fieldwork is going smoothly.

A view of our office on June 4th.

Although this year we are only dashing in and out of our field site, I remember our long camping fieldworks of the two past years as a founding experience when it comes to learning from others and about ourselves.

On the ice sheet, isolated from the world and our dear and otherwise ever-present web connections, we quickly get to know each other by sharing common scientific interests and goals, but also by building an everyday life together – cooking, cleaning, doing the dishes, securing the camp, informing one another about the new crevasses that can be spotted around, how to flush the most correctly our natural waste. Camp mood and closeness is important both for the productivity of our sampling and our survival; and we all quickly learn the needs and quirks of each of us that need to be fulfilled to keep each member of the team happy.

Our DP 2021 field camp after the mist suddenly fell on it … speaking about extreme environments.

This one works in the evening but will be late at breakfast; this one’s mental health depends on a constant supply of hot chocolate, this one needs to snack regularly or their mood will suffer, this one need more access to the communications to the mainland at the moment, this one will take afternoon naps, this one gets cold faster. Although we are all self-preserving, it actually becomes part of the routine to check on each-other, especially in an extreme environment. After all, several studies indicates that mutualistic groups have a higher chance of survival than groups composed of individualistic members.

Katie, postdoc in bioinformatics, the Aarhus part of our team, swimming among the icebergs in the harbor – among many other crazy things she does daily.

We easily adapt to our important diversity by giving our members maybe not the exact same things; but rather, what they need so the team functions at best. I sometimes wonder why this kind of diversity just functions so well for us, but the fieldwork world is still barely able to make gears that are safe and practical to use for everybody, pants half the population wouldn’t need to put down to their knee by a shitty weather to pee, and just, in general, space for all that do not correspond to the dominant idea of the explorer.

In this bright month of June, far away from those considerations, our little four-people team is working to perfection; flowing smoothly between our differences of tastes, cultures and rhythms, as we learn to know each other’s qualities and quirks.

And, of course, the real stars of our fieldworks … these aggregates of cells and minerals trapped under the snow layer since September, and that we managed to reach to study them!

DEEP PURPLE post on Department of Environmental Science LinkedIn

2022-07-04T15:20:00.004+01:00

Snow isn’t exactly welcome on this Arctic expedition.

Last week, Martyn Tranter, Ate Jaarsma, Shunan Feng, and Lasse Twiggs Degn set off on their summer fieldwork – the first of 20 who will make the journey this season. Traveling up to the north of Greenland with a portable research base is no mean feat – they must transfer 10 tons of equipment by barge, and helicopter to set up camp on the ice. It’s not just laboratory facilities either - sleeping quarters, toilets, a kitchen, and power sources need to be in place to support the altogether two-month long stay on the ice.

But setting up camp in the wrong place could be disastrous. Snow in this case can dangerously conceal deep crevasses in the ice, which can quickly grow with glacier movement. Finding snow on arrival means that the team have been on standby in Ilulissat for a few days, and are in good spirits while they wait for an improvement in conditions so they can set up camp safely. If this drone footage captured by Shunan Feng is anything to go by, then at least it’s not a bad place to wait!

Once the camp is established, the group will start their investigations, collecting data and studying the biology and chemistry of the glacier surface, and how this can affect the darkening and melting of the ice as part of the Deep Purple project. Read more about Deep Purple on the project website here: https://lnkd.in/eAtYzHvc and follow them on Instagram for some more insights from the team https://lnkd.in/ejx8Xbup. Deep Purple is funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

The original post can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/envs-au_drifting-through-ilulissat-no-audio-activity-6949626298927333376-_TRT

From 100 to 50 and 50 to 100

2021-09-01T14:11:00.002+01:00

by Alexandre Anesio

The previous blog by Liane G. Benning clearly described the journey of trying to put together a massive and ambitious fieldwork programme for the Deep Purple project, going from the microscopic scale to remote sensing information to demonstrate the impact of ice algae and other impurities on the darkening of the ice, their controls and dynamics. A bunch of names from the brave team will be mentioned here and you can learn more about the team members on our “team” page.

No doubts, we started in a very high mood. However, as team 1 (Principal Investigator Martyn Tranter, Lasse, Rey, Joe, Ian, Eva, Shunan, and Lou) started their journey from Denmark on the 1st of July and began the process of setting up the camp, they were hit by a number of obstacles. The weather was far worse than predicted, delaying helicopter trips to the ice camp from the lovely Greenlandic town of Qaqortoq (https://visitgreenland.com/da/destinationer/qaqortoq/). Corona just started to hit Greenland, which had faired very well until ca one week after we arrived. We had to separate our teams between vaccinated and non-vaccinated members of the group, reschedule the science programme and wait for good weather. The task of setting up a camp for ca 16 people at a time on the ice was more challenging than anticipated. Team 2 (myself, Marie, Ate, Frederik, Chris, Pamela and Leeds University beloved collaborator Jim McQuaid) arrived on the 8th of July with half of team 1 still in Qaqortoq. It took five days before we were all on the ice, but we had to leave Martyn Tranter behind in Qaqortoq to serve as a very needed organizer and local fixer on the ground, securing communications between ice and civilization, sending of the samples back to Denmark/Germany, organising flights and all sorts of things (even buying 15 rain ponchos that turned out to be a quite nice addition to keep the team on the ice dry).

Deep Purple camp when it was at its max capacity. Photo Alex Anesio

Team 3 (Principal Investigator Liane G. Benning, Helen, Elisa, and Laura Perini) arrived on the 12th of July to Qaqortoq but only managed to get on the ice ca 5 days later since Qaqortoq went into lockdown. Meanwhile, Teams 1 and 2 had just experienced 52 mm of rain on the ice in a 24 h period. Within just one 1 h of Team 3’s arrival, another 47 mm of rain fell. Considering the conditions (both weather and corona uncertainty), Team 4 had to cancel their travel plans, but their science plans were re-distributed between us to ensure all science was carried out. This left us behind time-wise, but then a spell of good weather hit, and that, coupled with great spirits in the team and the desire to get a lot of work done, was just what we needed.

A massive transformation on the ice was now happening in front of our eyes with the ice algae blooming. The rain had seemed to wash microbial cells together with impurities, but a few days of dry weather in the middle of the summer darkened the ice at incredible speed. At this point, the camp was running like a watch; carnivores were eating like vegetarians, freezer, fridge and -80 degree freezer were getting full with samples, the solar panels were providing all the energy necessary to fuel all sorts of equipment, and our journalist and TV visitors managed to make it all the way to the ice sheet (no names mentioned yet ;-)). All this happened as we received news from the civilization that Greenland was having unprecedented amounts of rain and the IPCC report was released, demonstrating the urgency of more understanding of feedback mechanisms between different stressors and fueling the young scientists in the project with a clear sense of purpose.

First lot of -80 degree samples for omics and pigments arriving with teams 1 and 2.

Slowly, parts of Teams 1, 2 and 3 left this year’s field camp, having done their jobs brilliantly. On the 6th of August, I arguably had the most glorious day of my scientific life. The final team of six scientists (Lou, Shunan, Liane, Elisa, Laura P, and myself) and our field logistics whizz Lasse woke up to blue skies. As luck would have it, that day satellites were passing above our location and we had a full day collecting data from the microscopic scale to cm and then meters to make the full connection of what we see on the ground and what satellites observe from the sky. The ice algae were in full bloom and the ice surface was full of very active ice algae. We walked about 20,000 steps, collecting pictures of the ice, spectral signatures and samples for all sorts of omics. Flights with the drone matching the satellite passing were also done. It was a tiring day that went on throughout the night, with additional midnight sampling to check how the ice algae behave when it is dark. Our luck continued during the few hours of darkness, as a rare event of northern lights put icing on the cake ̶ what a fantastic day.

Left: Ice surface (tens of cm scale). Picture taken from 1.7 m distance from the ice. Photo Alex Anesio

Right: Ice surface picture taken with a handheld microscope (mm scale). The pigmented ice algae is very abundant on the ice (example of a filamentous algae shown by the arrow), which essentially explains a lot of the darkening of the ice. As the ice becomes darker, more melting occurs. Photo Alex Anesio

After that, it was time to start the long process of decamping. Not easy, but it went super-smooth. Almost 4 tonnes of science and camping gear had to be removed from the ice, dried back in Qaqortoq and carefully packed into a container for transport back to Aarhus University at Risø and the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam labs. Most importantly, the ambitious plan set at the beginning of the project paid off. We shipped back 100 kg of frozen (-20 degrees) samples, 150 kg of cold samples and 6 cryoshippers (-80 degrees) full of samples for metabolomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, pigments, viruses, etc. Lots of experiments were run on the ice to investigate how ice algae respond to various physico-chemical conditions and how they interact with the other members of the microbial community, and a range of bacteria, viruses and fungi are being cultured with novel approaches. Terabytes of spectral data (drone imagery and ground truth measurements on cm scale) are now available.

Day or night, dry and wet, Deep Purple never stopped for about 5 weeks on the ice. Photo Alex Anesio.

