Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour!

Life in the far north continues apace. Whereas in Scotland we pessimistically say on the day after the summer solstice, 'That's the nights drawing in now....', here, the nights positively gallop in! Last night saw the first star being visible at midnight, but it doesn't get truly dark yet. 

Snow briefly visited last week. A fierce squall heralded a snow shower that instantly transformed the ochre and russet brown hillsides into dappled white. Needless to say, Rosie instantly ran outside to have a snowball fight against what turned out to be the majority of Barrack 13; the Russians. Russia 1, Rosie 0. 

As quickly as it arrived though, the snow departed as the temperature shot up to a heady 7.5c. Even at this time of year the weather can change incredibly rapidly. The (relative) warmth of Isfjord can quickly generate a thick hill fog that swirls and ripples around the sedimentary towers of rock that overlook Longyearbyen, and then as swiftly as it appears it is gone, to be replaced by sunshine. -And often drizzle, at the same time....

Study wise, Christine and Sarah spent last week away on their very successful quaternary geology field trip. More to follow on this in their report this week. Ailsa, Rosie and Paddy had a really interesting (and fun) week of Arctic hydrology lectures, delivered by an indomitable stalwart of sedimentary hydrology, Jim Bogen. Jim's lectures were always exciting as you never knew quite what was going to happen. And I think secretly, neither did Jim. He led us on an entertaining afternoon of fieldwork around Longyearbyen and up Adventdalen. This was quickly christened 'Jim's Magical Mystery Tour', and our minibus's coatings of dust were speedily modified to advertise this. We suspect our tour guide felt privileged to be leading such a fine 'liveried' fleet.

Mystery Machine Number 2

Through this work though we were able to get a good understanding of not only where the sediment originates, but also the multitude of controls that modify how it behaves. As a lot of this sediment ends up in the marine environment, getting a grip on the linkages that exist between the two is really insightful.

The AT209 Arctic Hydrology 'Crazy gang', in a rare moment of (mostly) all facing the same direction at once.

The last stop on our tour was at the valley junction between Adventdalen and Bolterdalen, next to the huge EISCAT radar dishes. From here, on top of the mountain, you get a fantastic view of the surrounding area. The EISCAT radar though is really quite interesting (I think!). It stands for European Incoherent Scatter, and essentially what this program does is study the ionised part of our atmosphere, -the bit where the Aurora Borealis, or Northern lights, occurs. Astonishingly though, during certain conditions, they can reverse transmit from the EISCAT system and synthetically stimulate the Aurora to appear above, in the heavens. 

EISCAT Radar dishes next to Gruve (mine) 7 in Adventdalen

Whilst this doesn't damage anything, it struck me as a powerful analogy for displaying the ability we humans have in manipulating our environment. It is just a tragedy that we cannot seem to so defiantly and distinctly use this ability to help clean up and sort out the mess and problems we cause. Maybe, hopefully, one day we will.