Tag Archives: Sampling work

DMS is in the air…

There is a sweet, sticky seafood smell in the crisp Arctic air that makes me happy. It turns my neurons on every morning, when I bend over the port railing of the Amundsen on my way to the laboratory. This smell emanates from the sea surface and is called DMS, shorthand for dimethyl sulfide. I admit that sometimes, in the intimacy of the laboratory, I open a tiny bottle of pure DMS and smell it to find immediate comfort. And as you will see, I am not the only one.

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Two under-ice blooms

During the Arctic spring, the melting of snow results in an increase of light transmittance underneath the ice. Meanwhile, the warming of sea ice causes its melting, contributing to the formation of a freshwater layer underneath the ice, where the phytoplankton can be trapped. These conditions favor the development of an under-ice bloom, which is the focus of the Green Edge project.

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Time of change

I arrived at the ice camp three weeks ago and during that time many things changed: the nearby mountain tops lost the remainder of their snow cover, the sea ice’s snow vanished and melt ponds just appeared, there are many more birds and seals than there had been, the phytoplankton bloom started, … But to me the most prominent trace of change was the access to the “Polarhaven” tent at the ice camp, where I went for water sampling and CTD operations every other day.

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