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Monday19 February 2007 Today has been an extremely quiet day. BASC and most other facilities are closed for President's Day, so there has been little activity around here. People are either at home resting after Kivgiq or they have taken the day to go out seal hunting. Dr. Cameron Smith is packing up for his 3-week camping trip at a remote hunting cabin. He has been mapping the trip for a couple of days now, and tonight his gear is all laid out in the hallway of the NARL Hotel. It is supposed to be around -22F tomorrow. I don't know how the North Slope compares to Iceland; it will nevertheless be an adventure. A film crew from the Discovery Channel London flew in to Barrow this morning and came out to BASC around lunchtime. They were here for today only (leaving tonight), and they wanted to see the area and meet some folks before they return in March and April to begin filming. They are filming a 6-episode series about Alaska from a geological perspective. It was unfortunate that they could not stay for a few days since everyone is gone today. They had contacted Dan Endres, the director of NOAA's CMDL (Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory) station in Barrow. The station has been monitoring atmospheric gases and pollutants for about 30 years; Dan came to Barrow in 1984. They had hired a driver for the day, but the driver did not know how to get to the site. Since I was the only one here, I acted as tour guide. The CMDL is about 3 miles past BASC as you drive away from town. We passed by the DEW Line station (Distant Early Warning Line), a relic from Cold War days. It has never been completely inactive, but it has not been fully staffed for quite some time. They were fascinated by the facility. It looks like something out of a James Bond movie. (Tom Stubberfield, location director) He was right. Taking pictures there is frowned upon, so we continued onward to the CMDL building. The snow was about four feet deep alongside the road and around the building, but it was frozen so solidly that one could easily walk on top of it. One of the crew picked up a chunk of snow and playfully threw it at another cameraman; luckily it missed him and fell to the ground. It shattered like glass. In fact, it sounded exactly like someone breaking a window. They found this fascinating and began dropping chunks of snow just to hear the breaking sound. I'll have to admit that I, too, was pretty amazed. Dan gave them a tour of the facility and described several of the more than 50 monitoring experiments that run simultaneously and constantly. The crew was particularly interested in the methane out-gassing of the tundra due to permafrost thaw and the subsequent vegetation decay. It was interesting to listen to the discussion about the relationship of the geology/formation of the tundra in terms of current climate change. They will spend more time with Dan when they return in the spring. I am visiting with Dan later in the week and I hope to learn more about what he does and what all the data mean. We returned to BASC and tried to contact some people in Barrow who could give an interview, but we had no luck. Researchers begin arriving in March, and the field season typically runs May September. The crew left with a list of projects, names of researchers, and email addresses -- they will have plenty of work to keep them busy in the spring. I am glad that I got to spend some time with them and learn a tiny bit about filming a science program, and I look forward to seeing the final version sometime next year. Captain Ted Lindstrom, the captain of the USCG Healy , an icebreaker that has been outfitted for polar research, arrived tonight. I hope that I have an opportunity to meet with him at some point. The Healy has been an enthusiastic participant in NSF teacher-as-researcher programs . The ship hosted a teacher last summer/fall. Tomorrow everyone will be back at work, and I am looking forward to a full day. Hope to have some more pictures too. Additional Journal Entries
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