Plenty of science can be accomplished in a laboratory or clean room buttressed by a seven-figure budget from the National Science Foundation.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the approach about to be undertaken by a hardy trio from Boulder, who will brave polar bears and temperatures as low as 40 below zero, above the Arctic Circle, on a budget of about $30,000 — funded out of their own pockets.
Jorge Rufat-Latre, Jason Reimuller and Ulyana Horodyskyj will embark April 10 for a 30-day traverse of the forbidding Penny Ice Cap, where they will take ground-truthing measurements of the albedo — reflectivity of the ground surface — as a means to verify whether problems have developed with the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite, the flagship mission of NASA’s Earth Observing System, launched in 1999.
A paper published in October led by a Dartmouth researcher advanced the theory that darkening in the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet in recent years, thought to be caused by fallout from fossil fuel pollution and forest fires, might actually be due to uncorrected degradation of sensors in the Terra satellite, specifically MODIS, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer.
By heading out onto the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island — situated in Canada’s remote, sparsely populated and northernmost Nunavut territory — the trio plan to take their own measurements of the ice cap’s reflectivity. Those will then be checked against measurements taken at the same locations and times by Terra, in hopes of confirming whether the satellite has a problem and its MODIS readings can or cannot be trusted.
“It’s very important when you’re studying melt models to know just how clean or dirty your snow and ice is,” said Rufat-Latre, 53, the expedition lead and a NASA space shuttle engineer for 10 years. “MODIS has been doing its job very nicely, delivering great data for all kinds of scientists. But this year there are people who compare their ground measurements with MODIS and start suspecting the sensor is not performing well. And if that’s the case, then there are a lot of conclusions from earlier papers that are questionable.”
In addition to taking on-the-ground measurements of surface reflexivity, the scientists will also take snow and ice samples on the surface and in snow pits, then filter their samples to capture dust and black carbon deposition. The filtered material will add to a global database used to improve melt models.
Bears and weather could be foes
Although the team members are providing the $30,000 in funding, they are benefitting from about $70,000 in donated scientific equipment, including their spectroradiometer, provided by ASD Inc., of Boulder.
Throughout, they will be crossing the ice cap on skis, each pulling a sled bearing about 100 pounds of equipment.
They plan to leave Boulder aboard a Cessna 210 turbo single-engine, six-seater piloted by Rufat-Latre — Reimuller is also a pilot — for what is to be a 30-day expedition, which could be adjusted based on the weather they encounter. Eighteen of those days are expected to be spent on the Penny Ice Cap.
The challenges the three will face are numerous and potentially serious.
For one, Rufat-Latre said, “The polar bear moms are coming out this time of year. They’ve given birth in a state of semi-hibernation, and they’re really hungry, so we have carry bear defenses.
“The first one is a protocol — deciding how to react,” he explained. If they are far away, try not to be noticed. If they are getting closer, you try to scare them. If they really get closer, you use flares. If things get really ugly … .”
“If things get really ugly,” Reimuller jumped in, “we’ll have a 375 H&H, a high-caliber rifle.”
“That’s really last resort,” Rufat-Latre said.
The weather could be another foe. The lows for the community of Qikiqtarjuaq, on what was formerly known as Broughton Island, could register as chilly as 12 below zero, and it will get chillier from there. When they near the 7,000-foot summit on Baffin Island, the temperature could hit as low as 40 below.
They are a physically well-prepared group. Last year, Rufat-Latre completed, unsupported, the 300-mile Yukon Ultra marathon. Horodyskyj, by the time she was 23, had traveled to all seven continents. Now 30, with a doctorate from the University of Colorado under her belt, she is a research associate at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Reimuller, 43, executive director of Project PoSSUM (Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere), has played rugby regularly at a high level for the past 25 years.
“I think there are risks,” said Reimuller. “I think we are very aware of what they are, and I think we have been very sensible in mitigation. As far as the climate, I think we are prepared well with the equipment. Crevasses are a risk, polar bears are a risk and the potential of breaking through ice on the exit is a risk. Each of these, I think, we have thought well through and mitigated through use of equipment and through training.”
‘Anything can happen’
Those preparations have included Rufat-Latre last year taking a polar training course on Canada’s frozen Lake Winnipeg with Boulder-based polar explorer Eric Larsen. Rufat-Latre also has been consulting as needed with Larsen as the Baffin Island expedition has drawn closer.
Speaking Thursday from above the Arctic Circle at Longyearbyen, Norway, where he was preparing to lead a 60-mile expedition to the geographic North Pole, Larsen spoke highly of Rufat-Latre and his worthiness for such a mission.
“Jorge is a great guy. He’s definitely a thorough planner, an accomplished endurance runner, and I think he’s got great chances,” Larsen said. “It’s a good time of year. He’s such a thorough, well-planned-out individual that I think they will have no problem in achieving their expedition.”
He added, “In an expedition in a really remote place, anything can happen.”
The scientists have objectives, however, far beyond simply showing that they can do their work and survive the rigors of an unforgiving environment.
They hope to demonstrate that a lean expedition approach at high latitudes in a remote and hostile environment is a viable way to conduct scientific research, and to draw entrepreneurial insights from the challenges of putting together a stripped-down science expedition with no traditional funding sources.
“Where we would like to operate is at the intersection of adventure travel, citizen science and low-cost expeditions — or an entrepreneurial angle to science,” Rufat-Latre said.
Showing that meaningful science can be executed on a budget, he believes, is particularly important today.
“People that are tenured have an amazing longevity, so the young scientists are having trouble challenging the orthodoxies of their field,” he said.
“The people that control the funding are not going to be leaving any time soon, so being able to articulate a way of conducting expeditions of this type might be an opening for younger people to test their ideas, no matter how crazy they are, without meeting necessarily the imprimatur, or the legitimization, of a very established person.”
Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan
