Day 17: Packing for return and other activities

Last night, midsummer at midnight sun at midnight – a breathtaking view of the EGRIP camp:

Our firn air project finished earlier than expected. Today we packed our equipment and cleaned up most of the firn air camp.

Only the drill and the logging tent are still there since Johannes and Camilla continue to drill the shallow core. Today they reached 93 m, and hopefully they will go beyond 100 tomorrow.As our project is finished, we will probably leave the EGRIP camp earlier than planned. Many new people (including the ice musicians and a lot of press) will arrive on Monday, so the camp will be overfull and it is good if we clear some space and beds. There may be an opportunity to fly out on Sunday already, otherwise Monday. The bad news is that I will miss the ice music concert….

In a break today I visited Alexandra in the “surface processes” tent, and Tobias, who just came back from collecting snow samples and showed me yet another underground trench, where they store and process the snow samples.

They analyze the isotopic composition (yes, again isotopes) of surface snow and atmospheric water vapor. They want to understand how surface processes affect the isotope signal that is used to derive the climate information. I will probably go on a snow sampling tour with them tomorrow, and maybe also collect a few sample for our own analysis in Utrecht.