I could not have had a better field season. A very resilient group of young scientists went through rain and pain and did everything they had planned. Deep Purple transformed wet misery into opportunity. Climate change will likely bring more wetness to the ice sheet. Scientists in Deep Purple did not hesitate to keep collecting samples in the rain, and this might give us a peek preview of how microbial communities behave in the rain on the ice; how the weathering crust is changed in the rain; and how fast it recovers after just a few hours of sun. All these data are fundamentally important for the parametrization of ice albedo into future climate models.

Principal Investigator Alexandre Anesio with Lou, Marie and Laura Perini just after lots of rain and enjoying a gift from the skies.

Another gift from the skies during fieldwork. Photo Alex Anesio.

I just want to finish to say a huge thanks to this amazing group of young scientists, wonderful friend and stimulating PIs and flexible supporting project managers, for their friendship on the ice, resilience, enthusiasm and hard work and for making me eat less meat, although I am not sure I will be able eat lentils again for at least 6 months.

Laura Perini and Alex Anesio finally enjoying a meal with meat without having to cook lentils.

Self on the last morning before leaving the ice. So much easier to decamp on a dry day. Photo Alex Anesio.

DEEP PURPLE PI musings – how a bunch of cryo-minions study ice darkening (or are we mad to put 27 people in a tent camp on the Greenland Ice Sheet in 2021?)

2021-07-06T11:24:00.005+01:00

by Liane G. Benning

As one of 3 @DeepPurpleERCSy PI’s I can only say that I am extremely glad that the summer 2021 DEEP PURPLE field season has finally started!

In 2020 we had 7-8 people in camp and did some great science. We knew that in 2021 we would hire a whole slew of new ECR’s, who will shape the science focus for the rest of the DEEP PURPLE grant duration. We also hoped that maybe humanity would behave and COVID would not still be with us in the summer of 2021, but hope is a good thing.

Nevertheless, in October 2020 we decided to have a ‘bigger, stronger and more ambitious’ summer 2021 season. Deluded, I know, but we wanted to let a large team of eager scientists loose to test our hypotheses and fulfil the science dreams for which @Alex, @Martyn and I (@Liane) were awarded the @ERC Synergy grant DEEP PURPLE.

Below some of my thoughts of how a bunch of DEEP PURPLE ‘minions’ planned and organised a massive summer field season.

Looking back, I often wondered what made us believe that it would be a good and feasible idea? The answer is actually rather simple! We had no choice!

We hired a fantastic and highly diverse group of ECRs from all over the world and each and every one of them came up with brilliant fieldwork plans to address various aspects of our research questions … so we simply had no choice. We had to do it !!

Figure 1 DEEP PURPLE ‘minion’ PIs: (from left to right) our supreme Welsh primo leader Martyn Tranter, the unashamedly European, yet of German descent puzzle master Liane G Benning, the Brazilian/Swedish superstar Alexandre Anesio and our Danish, sword wielding camp master Lasse Twiggs Degn in the appropriate DEEP PURPLE PI attire

Figure 2 The multinational and diverse DEEP PURPLE ESR and PI team are ready to get going for the 2021 field season in Greenland!!

We started with plan A, changed that to plans B, C, D ….. and after ~ 8 months of discussion and changes we are now at plan Q or so. We all know that once on the ice the conditions will force us into plan Z+++++, but we are all prepared for that (well almost all !).

So how did we manage to pull it off?

Well, we have not yet, but DEEP PURPLE team 1a (of 5 teams) is already in Greenland and team 1b just departed Copenhagen airport. Teams 2, 3, 4 and 5… will follow in 5,10…etc days.

Part of the DEEP PURPLE team 1 did a reconnaissance flight yesterday to establish base camp location and to test field communications.

Figure 3 (a) Reconnaissance flight was used to establish base camp location for DEEP PURPLE 2021, test drone and communications via Garmin and Satellite phone - all worked and we are ready to go (map sent as text via Garmin by @Rey Mourot)

Figure 3 (b) Selfie of the reconnaissance crew (Joe Cook, Martyn Tranter, Eva Doting, Rey Mourot and Pilu (pilot from https://www.sermeqhelicopters.gl/) at the DEEP PURPLE 2021 field base camp enjoying the sunshine and assessing conditions for deployment. (photo copyright @Rey Mourot)

Figure 3 (c) Drone image of DEEP PURPLE base camp area in S Greenland; note helicopter at bottom left side for scale (photo provided by @Joe Cook)

So what did it take to make this happen? Here some of my thoughts. I am sure Martyn, Alex, Lasse and the whole team have their own stories.

It all started in our weekly DEEP PURPLE PI discussions. We first agreed on the maximum number of people to have in camp at one time; we started with maximum of 10 people, raised it to 12 … and ended up with maximum 16 people in camp, a total duration of the field season from door to door of 50 days and a total of ~ 570 people days in camp. Let the science rule!!.

With such a big and complex camp, there were many possibilities of how to achieve / manage this, giving everyone enough time to fulfil their science objectives, while remaining within the camp size limits and allowing for changes due to weather etc etc. Planning such a camp needed several puzzles to be solved simultaneously, some of which are briefly shown below. Luckily, having a somewhat anal but organised puzzle-loving German among the PI’s was not a bad thing (the alternative would have been a Welsh or Brazilian ‘organised’ camp!)

So, in early 2021, I started assembling a constantly changing plan and after many, many, many, many, permutations / discussions / changes the current plan foresees 6 consecutive, yet overlapping teams, who will spend a total of ~ 570 people-days in camp.

Figure 4 How to put 27 people in a DEEP PURPLE camp for field work, while not surpassing 16 in camp but giving all the needed on-ice time for the research (Liane G Benning, puzzle no 1 version xx)

To do our work on the ice, we will have 4 lab tents filled with loads of loads of science gear from microscopes to drones and from pumps to pH meters, cryp-shippers etc. etc. (~ 90 boxes and cases worth of it). All this will be powered by a big solar array and two wind turbines. We also thought hard about the fact that our ~570 days on ice also equates to ~ 570 ‘crap’ days on the ice, so our Teams WikiCrapia channel had some – to say the least – interesting suggestions/discussions on this subject.

Figure 5 To allow all our DEEP PURPLE samples to be preserved well we came up with a rotating cryo-shipper schedule (Liane G Benning, puzzle no 2 version xx)

Finally, in camp, each team member will sleep in their individual tent, but we will all cook and eat together in a large mess tent in which we will consume ~1000 kg of food. To make the camp run smoothly, besides tent relocations, day-to-day logistics and keeping power going etc., we also have a camp ‘chores’ rota with daily-designated duties for everyone from preparing breakfast or dinner, washing dishes, fetching water and all the way to the dreaded ‘crap’ job! Ignoring or not doing ones scheduled chores results in automatic assignment of additional ‘toilet-cleaning’ duties! Thus I am sure everyone will do their duties 😉.

Figure 6 DEEP PURPLE summer 2021 camp chores schedule (Liane G Benning, puzzle no 3 version xx)

Only fair play and teamwork will make our camp plans possible, but with this excellent team of people we, the PIs, will be able to just sit back, relax and enjoy camp life in the sun with a nice whiskey or gin and tonic while the camp runs itself like a dream and the science happens 😀

Many more details about how we managed to get here and how we pulled it off once on the ice will come via further blog posts on the DEEP PURPLE website (see already the brilliant RISO ECR preparation blog). Thus, stay tuned and follow us on Twitter.

Fieldwork preparations

2021-06-29T20:59:00.007+01:00

By Lou, Marie, Shunan and Ate

Over the last months, we have been busy preparing for this year’s fieldwork, and with that our activities shifted from science to more practical things. Practical things that might be less fun, but certainly not less important than the science we need to do in the field!

The chance of us meeting a polar bear is very slim, but to prepare for the unlikely the event of one visiting our camp, we needed to complete a rifle training. We had a first theory course during which we learned about analyzing a polar bear's attitude and the subsequent behavior we should have towards the bear. In most cases, polar bears can be scared away and they do not need to be shot. However, it can happen that they are really hungry or protecting their cubs so they adopt an aggressive behavior, and this is why we got a second practical training. We arrived on the shooting range where six printed polar bears were staring back at us. We all learned how to securely manipulate the rifle (always directing at the targets or up in the air), how to load and unload the rifle (Greenlandic half-loading specifically) and how to shoot in different positions from 25 and 50 meters. We all had a really different experience with this shooting training, but we all had in mind that we were about to use highly dangerous tools that hopefully we would not need to use in real life. The shooting range was itself quite impressive, as it is an isolated place with constant shooting noises, and so were the guns as they make noise, they are heavy, and recoil upon firing. The instructor then put us in a stress-situation, where we had to run to the car parking and back and shoot as quickly as possible. Some guns had been sabotaged by the instructor who wanted to test our ability to stay calm, and we all managed to hit the target in time. In the end of the day we left 6 incapacitated polar bear posters behind, and brought home some nervously and emotionally exhausted PhD students.

We then had first aid training, focusing on the Arctic as it is an isolated place with specificities, e.g. it is impossible to call 112 in case of someone feeling bad there. It was more relaxed than the previous training and nice to try to give CPR to the “little Anne” doll. It was surprising how deep you actually have to press for it to work! And it was a reassuring and empowering experience for all of us that we all know how to perform first aid.

