Team Hengill Meeting in London!

In the middle of December, Jim Hood and I (Wyatt) traveled to London for a Hengill group meeting with collaborators from Iceland, England, Scotland, Denmark, Germany, and the US.  The meeting was organized and run by Eoin O'Gormann and the Guy Woodward crew from Queen Mary University London. We had an excellent few days exchanging talks and ideas, and got to spend some quality time meeting new folks and building collaborative 'spirit' among members of the team. Although most of our time was at Queen Mary U, we did manage to enjoy a trip to 'Brick Lane' for some authentic curry, and a guided tour of Jack the Ripper's old haunts. We came back to the US even more energized and motivated to find ways (funding!) to keep our collaboration rolling.  Let's hope this meeting is one of many over the next few years.

A panoramic of the team discussing ideas for future collaborations

The London TUBE!

Jim Hood, a bit under the weather on the flight, but just
darn happy to have an iPhone to hang out with.

Thundersnow

We were sitting in a coffee shop on Reykjavik's main street last week, when there was a flash of light that we all assumed was a camera flash. But then came the unmistakable sound of thunder. The air temperature was a couple of degrees above freezing and a mix of rain and sleet was falling. It turns out that this is one of the rarer meteorological phenomena - thundersnow. Read more about it here: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2196/why-dont-snowstorms-produce-lightning

The highs and lows of winter fieldwork

It's the middle of January and the December fieldwork is finally finished. This was stripped-down sampling, because of the short days and (often) long walks into the site. It gets light at around 10 am at the moment, dark around 5 pm. That doesn't leave much time, especially with a one-and-a-half hour walk in either direction. Fortunately, we got two days of good weather, and Sveinbjörn was able to drive us all the way into both sites the second day. We did not get the microbial samples or diel oxygen data from OH2 (for want of a $2 screwdriver!), but got the benthic invertebrate and algal samples, and did the salt and ammonium slugs in both the warmed and reference streams. Not bad for one of the toughest times of the year. The heat exchanger is cranking away, with about a 2.7 C increase. Thanks to Jón, Sveinbjörn and Friddi for helping. Alex gets here on 1 February and then we start up all over again. At least we'll have a bit more light then.

Jon starts his sabbatical in Iceland

A new chapter of the project began on 30 December, as Jon Benstead and family moved out to Iceland for the next seven months. We arrived to lots of snow, about 7 hours of daylight each day, and the insanity of New Year's Eve in Reykjavik. Neither words nor photos can do justice to the fireworks over the city - you just have to see it for yourself. Here's Lillian standing next to some of the curbside detritus the next day. Yes, that's 100 2-inch tubes - Icelanders don't mess around!






































Heidi has also been settling in. Here she is getting friendly with a local...

Expect regular reports on life in Iceland from now on. There may even be some science every now and then. Now back to preparing for the next bout of winter fieldwork...

October sampling trip (and PI training!)

Jim Hood and Jon Benstead enjoyed a great trip out to the site in late October/early November. The weather was cold and dry, if a trifle windy on a couple of days (what was left of Hurricane Sandy followed us to Iceland). Here's a shot of one of the pleasant picnic lunches (Jim H. is consuming the 651st smoked lamb and cheese sandwich of the project).

We did all the regular sampling in streams 7 and OH2, as well as a lot of SF6 releases. As you can see, Jon was excited to be in the second year of warming in stream 7.

Here's what the updated temperature plot looks like. Our mean increase is about 3.5 C at the moment.

At the risk of sounding like we've become total groupies, on our last night we were lucky enough to catch Sigur Rós, who were headlining the Icelandic Airwaves festival. The official project band put in another fantastic performance, including an encore preview of the "hard left turn" they've been promising (check it out here). Strong stuff.

It wasn't all fun though. Check out what Jon managed to do to the rental car after dropping Jim off at OH2. Hmmm.

This tends to put a real kink in one's fieldwork plans. Luckily Jón O. came to the rescue. Thanks Jón!

Happy Birthday! The heat exchanger is one year old!

Yesterday marked a year since we installed the heat exchanger (see post). And it's still cranking away. Jim Hood is in Iceland right now and reports that we are getting a perfect 4 degree C increase in Stream 7. Now we have to pull off a second year of warming. Let's hope that this winter's weather isn't as bad as last year's...

ESA and Sigur Rós in Portland

We're just back from the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. The meeting was a great success. By happy coincidence, Iceland's finest band played at Edgefield during the week, so Wyatt, Zab and Jon jumped on the chance to see them live for the first time. Jon remembers listening to Sigur Rós non-stop while working on the proposal that funded our work at Hengill, so it's perhaps fitting that we were able to see them play as we hit the halfway point of the project. I couldn't upload my video, so here's someone else's footage of the climactic end of Popplagið (or Untitled #8), which the band played for their encore. If you're a fan (and we are), it doesn't get much better than this.