Travelling, arriving and settling in...

Hello, this is Matt writing our first blog post of 2016 from the Arctic Circle!

My flight here was incredible. From Oslo Airport we burst almost immediately through the clouds into clear skies and a stunning cloudscape. At first the tops of hills formed islands above the clouds and then the clouds faded to reveal snow-covered hills, lakes and then the fjordic coastline. The mountains got bigger and bigger as we headed north and the sun began to set even though it was still morning! It was a beautiful way to say goodbye to the sun.

In the Arctic, the sun sets in early winter and doesn’t rise above the horizon until early spring. That means it’s dark 24 hours a day until mid-February. It’s also cold. At the moment it’s about minus 10°C and with a bit of a breeze, but the weather’s going to get colder and colder and we can expect high winds and temperatures below minus 20°C in the coming weeks.

Term starts tomorrow with the Safety Course where we will learn how to stay alive here in these Polar conditions. This includes clothing and equipment, boat safety and rifle training to protect ourselves if a polar bear attacks us. Until we’ve done the course, we can’t leave Longyearbyen – the town where we’ll be living and studying at UNIS for the next 5 months. We’ve been watching videos of snowboarding, skiing and scuba diving on Svalbard and we can’t wait to go exploring. We'll tell you all about the Safety Course in the next post.

                                                       

Even walking to the supermarket is an adventure here. It’s 3 km down the hill from the Barracks where we live and it’s freezing cold when you step outside. I already had hiking gear and my old snowboarding gear and after reading forums by Canadian ice fishermen, American winter hunters and Extreme Cold Weather armed forces servicemen I bought lots of second hand stuff on Ebay and some Army Surplus gear. Here’s a photo of my Mum pimping up a fashion hat made for the UK climate. She’s sewing in Velcro patches so I could attach a fur liner we custom-made. I built my own winter boots too. Follow this blog for a gear-review later this semester. For now I’m just crossing my fingers!

There’s an extra module running later this semester on the Northern Lights, so we’ll do a post on them when we know what we’re talking about, but for a taste of what’s to come here are a few photos we took last night just outside the Barracks…

Arctic Technology

Hello it's Kendal,  

On Svalbard there is always lots to do as you can see from the previous blog posts but I am sure some of you must be thinking do we ever do any work at university. I am going to use this blog post to tell you about the courses that Daniel, Jamie and I study here in the Arctic.

I study Arctic Technology.  Of course everyone assumes when I say Arctic Technology I’m fantastic with computers and I love nothing more than seeing how modern technology works in cold climates but no that’s not exactly it. Even people studying at UNIS think that is what Arctic technology is!!  We get lots of requests for general technical assistance.

Arctic Technology offers two bachelors modules in autumn semester:

AT-210: Arctic Environmental Pollution

AT-209: Arctic Hydrology and Climate Change

Arctic Pollution is a module lead by Professor Mark Hermanson. He sticks to his American roots by wearing his Levi's every class. His course covers a wide variety of topics including Oil Spills and Storage in the Arctic.  This part of the course involved an interesting and fun field trip to the airport where I ended up learning a lot about how the small but very busy airport works. We also learned about Mercury and POPs. POPs sound exciting and like something from back to the future. It stands for Persistent Organic Pollutants, which aren't from back to the future but are very important to protecting the environment. For a chemical to be classified as a POP they have to be Bioaccumulative, Toxic, Persistent, and capable of Long Range Transport. This is a deadly combination especially if we want to continue human existence on Earth. This is why they are either banned or classed as restricted use products for example Dioxins or DDE (pesticide). These chemicals are produced and used nowhere near the Arctic so how do we know they are here? Well, on the rooftop of UNIS there are air samplers which simply consist of a stand with a few vents open to the air and inside a filter held in place using a fancy clamp. During my time here the class has been carrying out practical work and taking air samples to be sent for analysis in specialist labs.