Many hours of work involved getting all of our stuff – which was a surprisingly a huge amount – from the UK and Germany to Denmark and onwards to Greenland. Most of us made daily trips to the basement where more and more packages arrived every day. Steadily our offices became a warehouse filled with cardboard boxes and bubble wrap which were then replaced by plastic boxes as we repacked all of it to fit onto the pallets to then go in a container.

Eventually the actual warehouse was mostly occupied with Deep Purple materials… Pallet after pallet of consumables, tents, sleeping bags, camping gear, food. Speaking of food, a combined effort made sure that we got some of the most important items included in our inventory. Without (real) coffee, parmigiano, chocolate, etc., certain colleagues just wouldn’t function on the ice.

More practical jobs followed, like modifying tents, weighing all boxes, packing all boxes on pallets, moving pallets, re-packing them again. Most of us became very proficient with moving pallets around, and the warehouse looked more like a game of tetris. In fact, some of us started dreaming about pallet positions… Two of us also went on a road trip to Aalborg with a van full of chemicals (made it just in time for the boat!). Last but not least, lab tents arrived that had to be set up as a test. After weekends and evenings spent, a full shipping container was finally ready in time to go to Greenland.

In parallel to the packaging tasks is the drone experiment conducted by Ate and Shunan with the help of Lasse. The drone is a DJI M600 Pro and has a payload of 6 kg and will carry the hyperspectral camera on it. The test consisted of several steps. First we practiced our skills in drone simulator. After crashing enough simulated drones, we finally came to the stage of flying the real one. We tested the both the manual and autopilot flight mode. We designed one flight mission to draw a “DP” on the map. Having got the flying part ready, we mounted the gimbal stabilizer on the drone. It will help stabilize the onboard instrument while flying. Eventually the drone is equipped with a hyperspectral camera and a LiDAR onboard.

We could almost forget that there are still experiments to do, so after the container left for shipping, it was back to polishing protocols, last-minute ordering and waiting anxiously for the last things to arrive. Departure is now fast approaching. Some think there’s too little time, while at the same time it cannot happen soon enough. The massive operation that needed so much preparation is now becoming real! Which still feels a bit unreal. And we’re all looking forward to meet each other on the ice after many online meetings across borders. In the end it was very hyggelig to work long hours in the warehouse together, and we will definitely keep up this work spirit on the ice!

Introduction to the Mineral-Microbe-Interface team

2021-05-04T12:52:00.008+01:00

The Mineral-Microbe-Interface (or "MMI") team, made up of seven early career scientists and led by Liane G. Benning, are based at the German Research Centre for Geosciences, GFZ, in Potsdam, Germany. Their research goal this summer is to assess the compositions, fluxes, rates and interactions between of all types of light absorbing particulates (microbes, minerals, black carbon). The team will focus on assessing variations in carbon and other crucial element cycles with a particular focus on the role of pigmented snow and ice algae. By combining molecular microbiological / organic geochemical and mineralogical sampling and analyses our quest is to elucidate how microbe-mineral-interface reactions are affected by delivery/on-ice processing/retention or downstream removal during melting and during overwintering.

Chris Trivedi, PhD (Postdoc)

Chris' research interests include using sequencing technologies and bioinformatics to better understand the role that microorganisms play in glacial melt dynamics. In particular, for fieldwork in 2021, he will focus on potential seasonal changes in snow/ice algae via changes in pigment and EPS production using metagenomic and metatranscriptomic sequencing, paired with metabolomics. Additionally, he is interested in the role bacteria play in conjunction with the algae and what mutualistic relationships may exist between the two domains.

Stefanie Lutz, PhD (Postdoc)

Steffi's research focuses on the microbial diversity and functions of glacial surfaces. In particular, she is interested in the role of cryophilic algae in these ecosystems. Her goal is to get a better understanding of their distribution, as well as their genetic and metabolic inventory that allows them to thrive in these extreme environments. This will be accomplished by using various 'omics' techniques and bioinformatics.

Elisa Katharina Peter (PhD student)

Elisa is interested in the metabolic fingerprint and adaptation of glacial microorganisms, and the factors allowing them to survive and thrive in such extreme environments. Her focus is on determining metabolic triggers and controls of pigment formation in the snow and ice algae that cause darkening and increased melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Using a combination of various high resolution mass spectrometric techniques, Elisa targets the variations in primary and secondary algal metabolites and how these change as a function of diurnal and seasonal bloom developments.

Rey Mourot (PhD Student)

"How do micro-organisms survive in extreme environments?" is one of the questions motivating Rey's scientific interest. As part of the DEEP PURPLE project, their research focuses on glacial microbial communities to better understand how mutualistic interactions could help organisms to survive through the arctic winter, when temperatures, light conditions and the lack of liquid water represent a major stress. With this focus, they are using computed tomography and microscopy techniques for visualising the arrangement of minerals and micro-organisms in ice core, coupled with various 'omics' studies of snow and ice.

Pamela E. Rossel, PhD (Postdoc)

Pamela is captivated by the molecular messages encoded in complex organic mixtures. Her studies cover a wide range of environments, going from hot hydrothermal systems to cold sediments from the deep Arctic Ocean. Using ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry, she deciphers these molecular messages to better understand the source and fate of organic carbon species. In the DEEP PURPLE project, she will evaluate microbial carbon dynamics in ice/snow algae dominated systems, with the focus on how particulate and dissolved organic matter are produced, degraded, preserved, and potentially exported.

Helene Hoffmann, PhD (incoming Postdoc)

Helene is a specialist in chemical and physical techniques to decipher past atmospheric conditions in Alpine and polar ice samples. After a Physics PhD she spent fourteen months in Antarctica as part of the 38th overwintering team at the German research base Neumayer III taking care of the Air Chemistry Observatory. Now she is a postdoc at the University of Cambridge studying paleoclimate proxies in Antarctica as part of the WACSWAIN (Warm Stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet in the last Interglacial) project. In her 1st Deep Purple summer season she will focus on the origin and fate of the dry and wet deposited particulates deposited onto the Greenland ice sheet and their interactions with the microorganisms during blooms.

Helen Feord (incoming postdoc)

Helen is currently finishing her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, studying the cellular mechanisms responsible for the daily rhythms of intracellular ion concentrations in a model green alga. Her research examined endogenous circadian rhythms, to understand how eukaryotic cells self-regulate energy availability and use throughout the 24 hours of the day. Building on this project, she is interested in studying biological rhythms and cellular homeostasis in an ecological context, and, in particular, how algal species adapt to stressful and changing conditions. Helen will join DEEP PURPLE as a postdoc to study function of eukaryotic algae present on the Greenland ice sheet. She will study diurnal and seasonal changes in algal community composition and gene expression as well as algal responses to various abiotic stressors. She hopes this will give us a better understanding of how these species both respond to and anticipate dynamic environmental change.

Some highlights from 2019 and 2020.

Our team at the snow/ice interface on Mittivikatt glacier in 2019. Photo: Laura Halbach.

The top of the ice core is full of dark material that consists of minerals and many many ice algae that change the watering crust (top-left). Rey Mourot and Martyn Tranter digging a snow pit at QAS-U in 2020 (top-right). At 2 am the sun almost sets in the camp (bottom-left). Photos: Liane G Benning. GrIS 2020 camp as seen from drone (bottom-right). Photo: Rey Mourot.

Introduction to the 'Weathering Crust' team

2021-03-05T16:17:00.001+00:00

The weathering crust (or "WC") team, led by Prof Martyn Tranter, are based at Aarhus University and are responsible for measuring, monitoring and modelling ice surface change. This includes all processes that affect the albedo (brightness) of the surface and control how rapidly the ice melts. Of particular importance are the changing architecture of the surface “weathering crust” – a thin porous layer that forms seasonally across the Greenland Ice Sheet’s melting zone, the accumulation of light-absorbing glacier algae, and the drainage of melt water towards the sea. These processes are interlinked in complex ways and determine the contribution of the ice sheet to global sea levels. The team is currently made up of four researchers:

Dr Joseph Cook (Senior Researcher)

Joseph is responsible for the overall work package strategy and has particular expertise in albedo measurement and modelling. He has developed the BioSNICAR models for calculating the albedo-reducing effects of glacier algae and published extensively on the interactions between biological and physical processes on ice surfaces. His field work experience includes >15 on-ice camps in Greenland in all seasons and he has explored deep beneath the ice sheet surface in a series of ice caving expeditions.

Shunan Feng (PhD student)

Shunan is interested in understanding the process and climate response of earth surface, particularly time series analysis by combining in-situ measurements, remote sensing and other geospatial data. This had led him to focus on remote sensing during his bachelor study and specialize in glaciology during master study in Uppsala University. He also worked as remote sensing associate in the International Committee of the Red Cross. His role in Deep Purple will be trying to monitor the variability of the albedo and biogeoprocessing of rotting ice surfaces in the Dark Zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet at different scales. The understanding of the albedo evolution of the GrIS will require unprecedented spatial, spectral and temporal resolution datasets from the ground and the air, new techniques for bridging across spatial scales and advanced analytical techniques for spatiotemporal changes. Novel algorithms of albedo calculation, methods of spectral analysis in detecting, classifying the glacier algae and estimating the pigment concentration etc. will be experimented to link the variation of albedo with glacier algae growth. We will try to bridge the gap between field measurement, UAV, and various satellite platform and upscale the optimized methods to large area.

