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3 June, 2000dawson journal 06/03/00 Greenland is letting us know it is not ready for summer. Winds did not ease during the night and increased to 30 knots today. The temperature has hovered around -20 C. There were times that the driven snow blanked out most of the huts around the main house. The snow drifts are awesome, with streams of snow flowing over them smoothing footprints. Areas that the tractor plow had made roadways are now filled with beautifully sculptured walls of snow. (Not so beautiful to Tim, the heavy equipment operator, I bet). At last I am working on a part of a project that involves more than just peripheral helping. Dr. Mary Albert of Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) is here studying the physical attributes of snow and firn, such as permeability (how the holes or airspaces in the snow are connected) and diffusion (the process of temperature, gas, or chemical movement as it slowly passes through the snow). One of the aspects of this research involves the temperature at different depths. To do this, we made 19 thermocouples from double- stranded wire this afternoon. Then Dr. Albert showed me how she wanted the thermocouples connected to the data recorder, and I proceeded to get that done. Tomorrow I will calibrate them. More on this later. Tonight there was a meeting of all the scientists and their associates to discuss where they were on their projects and the objectives that everyone wanted to pursue this field season. It was interesting to hear them discuss the same things that are discussed in the classroom: Is this controlled? How will it affect...? How should we...? Very enlightening and reasuuring that what we do with research and experimentation in the class is essentially the same as it is in the field. And curiosity is ageless. Warm regards, Besse Dawson
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