Arctic Hydrology covers interesting aspects of arctic environments such as glaciers, snowmelt, river catchments and water supplies to arctic settlements such as Longyearbyen. This course involved lots of fieldwork including the week long Pyramiden field trip, snow analysis in -16 degrees and a few trips to Mine 7 to look at catchments and how drainage works in the valleys. This course is taught by Nils Roar who is Norwegian. Nils loves hiking and that’s why we do so much field work as part of the course which happens to be my favourite aspect. During the semester I was tasked with working in a group to estimate Mass Balance of a glacier named Bertilbreen in Svalbard that we took measurements of during the field week. We found that the glacier is decreasing in Mass Balance, this follows the trend for all glaciers in Svalbard and is a direct response to the changing climate.

(Well, Kendal pretty much summed up half of what you'd need for our exams! - Daniel)

UNIS offers a lot of interesting courses with fieldwork opportunities and a lot of fun!

One of our classrooms

UNIS reception

Jamie's photo of UNIS

Hey, its Daniel again, look at that two writers for one post, must be the end of the semester!

Now that Kendal has told you all about the courses we studied this semester I wanted to add a bit more about the fun stuff. Kendal reminded me that we hadn't actually discussed one of the most exciting things so far; the northern lights! While I'm sure Jamie (the photographer) has the best pictures, he is also flying them back to Scotland with him (should be somewhere around Oslo now if I think). So my amateur attempts at taking pictures of the aurora borealis will have to suffice!

Most people think it requires great trickery to get the lights to look like that but you'll have to trust us, it takes a lot of practice to get it right on the camera but it still isn't as bright and vivid as they appear in the sky! 

I think I really fell in love with Svalbard one night when we were watching the aurora and the Draconid meteor shower, truly a spectacular and unforgettable experience. Although not all of us were as lucky, I remember Jamie telling me one day that he had gone outside at 9PM and at 11PM and had not been able to see anything while his barrack kept telling him it was one of the best nights for aurora! 

Still, seeing aurora isn't the only dark season activity there are also concerts like the Dark Season Blues which Jamie volunteered at and there was a concert by a Norwegian band recently called Valkyrien Allstars which I went to which was also a lot of fun!

And finally, you can never waste a good snow opportunity although, snow man felt too... normal?

It might not be obvious but it is a snow-horse! 

So, that's all from Kendal and I but Jamie will be back next semester with Holger and Matt. All the best for them and for the students at SAMS, we'll see you soon!

The mountains are calling, and I must go.

Hey! 

Sam Black here and I'm back on Svalbard. I've been here for the past two weeks and sadly now, Its time to leave. So, for old times sake, here's what I've been up to.

Now I wouldn't say my trip to Svalbard was for business or pleasure. Over the past 13 days I've been carrying out my dissertation lab work alongside a marine molecular biology masters course. Firstly let me highlight that I'm no molecular biologist. If only I'd known what I was getting myself in for...It's been a tough week of learning the ropes of DNA extraction, PCR and all the various lab protocols to avoid contamination etc. Safe to say I'm now pretty skilled with a pipette, or at least I am when this repetitive strain injury in my shoulder goes away.

I arrived on the 1st of November to a wet Longyearbyen. I was informed, by almost everyone I met, that all the lovely snow had recently melted. This big melting event had left a town of deadly ice where 'friction' is a cruel mistress. Arriving back during term time left me feeling nostalgic. At first I felt intimidated with all the new faces but I quickly settled in. The first week of lab work involved meticulously weighing out small pieces of sea weed, DNA extraction of said small pieces then learning about how to run PCR's. It was a steep learning curve but incredibly I made it through the week in one piece and on schedule.

In the evenings I joined back in with the sports I used to play; volleyball, basketball and football. The world famous Longyearbyen vs. Barentsburg sports competition was taking place that weekend, so I was keen to get into the team. As the temperature had dropped over the week and the snow had returned I took a trip on Saturday morning to the ice caves with 3 Danish anthropologists who I'd had over for dinner earlier in the week. The glacier and the cave had changed dramatically over the summer, it was incredible. I couldn't recognise any part of the cave. I took some quick photos and headed down to down in a hurry as I was up against the Russians in the volleyball team at mid day.

Volleyball went well and in the end we won by only 2 points! Funnily I was interviewed and filmed by the BBC who are producing a docu-soap series up here over 8 months. After looking into the camera numerous times I doubt my mug will be on your screens any time soon. I was roped into refereeing the football game straight after where Longyear lost 4-2. I'll leave that one off my C.V for now. Basketball was great fun and we won by a large margin.
Afterwards we all headed to a nearby restaurant and ate a lot of free pizza and drank a lot of free beer. Longyearbyen now has its own brewery producing some fine beer - I can highly recommend the pilsner, pictured here. The night ended in the only club on the island, Huset. I found myself sliding my way home on the ice at 4am under the northern lights - old habits die hard here on Svalbard!

The following week of lab work didn't go as smoothly as the first where I spent three days trying to fine tune my PCR set up. After numerous tries I found the magic formula and managed to get the successful products I needed. Sparing you the details, the rest of the week involved selecting the samples that I wanted to use, washing them over magnetic beads and preparing them to send them away for sequencing. Easier. Said. Than. Done. This weekend I've managed to fit in a trip to the mine, a night in the pub playing pool and some fat bike rides in the valley.

Then today at 6pm, after my 60th hour in the UNIS lab, I managed to finished my lab work (for now). What a relief! I've heard a picture says a 1000 words, so here's two that sum up my time here.

Me: 2 weeks ago

Me: Today

Until next time Svalbard, lots of love, Sam.

Goodbye sun, hello winter...

We are now past the last sunrise/set (there wasn't really much in-between) of the year and so now the best we get is a few hours half light in the middle of the day. Today is also the first day to be above freezing in a couple of weeks and so everything is incredibly slippery as the snow covering the ice on everything is melting a bit. The weather should be back to what we are used to pretty soon though. We had our final field trip of the semester on Wednesday in -16 °C, digging snow pits to look at the structure and composition of the snow pack; our transport for the day was the belt-wagon, a wonderful contraption built using the same basic principle as two tanks attached together minus armaments.

We've also been hiking in the snow a few times over the last few weeks, managing to capture the elusive creature that is all three of the SAMS students in one place, at the same time, and positioned in front of the camera (although Kendal wasn't quite on script!). See evidence below.

 

Less successful was our attempt to make it to the top of Nordenskiöldfjellet, the highest mountain in the vicinity of Longyearbyen, but we still had a fun hike in the snow which caused a few moments of people descending into an unseen dip in the topography and up to their waist in snow, much to everyone else's amusement. The reindeer have definitely fluffed up as the weather has got colder so now resemble teddy bears more and more:

I also got to fly a drone during fieldwork a few weeks ago which was lots of fun once I'd taken a minute to got the knack of it, especially since the one we used didn't have a live view camera on.

"It must be up there somewhere...."  Photo credit: Susanne Lindholm

Last weekend I volunteered to help move and set up/dismantle equipment for the Dark Season Blues, the world's northernmost blues festival, and most likely any music festival. This entailed lots of carrying and coiling, plugging and unplugging and interpreting a few instructions in Norwegian (far simpler than apologising and explaining again); it is amazing how much you can get from the odd word and pointing! The weekend was quite a lot of work and I realised how little lifting and carrying you normally do up here, despite the generally active lifestyle; I had lots of fun though and I got a crew pass for the weekend and freebies to wear. All the volunteers got free pizza and drinks this Thursday night, which made leaving for uni at 7:30 on Friday hard work!

We're hurtling at alarming speed towards the end of the semester: this week is our final week of lectures and a final midterm, report deadlines, presentations, and then final exams are in the pipeline soon. Working when it is nasty weather and dark outside is far better than when it was sunny and always light though so it isn't too bad! 

I think that's everything of note that's been happening up here really; I'm sure there will be plenty more to report back in a couple of weeks.

Jamie