Lou Chevrollier (PhD student)

Lou studied energy and environmental engineering in France before finding her way into natural sciences. She is interested in micro scale processes and before joining the DP project, she has been working with plankton and metal pollution combining modelling and field-oriented methods. She is also fascinated by light interactions, from the diffraction patterns on butterfly wings to the atmospheric particle scattering coloring the sky in blue and the high reflectivity of cryospheric surfaces, blinding us when hiking in mountains. In the WC group, she will be looking into the small scale processes driving albedo variability, trying to disentangle the role of the different light absorption particles (LAPs) and weathered crust dynamics in the darkening, combining field measurements and modelling experiments. In particular, she will work on refining numerical models to better reproduce and understand the role of glacier algae among the other light absorbing particles and within the changing ice structure.

Dr Ian Stevens (Postdoc)

Ian completed his PhD exploring the eco-hydrology of glacial surfaces at Aberystwyth University, studying the physical parameters of the near-surface weathering crust and the microbial abundance of surface meltwaters at field sites across the Northern Hemisphere from the high Arctic to the European Alps. His research interest focuses on elucidating hydrological processes within the weathering crust, exploring water, particulate and microbial fluxes through this aquifer to the channelised supraglacial hydrological system. To achieve this goals, Ian has a passion for method development, including designing and building custom sensors to measure previously unrecorded parameters. Ian’s role in DEEP PURPLE will be to continue to obtain empirical measurements of the weathering crust, informing modelling and upscaling approaches, and enabling assessment the provision of water to ice-surface algae.

Team member introduction: Ate

2020-12-02T20:13:00.001+00:00

By Ate Jaarsma

I’m Ate, one of the newer additions of the Deep Purple team. Since I started recently, I thought I would introduce myself a bit. In the beginning of this year I graduated from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, where I got my background in molecular biology. During my master I have mostly been busy with microbiology, in particular competition between bacteria. In my research projects I worked with engineering of antimicrobial peptides, and Contact-Dependent Inhibition (during a stay at Uppsala University). I’m happy to continue this line of work now at Aarhus University as part of the Deep Purple project. In a nutshell, I am looking into the chemical warfare that takes place between microbes living on the Greenland Ice Sheet in their fight for food and space.

Still, the Deep Purple project is very inter-disciplinary and because of that, the field was a bit new to me. The last three months I have been reading a lot, and I found out how much I didn´t know… But a plan for me to work on the coming years is now in place! This has all been made possible in part by incredibly helpful colleagues and Danes in general, who made the move to Denmark really easy. The transition to a new country has been smooth so I felt settled quickly, allowing me to focus on the science. Most of all, it’s wonderful to be back at work. This summer, my productivity was a bit limited to growing vegetables, building an insect hotel, painting (not in the art-sense), and drawing (in the art-sense). So it is amazing to also do science again, most importantly in a real lab with real colleagues around. Something I certainly missed during the past lock-down. Starting a PhD is a dream come true, which still feels unreal now and then when I’m biking along the beautiful Roskilde Fjord to work in the morning… I´m excited for what is to come!

Tutorial for an exciting Zoom call: first full team meeting!

2020-11-16T08:50:00.001+00:00

by Lou Chevrollier, Marie Bolander and Ate Jaarsma

Just like our purple algae on the ice, we were supposed to colonise the GFZ Potzdam on the 12th of November for the first full team gathering. The covid-19 virus interrupted our plans -and similarly another may prevent the algae from spreading on the ice… that's for Laura P. to discover!-, so we have practiced our Zoom skills instead. Here are some observations from a few of the newest recruits to the team who joined the meeting with the entire group for the first time. We'll take you to our 6 steps tutorial on how to turn a 5hours zoom meeting into a non-boring, and even exciting experience…

Start the meeting by introducing lots of weird names everyone has to repeat 3 times to get it right. Laura P. took care of warming up our brains by telling us about viruses on the ice, as well as the efforts currently ongoing to culture the famous purple algae. She introduced one of her favourite fungus, which is able to swim and is named Chytridiomycota. Later, Martyn tried desperately to pronounce it correctly… but to be fair, we probably would have also failed, after 4 hours of Zoom.

Make sure you have a brave member to dare asking for breaks even when the PI chairing suggests we should go on. The problem when you are discussing exciting topics with interested and curious people is that you're very likely to go over schedule. Then, two solutions arise: either you extend the planning or you cut the breaks… There, you need someone to stand up for the negotiation: no way, you can't bargain with snack breaks! Thanks Eva!

Get the discussion emulsify so much that PhD students want to revise their (freshly created) plans. This is the point where you find out your plan will never be set in stone, and communicating your ideas may leave you with more questions than you had to begin with. But that is a good thing and really confirms that these scientific meetings are worth all the Zoom time. Ate is now on its way to update his plan to an even better one!

Make space for weird discoveries such as the presence of testosterone on the ice by Laura H. and the possibility of remaining shower-free for 4 weeks of fieldwork (this time we will not mention any name…)

Listen to the PIs trying to reassure the new PhDs students on their potential apprehension about camping on the ice: "It's not that cold, I was sleeping in underwear!" Thanks Alex, that was the most convincing argument!

Last but not least: build a team of which members listen to the others, are happy to learn, share, and help

Although we would all have enjoyed this first meeting to happen at GFZ, this online version did not prevent us from sharing our respective works in a positive atmosphere. Getting feedback on our work is essential to make progress, as other members can help spot mistakes, give another view angle on a dataset, introduce new methods or suggest different implications of the results. In addition, carrying a synergetic project, especially in time of covid-19, definitely requires getting in touch with each other to keep a coherent direction and develop collaboration between members. It became clear that the synergy between us is working, as many collaboration ideas have been set out on the spot during these discussions. Having a multi-disciplinary group of people with a wide range of expertise is definitely a great bonus in this aspect. We also discussed upcoming fieldwork, and what to deal with when living on the ice for several weeks. For us fieldwork-newbies, it was reassuring to hear that we can build on the experience of the rest of the team to help us stay warm, nourished, well-rested, polar bear and crevasse safe, but most of all, happy.

At the end of this meeting, we all came to the same conclusion : "I learned so much, and I'm so excited for what's to come!"… and our smiles on the picture below say it all.

Luckily it was still possible to get a group photo (thanks Elisa!), with the bonus of peeking into everybody's home, such as Chris and Eva who were apparently ready for fieldwork…

PS: The Deep Purple team grew quickly over the last few months, and is expanding still, so expect to see the newest members introduce themselves in this blog over the coming time… Stay safe, and tuned!

The post-fieldwork blues

2020-10-07T16:13:00.000+01:00

by Eva Doting

While we were enjoying our best meal in weeks served by NiNu's in Qaqortoq, Greenland, on our last evening with the complete fieldwork team, the wise Martyn Tranter warned us about the post-fieldwork blues. We had just come back from almost three weeks on the ice and were feeling all kinds of exhausted and grateful as well as a little confused about returning to a world where COVID-19 was still very much a reality. Somehow, I had been expecting that the world would have returned to normal and sensible while we'd been off the grid, and it was a bit of a disappointment to find out the opposite was true..

Beers and big smiles after a successful expedition, several showers and amazing food at NiNu's.

Now, almost 2.5 months after returning home from the first DEEP PURPLE expedition, I can safely say that, at least in my case, Martyn's warning was definitely warranted. As per his advice, I scheduled in some rest; five days to visit my parents in the Netherlands. Lesson learned: I need more than five days to rest, get rid of all the tight knots in my body from changing-clothes-in-a-tent-manoeuvres and carrying odd-sized items across an ice sheet or heli-pad and to come up with a post-fieldwork game plan. Once back in the lab, I got back to work on a whole bunch of samples that needed my attention, both from 2020 fieldwork but also things that I had abandoned when we rushed into the first COVID-19 lockdown back in March. While I really love my PhD research and my colleagues, my head was still somewhere between Greenland and the lab. I feel a little bad about the number of times I told my supervisor Alex: "I really want to do this, but I just DON'T want to do it right now...!!!" After spending crazy hours preparing for fieldwork during a pandemic, not knowing if we'd be able to go, COVID tests, traveling with masks on, an incredible sense of relief once we landed and days on the ice filled with science, fresh air and focussing on staying warm and fed, it was overwhelming to have a constant stream of news and indoor work again.

It took a while, but I am finally back in the swing of things: I have exciting samples to analyse, intimidating data to process, planning of new lab work to look forward to and amazing colleagues to discuss data and science with. Lots more fun to come!

Some insights into the struggles and joy of fieldwork in a camp on the ice

2020-07-31T15:20:00.003+01:00

By Laura Halbach

Being back in Copenhagen, I feel happy about the regained comfort of modern civilisation: having a comfy mattress to sleep on, no distractions of a flapping tent wall mimicking the noise of bear paws scratching over the tent during the night and a warm and proper shower. While trying to get back into my normal work routine, I am using the opportunity to recap some of the exciting moments on the ice while the memories are still fresh and adding my perspective to the stories below.

