Hello Everyone,

I hope you all enjoyed the audioconference, whether you were asking questions today or just listening in. The day was rather eventful! I woke up before 5am this morning, because I was so excited about starting our adventure. I sent out the questions for the audioconference and double checked the phone and my equipment. I sat down for breakfast with Don and Tom around 7:00 this morning and discussed our plan for the day. We spent about an hour getting all of their equipment ready in the BASC warehouse.

We then headed out to the site and got things set up. All of their equipment was working fine, but my phone kept disconnecting from our audioconference. Which you got to listen to, believe me it was frantic for about five minutes before we got back on the audioconference with you. You should have seen us 3 racing back to the truck, loading all of our equipment back into the truck and then speeding back to the warehouse to get to another phone. Could you still hear us huffing and puffing from running when we first got on back on the phone? When we completed the audioconference we went back out to the site, set up the transect, set up the equipment and collected data. We measured the albedo along a 200m transect at 2.5m intervals with the albedometer. I was helping Tom do this and even though he was working he was routinely looking up to scan for polar bears! We didn't see any though. Don measured the infrared albedo using the backpack equipment. We also measured snow depth on the ice at every meter. The deepest in got was only about 30cm. The day was beautiful! It cleared off so it was really bright out. I was wearing sunglasses while Don and Tom were both wearing ski goggles. Even though is was sunny I still got cold. There was a gentle breeze with a temperature of about 5 F. I had my bunny boots on, a down parka, thermal bibs and lots of FLEECE! I am looking forward to our interview with Hajo Eicken tomorrow.

Have a good evening and see you tomorrow!