ATom-2 RF10 19 February 2017 Thule - Anchorage
Our tenth research flight travelled across the northern edge of the globe from Thule Air Force Base, Greenland to Anchorage, Alaska via 82oN.
This was my first trip to Thule and is the furthest north I’ve ever been (on the ground anyway) at 76oN. The air temperature was a brisk -25oC (-30oC with the wind chill) when we arrived. I always turn bright pink in cold like this and no matter how well I try to protect my face, it doesn’t seem to help! But when dusk arrived, the wind picked up and the temperature was biting on my eyes as we left the dining hall.
We arrived just after noon and saw a little sliver of sunlight on the ground. It turns out this was the first direct sunlight the town has seen all year! This means a “first light” party with full costumes! Unfortunately, with a 4am start to leave Lajes on time, I was fast asleep in bed by 9pm Thule time (or midnight Lajes time) and missed the party. I was feeling bad/old until I heard that the more junior graduate students didn’t make it either :)
I was really surprised by Thule. The food was great and the rooms were cosy and one particular highlight was free laundry! I had a load of washing in the machine within 5 minutes of getting to my room. It was desperately needed too! I hadn’t washed any clothes since Christchurch and my reserves were pretty low. 
I even got to see the three (one white and two black) resident arctic foxes, who were very well fed little balls of fluff! They weren’t afraid of people but kept a respectable distance to still be considered ‘wildlife'.
We started pre-flight at a nice leisurely 9.30am and left Thule a little after noon (you can almost see the sun!). We then chased the sun west across the Arctic ocean to Alaska.
On our flight, we flew north out of Thule to 82oN and across northern Canada to Alaska where we did missed approaches over Utqiagvik (Barrow), Deadhorse and Fairbanks before landing in Anchorage.
On this and especially on our next flight leaving Thule to fly across northern Canada to Alaska, we saw the highest levels of pollution (besides the African fires) of the entire of ATom2. CO2, CH4, and CO were all really high in layers right down at the surface and there was a lot of sulfur in this air too. And some of the pollution extended right up to the top of the troposphere. In contrast, on ATom1, when we didn’t fly over northern Canada, we saw fires from Siberia just north of Alaska, but the constant summer sunshine there was no cold dome then.
We also saw a lot of thin broken sea ice as we flew along. Translucent layers of ice were forming over the open water areas we saw when we flew over on January 29th. The 2016/2017 winter saw the lowest sea ice ever observed by satellite and it’s scary to see it in person…
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