The last weeks before Greenland: What a marathon!!

Sitting in the plane to Greenland gave me mixed feelings of excitement, exhaustion and relief. The last weeks before our departure was a marathon and my mind could barely relax, being constantly worried about weather I am forgetting anything. What about all the last minute orders I placed, will everything arrive? Did I mix up anything? Was 0.2 µm really the right pore size for analysis x? In the end, you have what you have on the ice. Knowing that the GFZ team brings their own science kit made me feel a bit more relaxed, since this will allow for some improvisation if something has been forgotten.

First week on the ice: Getting the science started

Arriving at the camp location makes me feel excited: I participated in a range of field work before, but often I could enjoy the comfort of a ship or at least a hut, but now we all would have to deal with living and working in tents. This means limited power supply and exposure to the weather (which turned out to be actually not as bad as I expected after Jason’s warnings about the heavy rainfall that is typical for this region). But that also means, having the possibility to observe the ice crust, the microbes and meltwater dynamics RIGHT OUTSIDE your tent. How cool is that?! Our first week was all about setting up the camp, the lab, our science gear and already spotting some good locations for potential sampling and experimental sites.

Observing cryoconites developing right outside my tent (top-left) and my beautiful bottle incubations (top-right) and me being happy that they worked out (bottom). Photos Laura Halbach

Second week: Science is running and daily routines are established

During the following days, the science took off (as did the algae bloom) and I started to take care of my first experiment: an in situ fertilisation of the glacial microbial community with different nutrients and minerals. I decided that fertilising two times a day would be best, as the nutrients may be quickly washed off. The gardening-like activity (it looked like I am watering imaginary plants) turned out to be a great and relaxing start of the day for me, being a non-morning person. The morning routine was complemented with some nice and creamy porridge and a big smile from Alex, who is always in a good mood and doesn’t mind spreading it. Thanks to Lasse, we ended up with two nice lab tents, each of them fitted with designated lab tables, which were sawed nicely matching the tent shapes.

Our ice camp at the beginning (left) with lots of snow cover and towards the end (right) with melted snow and some melt ponds and streams developing on the ice surface. Photos Laura Halbach

Third week: Science, science, science and wait… is this our last week ?!

During some days of A LOT of rain, I got reminded of how little fun camping in rain is. I try to see the positive side of it and remind myself that we might be lucky to the rain signal in our data sets. The slightly lowered mood in the camp during the days of rain, was contrasted by delicious food cooked in the kitchen tent during all evenings. I still remember that smell of the rich potato, cheese combination a la cuisine francaise by our young star chef Rey, that was just the perfect meal for that weather… So delicious! Somewhere in the middle of our expedition, I started to count our remaining days on the ice and realised that there was not thaaat much time left. The strong rain event showed me how easily all our science activities could be interrupted. Therefore, the next days with better weather would be the time to start the second experiment: again a fertilisation approach but this time under “ex situ” conditions in small glass bottles, which were left on the ice for 24 hours. The bottles were spiked with stable isotopes (C13 and N15) and additionally amended with a phosphorous solution and mineral mixes, the latter kindly provided and prepared by Liane and Rey. Thanks to the big support by Katharina Kitzinger from the Max-Planck-Institute in Germany, the experiment will give new insights into the productivity and nutrient uptake by the whole community, as well as on a single cell level. But since the Greenlandic weather gods don’t seem to like me ending experiments, just as last year, the final sample analysis and filtration work got interrupted by a storm approaching the camp site. Securing the camp site had first priority and we had to take down one of our lab tents, move the other lab tent and secure the whole camp site. Me, trying to be happy that we are not leaving the camp site already on that day (-> = processing ALL samples in the hotel), then rushed through a series of last sample processing and filtration work, trying to use every last hour that was left during our last two days for science. This involved long nights (not too long, since I get far too easily scared by sitting alone in the dark in a tent and again, hearing the noise of potential bear paws outside), early mornings and the support by the whole team, and particularly the big help by Alex and Rey.

Video of the beginning of the storm.

This could have been one of the last pictures taken of Alex: it was the night of the big storm and the night when Alex was almost blown off the ice sheet in his tent (see his video further down), luckily Lasse our hero could save him during the night. Photo Laura Halbach

One of my favourite pictures: showing Alex, in the back, Eva and Rey filtering and sitting at the table and Liane microscoping on the floor, since this was the very last spot available in the tent. The night before, we had to take down the other lab tent, so all lab activities had to be merged together on very little space. Luckily, everyone is easy-going and Liane and Alex, don’t mind improvising. Photo Laura Halbach

Great lab processing team :) Photo Laura Halbach

It took us until the very last day, until all science gear was stored away safely into boxes, locked by several layers of duct tape, that we, finally, took the time to go out for a walk and explore our glacier more. This last evening on the ice was rewarded with an exceptionally beautiful sunset.

I am very proud on what we have achieved, the great team effort that made all of this possible and I can’t wait to see what will come out of the experiments!

Liane and Rey happy (left), ESR's Team (right). Photo Laura Halbach

Last evening on the ice. Photo Laura Halbach

Great team! Photo Laura Halbach

Snow to ice transitions

2020-07-29T11:16:00.007+01:00

By Liane G. Benning

Despite a few days of sleep and lying low, I don’t know how to properly recover from this marvellous and, compared to many international colleagues, unique opportunity that we were awarded. Against all odds and with preparations and shipments that could have been for nothing, in the end the team made it onto the ice and we managed to carry out a glorious (and at times harder than expected) 3-week field season in the summer of 2020 in Greenland.

This success was an enormous team effort and as Martyn and Alex already mentioned it is all down to the 3 young ESR’s (Eva, Laura and Rey) and to Lasse (our camp manager and all round fixer par excellence) as well as the help of the local pilot crew around Pilu from www.sermeqhelicopters.gl that it all worked out in the end.

We are all safely back now. Our travel to Greenland was preceded by an individual pre-departure Covid1 SARS CoV-2 test, if required the 5-day Greenland quarantine and an antibody test on the ice (thanks Alex). While on ice and away from ‘the world’, we felt safe and that the ‘real’ world was far away and COVID19 became almost irrelevant; viruses were only a part of the microbiome that we studied and only an issue in our snow and ice samples and not in/on us.

We had a fabulous – yet at times tough time - strong winds and way, way more rain than we wanted is just one part of the story. We managed to do fabulous science, perform complex experiments, do in situ measurements and collect snow-ice core transitions – all stories that the ERS’s will tell in their own time. We had a well working camp with great food and high spirits even in the most dismal times and a team that I would not exchange for anything. Thanks all !

For me scientifically it was also a perfect start and snow-ice darkening transition season. Based on our work at S6 during Black and Bloom, I was almost ready to maybe accept that snow algae are less of a player in the Greenland darkening game. Alas, this season restored my faith in snow algae and their crucial role in the melt enhancing and albedo lowering processed on Greenland. We caught an ideal snowy start (crevasses notwithstanding), with plenty of red snow algae patches all over our camp and work area; with time, melt proceeded as expected and with the rain and strong winds some of these red snow algae patches melted away and transitioned, over the 3 weeks, into dark, ice-algae dominated surfaces; yet some red snow algae fields still persisting until the end. We also saw during our dash to QAS-U that red snow fields were everywhere; even Pilu, our helicopter pilot said he sees them all the time when he flies over the ice sheet. We even saw them at depth (but that is another story); thus, my beloved snow algae are still in the game; phew….

Flying over the dark ice of South Greenland reveals how albedo changes fast during melting

These snow-ice transition processes that we closely observed and lived through this summer were part of our Deep Purple hypothesis, yet they turned out to be way more fascinating than we all assumed. Melting, enhanced and highly affected by rain and wind, gave us even more insights into what we don’t know and how we need to proceed if we want to disentangle the mechanisms and roles of the individual components in this complex, ever changing system; this field season also showed us a likely scenario of ‘what is to come’ in many other areas in Greenland and the Arctic. It showed us how little we understand these fast changing supraglacial systems, where darkening is not just unavoidable but governed by a very complex, highly logical and tight interplay between physics (hydrology) biology (microbes) and chemistry (minerals and soot) that we still have to decipher.

Living on ice and doing science on ice has led to many funny stories and the videos and photos are plentiful and these will emerge slowly in subsequent blogs. Below just a smidgen of those I took.

The top of the ice core is full of dark material that consists of minerals and many many ice algae that change the watering crust

Blue ice coring with a blue ice corer ;-)

A happy filtration tent (note expert tables made by Lasse Deng) and with Laura Hallbach, Alex Anesio, Eva Doting and Rey Mourot all stressing our solar array with many pumps running simultaneously

Back and Happy

2020-07-27T14:22:00.003+01:00

By Alexandre Anesio

After almost three weeks camped on the ice without any internet and completely detached of the world, we are now all back home to Denmark, Germany and the UK. Samples are safe in our laboratories at a variety of temperatures from -80 to +4 degrees C for a range of chemical and microbiological analyses. I still can hardly believe that we could mobilize such paraphernalia for fieldwork on the Greenland ice sheet in times of COVID-19. An extremely efficient logistics manager (thank you so much Lasse Twiggs Degn), flexible and welcoming local community and very strong minded and willing PhD students, postdocs and PIs made this possible. No regrets. I have learned a lot of new things about the life cycle of glacial algae, compared to previous years. A combination of good timing and weather conditions allowed us to have arrived just at the snow transition to bare ice. This provided the opportunity to collect a bunch of ice cores that shows where glacier algae lie during the winter, the impact of hydrological processes, such as snowmelt and rain on the distribution of glacier algae and how glacier algae colonize white surfaces to darken the ice during the summer season.

