Greenland Flow Distortion Experiment

Thursday 22rd February - Icelandic Flight

The second flight of GFDex was a true Icelandic flight. The task of the day was to map the structures to the south and west of Iceland that result from easterly wind impinging upon the island and the flow splitting. To the west of Iceland we were expecting calm winds but to the south strong winds. The mission was dominated by Icelanders, with Nina as jump seat mission scientist and Jon Egill and Haraldur in the back. Kent was allowed on the flight, although not Icelandic, along with a camera crew from Sky News, doing a piece on GFDex. The story should be on Sky Monday morning at 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30.

The flight was quite interesting with wind of about 1-2 m/s in the wake at 1500ft and up to about 29 m/s in the jet to the south of Iceland. There was some turbulence but nothing compared to the day before. It was really interesting to see the difference in the sea surface from the calm wake to the jet were there was large swell and impressive wakes.

After measuring the jet at low levels we flew off to the east of Iceland and dropped a sonde to measure the upstream conditions. The first sonde failed so another one was dropped. Nina agonised for about 10 min over that decision as Ian had been “kind enough” before the take off to tell her that she shouldn’t think about the money but concentrate on the science. Until then she hadn’t thought about the money at all!

On the way back, we flew over the centre of Iceland. The skies were clear during most of the flight with fantastic view of snowy mountains and glaciers.