What are your accommodations like on the ship?
My cabin on the ship is very comfortable, which has the typical bunk beds, like most ship cabins. My cabin mate is an associate on the Sediment team. We even have a small sofa, and a desk! It's sort of like living in a caravan. Everything is quite small, but the space is efficiently used, so it feels quite cozy!
How are the first few days on board?
The first few days are usually spent getting to know the ship, the crew and the science team. We were given a ship tour right when we arrived, which was definitely the right idea, as the vessel is huge, with nine decks; and there are numerous doors and rooms you are not allowed to enter. We did have a round of introductions and an on-deck barbecue was held within the first few days on our way up to Greenland as an opportunity to get to know the ship’s crew better. Our cook conducted a pub quiz afterwards, which we all enjoyed.
What is your daily routine like?
Everything was quite relaxed for the first few days of the voyage from our home port in Scotland. The main agenda item for everyone on the way up to Greenland was organizing and preparing one’s own work. In the evenings there was plenty of time for socializing, doing crossword and jigsaw puzzles. We have since transitioned over to “normal” scientific operations, which for me and my team means working a night shift. So I get up at 7 pm, have breakfast and then go up on deck, where we take sediment cores and samples. The work is tremendous fun, we always get wet and dirty, and have to be careful not to get too cold. We enjoy the Arctic sunset while waiting for the sediment cores to be drawn up out of the water, and then about an hour later we enjoy the sunrise! Those are truly magical moments! My shift ends at 8 am, when the daytime teams take over. There is some leisure time, for books, music, movies, etc., but usually I go to bed pretty soon after work—exhausted but happy.
Arctic expedition
What chemical processes occur in the oceans, and how are these changing as the climate becomes warmer? This is the question being addressed by the Environmental Geology working group at the University of Bonn Institute of Geosciences, headed by Professor Christian März. Research is being conducted in the field as well as in the lab, up in the Arctic region of southeast Greenland. Doctoral student Katrin Wagner, as part of an interdisciplinary team of 40 researchers and staff from world-leading research institutes, is embarking on a six-week expedition on the research icebreaker RRS Sir David Attenborough to study evidence of glacial change in Greenland and sea life in the coastal waters of the earth’s largest island. Her role in this mission, called the KANG-GLAC project, is to extract sediment cores from the seabed and take samples for subsequent analysis in a University of Bonn lab. “The samples taken will allow us to identify the geochemical processes currently taking place in the seabed, so we will learn a lot about how glacial activity is affecting conditions in the marine environment. We will also be collecting evidence of how these conditions may have changed over time,” Wagner explains.
Living and working on a research vessel
If you have always wanted to know what it is like to work on board a research vessel, you will now have a great opportunity to find out from first-hand reports. During the expedition, doctoral student Katrin Wagner is taking questions from interested members of the public, posting answers on the University’s Instagram account (@universitaetbonn) and the University website. You can send in your questions by email to wissenschaftskommunikation@uni-bonn.de.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is decaying at an accelerating rate in response to climate change. Warm Atlantic waters moving through fjords eventually meet the ice fronts of marine-terminating glaciers, increasing melting and causing icebergs to break off. In turn, the injection of increased fresh meltwater into the ocean is altering both ocean currents and marine ecosystems around Greenland and farther afield in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on UK weather systems.
The KANG-GLAC project aims to determine the intricate processes driving these changes by studying what is happening now and during warm climatic periods in the past. Researchers can help anticipate future ice-ocean-marine ecosystem changes by extending the modern observational record back through the last 11,700 years, a period known as the Holocene. This includes a time when summer temperatures in Greenland were 3-5°C warmer than today: the Holocene Thermal Maximum. While some records of 20th-century iceberg calving and warm water inflows exist around Greenland, records of how glaciers then decay and the effects on marine productivity over many decades to millennia are lacking. Dr Kelly Hogan, a marine geophysicist from British Antarctic Survey is Co-lead on the project. She says: “Our expedition is extremely timely as we are seeing every day in the news how the Arctic is changing, and we know there will be knock-on effects for the rest of the planet. We need to understand how the Greenland Ice Sheet is likely to decay over the coming decades to centuries, and what the subsequent effects will be on both ocean currents and marine food webs. This is now urgent information for us to gather so policymakers can understand what will happen in the North Atlantic and set out appropriate adaptation and mitigation plans.”
This three-and-a-half year project will generate records of glacier, ocean, and ecosystem change for the Holocene era at key sites close to Kangerlussuaq Fjord in SE Greenland. The team includes a mix of researchers – including oceanographers, biologists and geologists – who will collectively use a range of instruments to retrieve samples from rocks on land, from the ocean, and from the seafloor to gain a comprehensive picture of this region and its current and potential future response to environmental change.
Using state-of-the-art capabilities of the RRS Sir David Attenborough and deploying advanced underwater robotics such as the Gavia, operated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), the team will investigate modern interactions between meltwater expelled from glaciers and the inflowing warm ocean waters, as well as how this affects primary productivity in Greenland’s fjords and coastal seas.
In parallel, marine sediment cores from the seafloor and terrestrial rock samples collected using helicopters deployed from the ship will reveal changes in glacier size, ocean temperatures, and carbon storage at the seafloor all changed during the Holocene. Professor Colm O’Cofaigh, a glacial and marine geologist from the Department of Geography, Durham University, is Co-Lead PI on the project. He says: “Understanding the Holocene record of Greenland Ice Sheet change and the role of the ocean thereon is crucial for placing current observations of ice and ocean change into their longer-term context and for underpinning predictions of future change. The range of tools to be deployed from the RRS Sir David Attenborough during the KANG-GLAC cruise provides an unprecedented opportunity to assess this change over the last 11,700 years.”