The dark spots in this ice surface are almost entirely composed by ice algae and translucent minerals. By scrapping the surface into a small pile of ice, one can clearly see the pink-purple coloration of the ice that contributes to the melt of the Greenland ice sheet. Photo Alex Anesio

The PhD students (Eva Doting, Laura Halbach, Rey Mourot) and logistics manager (Lasse Twiggs Degn) did such a brilliant job through the fieldwork and got everything they came for. Photo Eva Doting

PI Martyn Tranter was “wood for every construction” (to use a Brazilian expression, meaning that he was in high demand). His albedo and ablation pole measurements were in high demand by all the PhD students. Photo Eva Doting

PI Liane Benning under high wind conditions, preparing to collect a box of surface ice. Photo Eva Doting

Crevasses and polar bears are overrated. Wind turned out to be, at least for me, a much bigger nuisance. This is a video from inside Alex’s tent…

I have learned a lot scientifically, but I am also delighted that I have learned so much from my colleagues during long conversations in the field. Here is what I learned:

The film Titanic is classified as a romantic comedy by one of the PhD students.
The sound description of drinking a pint of beer is “puff, puff, puff”, which is quite impressive since I would need at least 20 puffs to get through a pint.
I have learned new expressions in Danish. Der er ingen ko på isen (no cow on the ice) means ”no problems” and I thought it was pretty appropriate considering where we were. However, my wife, who is Swedish, claims that the Danes copied the expression from the Swedes….
I could not have guessed this, but some people think football is boring.
If you are hungry in an ice camp, even super overcooked macaroni with a half-heated tuna in water can actually be tasty.
Cucumbers are the fourth state of water. Ok, this is my own….

Beyond the great companionship and exciting science during these 3 weeks, I have also been constantly reminded how beautiful the Greenland ice sheet is and the feeling to be surrounded by ice and amazing skies.

Photo Alex Anesio

First field season completed – blooming algae everywhere

2020-07-22T12:15:00.003+01:00

by Martyn Tranter

We left the field on Sunday (19th July), began preparing our equipment and samples for return immediately, and Alex, Laura and I returned to Denmark with samples in cryo-shippers and ice boxes yesterday (Tuesday, 21st). I am writing this short piece in the comfort of a hotel room at Copenhagen Airport. Eva, Lasse, Liane and Rey are finishing the packing in Qaqortoq today, and will return tomorrow. We’ve had a pretty intense four weeks, and we all need some time to recharge, but it was well worth the hardships, as I hope the following sample shows.

Alex, Eva, Laura, Lasse and Jason Box (from GEUS) literally got off the plane in Narsarsuaq on June 30th, walked into the Sermeq helicopter and were at our field site within an hour of landing. They effectively quarantined for COVID on the ice. Liane, Rey and I tested negative again before we left. We set up camp near the PROMICE (https://www.promice.dk/home.html) KAS M site.

Our camp site, near to the PROMICE QAS M weather station (which is ~200 m to the right out of sight).

I honestly thought that the southern tip of Greenland would be as warm as it could get for summer fieldwork on the ice sheet, but Jason had warned that you get a full house of variable weather most weeks. We experienced the “balmy south” for a couple of days only – beautiful weather, bright blue skies and no need for an outer jacket.

Eva and Liane dining al fresco in the (rare) warm evening sun.

Otherwise, we had camped in a cold summer with plenty of rain and lots of wind. Fortunately for Jason, he left after a few days, having installed a rain gauge on a nunataq near by. This seemed to provoke the glacier gods into an attempt to wash it away with a downpour or too. We’ll certainly know if the automatic rain recording works, and the data will be invaluable in our understanding of how the darkening ice surface evolved. The practical consequences of being wet while camping on ice are a pain. You’re cold, in takes a long time to warm up, and drying your wet things inside cold tents takes a long time. The dank smell lingers on your clothing too.

It’s hard to capture cold, wind and rain in a photo, but you get a good impression of us being cold and tired from this photo. Liane, Alex, Laura and Lasse are, what Aussies call, pooped.

Did the glacier algae care about the cold, wet and windy weather? Not a bit. They were everywhere, happily multiplying and colonising new surfaces.

A shot from a helicopter ride out of camp mid-season towards the snowline. The ice surface is black almost as the snow melts.

The black circle is a 52mm lens cap, but the clumps of black and black covering to the ice crystals are largely glacier algae. They thrived everywhere there was melt.

One of my favourite microbiologists, Alex, always happy when he’s looking at glacier algae through his microscope.

Our three Ph.D. students, Eva, Laura and Rey worked flat out and around the clock to compensate for time lost due to rain and high winds, Alex and Liane ensured that the lab tents were functioning as best they could, and did great jobs sampling and filtering, and Lasse became our key man in building and maintaining a functional camp, keeping our personal tents safe, and patrolling all hours of the night to ensure that we didn’t blow away in the storms. We all were well down on good quality sleep, but Lasse was more machine than human during the worse of the winds. We would have pulled off the ice early had it not been for his skill and calm in keeping us safe.

Rey about to retrieve his first ice core from under a 1.5m deep snowpack. We are going to learn how glacier algae “hibernate” over the winter. Microbiologists will hate this turn of phrase for sure.

Laura’s incubations basking in the sunlight.

Laura looking a lot happier in the warm of the science tent.

Liane ensuring that the science tent was productive. Rey demonstrating that gloves need to be worn at all times when processing microbial samples.

The last week on fieldwork was something of a frenzy, with lost time being made up at the expense of sleep and breaks. Lasse did a sterling job working around us to ensure that all was packed up as early as possible, ready for the helicopter decamp.

A sample of packed up camp and trash, ready for return to Qaqortoq by helicopter.

Eva watching Lasse deal with the first sling load out of camp.

Lasse, more machine than man, after a great three weeks of keeping our bodies, souls and the camp together.

My final thanks go to Pilu Nielsen of Sermeq Helicopters (https://www.sermeqhelicopters.gl/). He could not have been more helpful, flexible and professional, and is ultra-knowledgeable about local conditions, ad who to get hold of to do what. Expeditions and holiday makers, he is top drawer and gets my unreserved recommendation.

There will be other field and science blogs to follow. The bottom line is that we learnt tons, and that we have a load of exciting samples to process. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Picking a camping site and a first helicopter trip

2020-06-30T13:21:00.006+01:00

By Rey Mourot

Hi all! Rey here. I'm the youngest member of the Greenland 2020 team - as my supervisor would say, I'm "the team baby". As a short introduction, I am a future PhD student in Liane's team at the GFZ, and I am the "ice corer" of the Deep Purple team. I will study the organization and composition of microbial communities minerals in the columns of ice, with a special focus on the snow - ice transition - that's where everything happens! I already had (and will have) many "first times" during this expedition! First time in Greenland, first time seeing all kinds of new species of plants and birds, trying new food... But on Friday, June 27 was my first time flying in an helicopter. You should certainly read Martyn's post about our arrival in Narsarsuaq. On our first day here Liane, Martyn and myself had a first look IRL at the ice sheet section we were interested in for setting up our camp. Following many discussion with Jason Box, who will accompany the Deep Purple team for the first part of our Summer 2020 field season, we explored and selected a good camp site. We left the first part of our cargo on the ice, so that we can set the camp fast once our real adventure begins, when the Aarhus team - Eva, Laura, Alex, Lasse, and Jason will join us tomorrow.

Before flying, in the morning, after hesitation and delays due to low clouds covering the mountains, we received the OK call from Pilu, our helicopter pilot and fixer, that he will come to pick us up in Narsarsuaq airport, direction: the ice sheet! The helicopter was already packed full with Zarges boxes and bags for our field camp.

Fig 1. My 1st helicopter experience

As the clouds disappeared, this first flight in the helicopter was crazily beautiful. The surroundings of Narsarsuaq is full of mountains of all sizes, some covered by green mosses and some species of flowers I still need to investigate. The melted snow forms diverse ponds of translucent water reflecting the sun.

Fig 2. My 1st iceberg landscapes

As we flew by I saw my first real icebergs (another first time!, my previous icebergs sightings were on a glacial river in Iceland), small farms, sheep... and finally, the massive ice sheet. Even if it appears bright white on the distance, as we got closer it became clear that the surface was actually pretty dark due to a ton of dark particles (minerals and algae) that we can see from the helicopter.

Fig 3. Dark ice surface next to Nunatak

We asked Pilu about how the ice sheet melted during the past years, and he estimated a retreat of more than 15 meters a year in some places. Even on a marvellous trip like this one, climate change is frightening...

As we finally approached our intended camp site area, Pilu had to try to land at different places.

