21 June 2010

Greenlandic national day. Summer solstice

NEEM team 3 on summer solstice and national day of Greenland
Group picture of the 33 participants of NEEM team 3.

Today is summer solstice and luckily good weather is coming our way. Good weather in our book is clear blue skies and a lot of cold. Temperature is already dropping and the forecast indicates night temperatures down to below -20 °C. How wonderful! This is indeed good news for the flights this week and we keep our fingers crossed that weather stays this way for a while.

It is also the national day of Greenland and our cooks Sarah and Louise prepared many Greenlandic delicacies: Musk-ox, scallops, halibut (smoked and dried) and mattak (the raw outer skin of a whale).

What we have done today:
1. Drilling and core logging.
2. Processed ice cores: 52 bags, from 3900 to 3951. New daily record.
3. CFA measurements. Measured 20.9 m. CFA depth: 1751.75 m.
4. Took down one shelf rack in core buffer to gain access to the brittle ice.

Ad.1: Drillers report:
"Today things went a little bananas. We lost our good mode (but not our good mood, I hope). Long cores were followed by short cores due to poor chips recovery. At the same time inclination took a significant step higher throughout the day. The first signs of this started in my gut and in the data on Saturday and today's data confirmed both. To get a handle on this we have mounted new cutters. These cutters were tried earlier in the season without consistent success, but were modified about three weeks ago according to our experience.
Tonight they performed well in their first run. We were able to drill with a negative cutter load of about 12 kg with a pitch of 2.5 mm. We should have a better feeling tomorrow as we say goodbye to some folks and hello to others." Chief driller, Trevor Popp.

Drilled 16.83 m. Driller's depth: 2171.18 meters. Logging depth: 2184.60 m.

Weather: Thin overcast, later blue sky. Temp. -13 °C to -6 °C, 10-20 knots from SE, later S. Visibility: Unrestricted.

FL, J.P. Steffensen
 

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