Field Report for 2017/06/17:
Completed first flight of the season. Due to Search and Rescue priority, flight was shifted from 6/13 to 6/14. Left Kodiak 9:00 am, hydraulic leak forced return shortly after departure from Kodiak. Swapped aircraft, reinstalled science gear, got underway 14:00.
Sea Ice Conditions:
Sea ice near coast until about 72 was still fairly solid with little open water. Encountered substantially more open water going forth from 71.30N. with sea ice concentrations estimated from aircraft varying between 80% to 100% (AMSR-2 showing near 100%). No evidence of substantial melt yet and very few ponds. Sea ice looked not particularly thick but very broken up and heavily ridged.
Ocean:
Deployed AXCTD/AXCPS at 72N, 73N, 74N. Preliminary analysis of AXCTD profiles shows a weak Near Surface Temperature Maximum (NSTM).
Atmosphere:
As forecast Mostly clear conditions with a few high clouds.There is surface high to the north and one to the east. Surface pressure was 1015 hPa at 73.4N. This is a high pressure, cold advection case, a mixture of states 1 and 2 in Liu and Schweiger (2017). Dropsonde at 73.4 N shows temperatures at freezing near the surface. There is a weak surface based inversion with maximum T of 2.7C at 400m.
Images below are sampling of the sea ice conditions encountered on 150W between 72N and 74N.
NASA Wordview (MODIS) image from June 13 2017