There was still plenty of snow (and visible red snow algae) on the ground and we had to land a bit lower to find a perfect spot, but here it is.

For a small insight on how we're choosing it, see below!

Smart criteria for a good camping site:

- on the bare ice: even if we chose a broad area with no big crevasses to set our camp, the snow is covering potential dangerous patches. So, safety first!

- not too far away from a small river, which we will use as drinking water source, water for doing the dishes... and all human functions that we still do, even during a science mission on an ice sheet.

- slightly elevated, so our tents can be kept safe from melted snow / slush avalanches

Science criteria for a good camping site:

- not too far from a promice.dk met station

- not too far from a Nunatak (rock promontory in the middle of the ice field) where Jason will install a rain gauge to monitor precipitations.

- not too far from the snow line so we can follow the melt and algal bloom progression and development but still be able to collect good transitional snow to ice samples

Over the 3 weeks of camping we will have to move our tents regularly anyway, to follow the snow line and find a new, safer, and less wet spot as the landscape is changing. We found the perfect spot, and even saw a beautiful patch of bright red snow algae on the way! Our camp will be at ~710m above sea level.

Once we arrived, we disembarked and remained on the ice in the brilliant sun and Pilu flaw back to Qakortoq to pick up the remaining boxes that were waiting for us since the spring - sent there for an April mission which I was supposed to be part of and that was supposed to be with Alex, Jason, and Masashi; alas Covid19 happened!

We were more than happy to stay for one hour and a half on the ice sheet under a bright sun and beautiful blue sky. Let me tell you, time goes fast when you can listen to Martyn and Liane talking about polar bear and research stories in such a cool landscape. As I'm in charge of the GoPro, I was glad to record some of the weird things the PIs could do to celebrate the finding of the-perfect-site!

Fig 4. PI’s being silly

We left our boxes on the ice, and they are waiting to be united with the remaining cargo tomorrow when we come back, this time with the full team...

After a final return flight …. over marvellous landscapes … my 1st ‘helo’ flight was over and we had a well-deserved beer after this successful day!

Unmasking en route to Narasarsuaq

2020-06-28T18:45:00.000+01:00

by Martyn Tranter

Elderly masked person in helicopter, Narsarsuuaq, 27^th June 2020

I have been locked down at home in Monkton Combe, just outside Bath, for three months. I have been no further than 10 miles from home about three times, and mostly within a mile of home, and this to fish in a very quiet stream at the bottom of the valley, where I barely see a soul. My wife drags me out of the house for a few miles walk on a Sunday morning. We have socialised not more than 10 times, and with both our adult children at home we barely had time to keep in touch with friends as much as we would have liked. Most interactions were via the internet, and those flat 2D interactions are not as subtle as 4D meetings with folk in person.

I booked a COVID test at Bristol Airport on Monday morning (22^nd June) and assumed that I would test positive, a false positive of course, and be unable to go into the field. The 17 mile drive to the airport seemed a bit like this man’s first trip to the moon and a little surreal. I didn’t really like being taken out of my routine of loading up the computer and doing e-stuff, remembering to stand up every hour, and trying to finish around 5 with my daily Danish lesson, else you can always find something to work on. Now, it was interacting with real people outside my close family, friends and neighbours again. I didn’t get tested for COVID, I did a self test, which I thought was bonkers, since I could easily bias the result, but I did my best to pierce my tonsils and one of my sinuses with the lethal plastic cotton bud with a long stem, messed up breaking the stem at the wrong place, but still did sufficiently well to be deemed a success at self testing. I drove home slowly, enough to hiss off most cars behind me most of the time, and then felt in limbo. I was convinced I’d test false positive.

The text came at about 05.30 I think, not being great in the mornings, and I was a negative. It was game on for Greenland, and shit……. I had to get ready for the journey. My son drove me to Heathrow, allowing two hours to my doddery three or four. It all seemed a bit fast on the motorway to me. Then, we put on the dreaded face facemasks about five miles from the airport, looking like we were going to draw our guns and rob the place – we’d have been shot for sure with all the security around by the way. The mask gives you a good idea of how stale your breath is and mist up your glasses. It was a pain in the front side to wear, and I kept lifting it when I talked to folk, who were very patient with me to be fair. Ieuan drove off and I was by myself with a rucksack, a large bag of clothes, field equipment and magazines I hadn’t read over the past three months, and my laptop bag containing instructions on where to be and when. Ieuan had loaded them onto a trolley, and I pushed out into Terminal 2. All those people in masks, everyone looking at each other in case of a cough or an unprotected nose or mouth.

If there is a silver lining to COVID, then airport check in and security hassle being minimised just has to be it. I was apprehensive about being around a multitude of equally nervous masked folk, but folk were very friendly, matter of fact and there was so little queuing I didn’t know what to do with the extra two hours I had in the departure lounge. There was plenty of room, folk positioned themselves the maximum distance possible from each other, I was away from my computer screen, and so I made a few phone calls to my family, and spoke/txt’s/e-mailed/What’sApp’d friends that I’d neglected this last three months.

Another silver lining was getting onto the plane. We boarded strictly from the back to the front. Bugger the elite card holders and first class passengers. Elderly folk and folk with young kids get preference of course, but COVID has made the rest of us more equal in place queues. SAS ran the flight with Nordic precision and treated us like adults in terms of telling us what they could and couldn’t provide on the flight anymore. Most of us sat with the gap of a seat between each other. I had to fly to Stockholm first, and change within 40 mins to board the Copenhagen flight. SAS managed that very well too, because despite being 10 mins late departing, they held the Copenhagen flight 10 mins to let 37 folk make the connection. All the luggage made it too. My thought at the time was that I’d make it to Greenland but without any clothes or equipment……

Copenhagen was busy – there were people without masks outside the airport, and they seemed to be relaxed around each other, albeit at a distance of 1m. Liane Benning and Rey Mourot had already arrived from Potsdam, via Frankfurt, and we had to stay in the Clarion Hotel at the airport. The receptionist and staff were relaxed about having a masked old git turn up, looking anxiously around, with too many bags and too little control over his trolly. I could even take the mask off, which by that time was driving me nuts. Then I saw Alex Anesio and Rey at the bar, and it was like old times, except we didn’t know whether to shake hands, so elbow bumped. He rest of the team turned up over the next hour, and slowly I got used to talking to 4D people again. We ate together – my first meal with folk outside my family in three months – had a few beers in public, and life didn’t seem to be that inward looking, bounded by a mile radius and quite so bad anymore.

Liane, Rey and I had breakfast unmasked with a bunch of other travellers, all 1m removed as a minimum, at about 06.30, and then wandered over to the airport with a bunch of additional equipment that Lasse Degn had left us the previous night, and which Eva Doting kindly brought to the hotel just after breakfast. Masks on again, and the silver lining of fewer people flying made the 09.00 queue for the Air Greenland Flight slightly less chaotic than it usually is. It was going so well – Liane and Rey showed their German negative COVID test results, then I got my UK negative result out. A print out of the e-mail I received. The negative test result did not show the date I had been tested. I showed the text message of the negative result – no test date. I showed the receipt I had been given for my self-tested sample at the airport. Yes, it wasn’t dated. The senior Air Greenland customer services representative who had come across to look after an elderly guy in despair was very patient with me. She said “take a few deep breathes, we can sort this out”, and as I did, it came to me to search my deleted e-mails for the confirmation of the air port test. It came up on my i-phone and I was on my way. Thank you Air Greenland.

@Copenhagen Airport (l-r, elderly old git, Eva Doting, Rey Mourot and Liane Benning)

Boarding was again from the back rows to the front, and again one elderly old git was smiling behind his mask in approval. The flight was great and I slept, and there was one seat free either side of most people. Most times I have arrived in Kangerlussuaq in summer I have been covered in mosquitos almost as soon as I walk off the plane. Not this time. A silver side to climate change is that it was raining heavily – I can’t remember it raining in Kangerlussuaq in about ten previous visits. Mosquitoes don’t fly in the rain, and it could have rained non-stop for the two hours we were in Kanger as far as I was concerned.

Our plane in the rain – note the absence of mosquitoes

We transferred from the jet-engined airbus to a twin prop De Haviland (I think). You literally walk out of the door of the airport and walk onto the plane, just like you would catching a taxi. The big thing now was that you didn’t have to wear a face mask. I felt fine without it, but a few other folk kept theirs on.

Flagging down a plane to take you to Nuuk, and then Narsarssuaq. Mosquitoes still notably absent

We flew down the coast to Nuuk in about an hour, had a cup of coffee in the airport, and then flew for an hour down to Narsarsuaq, which is near the southern tip of Greenland, and to the west. It is a quite beautiful place, although you wouldn’t think that from this amateur photograph of the airport.

The airport at Narsarsuaq, and a lot of the town too

We walked out the airport and five minutes down the road was out hotel, where we have since be ensconced. The staff are very friendly and helpful, and the quarantine arrangements are quite laid back as long as we keep our distance from other folk. Flights to Greenland and down to Narsarsuaq were quickly booked up when they were confirmed, so Liane, Rey and I are three days in advance of the main party since they were the only ones we could get. However, we have been allowed to fly with a local helicopter company, Sermeq Helicopters, as long as we are masked, and we took the opportunity on Saturday to do a field recce to establish the location of our main camp site, and to drop some of our cargo to make the the camp.

Rey will post the next blog, since this was his first helicopter flight. I’ve been allowed to say that the general field site is just fantastic for the type of work we do. What is there not to like about an area with this type of surface characteristics?

Dark surface ice on the southern tip of the Greenland Ice Sheet near Narsarsuaq

Well, the ice sheet melts faster because of the darkening, and that is not a good thing for the rate of sea level rise.

What have I learnt from the trip so far? I started off very anxious about travelling and meeting up with other people, even those who I know well in 2D from e-meetings. It’s not the destiny, it’s the journey. I believe that travel broadens your mind and experience, and allows you to see life outside the confines of your regular domain. This trip confirms those prejudices. I am a privileged elderly white man, who is even more privileged to be here in southern Greenland now. Those folk of my generation and older, including friends, neighbours and family who are shielding, seem to concur that the virus is a disease of the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. I don’t think that any of us want to hold back younger healthy folk from having the experiences, negative, neutral and positive, of interacting with other folk and travelling. I would gladly swap places with my children and remain in lock down, and painful as it would be, isolate from them to give them the chance to experience life as I think I did forty years ago. How that happens, and where it can happen, is a complex issue, and the political solution should be nuanced to account for that complexity. What I feel is that life has to go on for younger generations, and if I have to loose liberties or take more risks as a consequence, then so be it. I remain older, simplistic and no wiser, clearly.

Next up is Rey to blog about our trip into the field yesterday. Until next post…… Martyn Tranter.

The mask sure made an improvement

Preparing for Greenland field work in times of COVID

2020-06-24T19:23:00.001+01:00

By Liane G. Benning

Being allowed to do field work this summer is a huge privilege and we are not taking it lightly – the inherent dangers of the virus we all live with are very real. We had in a frenzy packed and shipped all our gear (and some) in early June although we did not yet know then if we would get a permit, find flights, be allowed into Greenland, or arrange a field camp etc etc. The moral issue about going at all to a virus-free country weighed heavily on our minds. At least for myself I almost became a hermit and distanced myself from all humans for the last 3 weeks so as not to jeopardise our chances and possibly get infected. I did eat loads of salad to prepare for the lack of it on the ice, and once @Rey_Mourot arrived back from the ‘exile’ in France, we did final lab preparations…

Stocking up on salad in preparation for the lack of it on the ice

@Rey_Mourot doing the sterilisation of the mineral mix for the in situ and fertilisation experiments… to be done soon on the Greenland Ice Sheet

All planning and care is however useless in the light of the possibility that at the last moment a test comes back positive for any of us.

Alas, the advance @DeepPurpleERCSy team consisting of our fearless leader @MartynTranter1 and, as far as I know, our youngest team members @Rey_Mourot and myself @LianeGBenning have all tested negative and can thus tomorrow embark on the 1st leg in our 6-stop journey to our field site in south Greenland. Tomorrow evening we transit through CPH airport and meet the DK part of the DeepPurple team. On Friday morning (crossing all digits that we have all paperwork we need – I counted 20 pieces) we will hopefully be allowed to board the AirGreenland plane to Kangerlussuaq/Nuuk/Narsarsuaq. That will be followed by 5 days quarantine in the airport hotel combined with lots of hope for all to go well. There are many possible plans B, C, D, …X, yet ultimately keeping everyone safe at our end but also in the Greenlandic community is the only thing that matters. The next step is to be united with the 2nd part of the team and getting onto the ice.

Only once we are left behind by the helicopter on the ice sheet will we be convinced that field work this summer will indeed happen.

But I am after all the eternal optimist so it will work out somehow.

We are a GO! (for now)

How to prepare for fieldwork during a pandemic

2020-06-15T09:54:00.001+01:00

by Eva Doting

On Monday May 11, the Aarhus University cryo-bio group held its first physical meeting since the lockdown in Denmark was announced two months prior. We met up in a park, discussed some science and ate some cookies while fending off some overly eager ducks that seemed more interested in our cookies than our science. It was here that Alex mentioned that it was really starting to look like we might be able to get to Greenland for a very reduced version of our original fieldwork plans. Two days later, during one of the regular Deep Purple Team Zoom meetings, it was decided that we would start ordering, planning, packing and shipping as if it was certain that we'd be heading to the ice.

Despite everyone's intentions to keep ambitions low, they quickly spiralled from planning a 4-person grab-and-go expedition into planning a full on 7-person-three-week-long ice camp. Scientific imaginations ran wild, orders for scientific equipment, chemicals, camping gear, food provisions, down pants, jackets and boots were being placed at record speed and packages quickly started pilling up in our offices.

With our postdoc Laura Perini still stuck in Italy due to an impressive number of COVID-related flight cancellations and while navigating the social distancing and limited attendance rules at our department, we started filling box after box, after box, after box... Over the span of a short week, we packed scientific, food and camp supplies onto 5 pallets weighing an impressive total of 1215 kg. A couple of 16+ hour work (and weekend) days and several paperwork nightmares later, the major share of our gear was wrapped up and ready for its first leg of travel: by truck to the port in Aalborg, Denmark. From there, it will make a two-week journey over sea to Nuuk, where it will be loaded onto a second ship that will sail it to Qaqortoq. Once in Qaqortoq, it will be picked up for transport to the ice by helicopter sling load. It will be there, on the Greenland Ice Sheet near PROMICE weather station QAS_M (https://www.promice.dk/CurrentWeatherMap.html), that we hope to be reunited with our gear.

With load one on its way, we went home to catch up on some sleep before heading back to pack a sixth pallet with stuff that had not arrived before the first departure. On Tuesday June 9, a little less than one month after the decision to start ordering, planning and packing, this final pallet was picked up to follow in the footsteps of the first 1215 kg. It is expected to arrive in Qaqortoq around the same time that we hope to be landing in Narsarsuaq, on June 30, armed with negative COVID-19 tests, a bunch of warm clothes, some scientific equipment that we were not able to ship, high spirits and even higher ambitions. Until then, we will be working on finalising sampling protocols and field logistics while anxiously watching the status of our flights and expected delivery dates of the equipment that has not arrived yet. Fingers crossed!!

Did I send everything we need for our summer field work..?

2020-06-06T09:37:00.001+01:00

by Liane G. Benning

Hope is the last thing to die, and for me as an eternal optimist, hope and its best 2nd cousin - preparation - partly saved our summer field trip; despite lockdown since middle March, and the cancellation of our spring trip, the ever growing @DeepPurpleERCSy team discussed and planned for every eventuality despite not knowing if we will be able to go at all, or for how long. Thus, unsurprisingly we made plan A, B, C, D ….X … Should one plan and pack for sampling and in-field experiments for 1 week or > 1 month? Invariably we took the approach - plan for everything and react to the situation.

The @GFZ_Potsdam @DeepPurpleERCSy team could not have done this without the tireless help of Marc Paje – our lab technician; he and I had many discussions and exchanges through endless Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, Slack and you name it e-platforms; together with @Chris_Trivedi and @knutkonopke and our team's PA Sandy Herrmann all in lockdown in Potsdam and with @Rey_Mourot stranded in France, we slowly managed to not just plan for every possibility and order the needed consumables and field gear (including having to purchase new Zarges boxes …grrrr – that is another story) but do this while fine-tuning our field sampling, sample handling and sample processing procedures to be as flexible as possible. Not to forget the help from all members of with @AlexAnesio's team in Denmark.

Naturally plans are good but … nothing prepared me for the storm of activity once we decided to pack and ship even if in the end we could not go. To do this at the best of times in 3-4 days is a tall order – to do this in 3-4 days while under “only essential presence at work return rules” and while wearing masks and following all social distancing rules was even harder but ultimately the glorious sight of our 9 boxes all packed, inventoried and labelled was a good reward;

To get our gear/consumables to Greenland we needed to first ship it to Denmark where it was combined with @AlexAnesio team’s consumables and the very important camping and safety gear for all of us; they will tell that story next …

I don’t know if we have managed to pack all we need but ultimately that is irrelevant – if we will manage to go we will do great science together. I could not have done this without the fabulous team effort and inputs from all our early carer scientists and project managers who despite these weird times have all done a fabulous job. Thank you all, and chapeau!

Fieldwork in July is likely to happen........

2020-06-04T11:13:00.001+01:00

by Martyn Tranter

The last couple of weeks have been a little bonkers, and Manic Mondays have become Manic Weeks. We were given a small window to get into the field at the end of June, and to work through into the second half of July. We think we have gotten everything in place to work on the southern tip of the Greenland Ice Sheet, near to Narsarssuaq. I’ll let Alex’s and Liane’s groups tell their stories about getting ready, and working around COVID19 restrictions. I have been very proud of the way that our younger researchers and project managers have worked flat out to get equipment, travel plans and permissions into place. We’ll keep you posted of developments and the stories over the coming weeks, as folk recover from their endeavours and have a little time to post on this blog. I hope that you enjoy the stories and observations of what will follow, which perhaps will give you an insight to what is involved with getting a field science team onto the ice sheet for three weeks. Take best care in these viral days meanwhile.