Reported by Dr Wayan Suparta
Brief history of the project
The history of the project was initiated by late Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zainol Abidin Abdul Rashid in 2002. He was developed GPS measurements at Scott Base, Antarctica, New Zealand coordinated by the Malaysian Antarctic Research Programme (MARP) under Academy Science of Malaysia (MOSTI). He was planning to investigate ionospheric phenomena in Polar Regions (Antarctic and Arctic) and Polar-Equatorial of upper-lower atmosphere observations. However, his idea was breakdown caused his deceased on 8 October 2006. With our small group but full competitive in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) coordinated by the Institute of Space Science (ANGKASA) through Prof. Dato’ Dr. Baharudin Yatim (Director), Prof. Dr. Mohd. Alauddin Mohd Ali (Associate Principal Fellow), Dr. Norbahiah Misran (Researcher), Assoc. Prof. Ir. Dr. Mardina Adullah (Researcher), Mr. Sumazly Sulaiman (Researcher), Mrs. Alina Marie Hasbi (researcher), Dr. Mohammad Awad Momani (Researcher), Dr. Wayan Suparta (Researcher) and post graduate students, we are exists, survive and still continued his idea. Our sincere intention is to pursue his dream with this project through UKM – National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) and Institute Science University of Iceland (SIUI) collaboration during the Arctic expedition 2008 to continue his legacy.
This project forms an integral part of Dr. Zainol’s approved IPY activity 2007-2008 Expression of Intent (EOI): Geospace Characterization, no #894 and clustered submission under group topic ICESTAR/IHY-Bipolar. ICESTAR/IHY coordinates the multinational research on solar-generated events, which affect the composition and dynamics of the atmosphere in the terrestrial polar areas. The outcome of polar-equatorial-polar research studies will provide us some benchmark and indicators as our base line in the lower and upper atmospheric sciences research. The availability long-term data of precipitable water vapour (PWV), total electron content (TEC), and scintillation with high accuracy on a global scale conducted at L-band frequencies is one challenge in lower and upper atmosphere studies. Further the outcome of these projects will provide us to understand the upper-lower atmosphere coupling processes, its physical drivers and mechanisms, and to discover the interhemispheric between pole (South Pole) to pole (North Pole) through conjugacy and non-conjugacy studies. Exchanging ideas and understanding other existing systems and research programs available at NIPR and SIUI collaborations will provide an invaluable experience and knowledge gain for the UKM researchers as well as benefit UKM to frontier the advancement of knowledge at par with international collaborations. The challenge to conduct atmospheric research at Arctic would provide us the opportunity to study the upper and lower atmospheric sciences and to investigate the character of the ionosphere and water vapour at the Northern Hemisphere. Hence, results from polar-equatorial-polar can be comparable.
There are many challenges to realize this project for Northern hemisphere studies, before the established collaboration between UKM and NIPR, and between UKM and SIUI. Since the end of year 2006, Sumazly Sulaiman (PhD student) and Wayan Suparta (PhD student until appointed as a Post Doctoral Fellow) started the first effort of collaboration. These two persons has trying to communicate with researcher at the Norwegian University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) to pursue a collaboration and installing the GPS receiver. At same time communicate was also goes to the researcher at KORPRI, Korea, in which we have meet her personally during MISA-3 at Sabah on March 2007. The communication with UNIS people was also continued by Alina Marie Hasbi (PhD student), as she was attendant in the ICESTAR/IPY-IHY Kick-Off meeting 5-9 February 2007 (Finland). Further, a UNIS person was proposed summer season on 2009 is the campaign planned. Unfortunately, the time for expedition was not suitable for us due to timely legacy of #894 and costs maintenances of system by UNIS was also quite expensive. The efforts has continued during AFoPS (Asian Forum of Polar Sciences) meeting hosted by Academy of Science Malaysia on 10-11 September 2007 at Corus Hotel, Kuala Lumpur which UKM group was represented by Wayan Suparta, Sumazly Sulaiman, Alina Marie Hasbi and Noor Hafizah Abdul Aziz. In those meeting, we have tried to explain to the NIPR group, the purpose of our study. We know that they have conjugate observatories between Iceland (Arctic) and Syowa (Antarctic) for auroral studies and have collaborated with SIUI started from 1984. Shortly, by some meeting with NIPR in Japan represented by Sumazly Sulaiman on 23-24 July 2007, and Dr. Mardina Abdullah, Dr. Norbahiah Misran and Alina Marie Hasbi on 13 November 2007 visit to NIPR and SERC, Tokyo, Japan. In those meeting, NIPR Japan was agreeing the Institute of Space Science, UKM assembled our instruments at Husafell observatory, Iceland. NIPR at Iceland was offers auroral studies using SuperDAN radars (MF, Meteo and EISCAT), riometer and unmanned magnetometer. UKM to be also collaborate with SIUI to ensure all the equipments and the data management is guarantee well maintained. In addition, land (site) to setup the system was owned by Iceland through SIUI coordination. In this collaboration related to the Antarctic project, UKM is not under ASM umbrella agreement coordinated by MARP. However, we are thankful to the ASM to have a MoU with NIPR, which at the same time we continuing our research at Scott Base, Antarctica (South Pole).
Activities:
· MoA’s submission to the NIPR and SIUI on 4 September 2008 at Dunhagi 5, SIUI.
· Checking all the equipments from Malaysia, which have been received by SIUI, and testing the GPS and MET4A systems on 5 September 2008.
Installation of GPS antenna and broadband meteorological sensors at Husafell, Augustadir on 6 September 2008. Figure 1 shows the location of GPS installation at Husafell, Iceland.
Figure 1. Location of GPS at Husafell, Iceland (Yellow Star)
· The installation site is at around 15 m Northeast from behind of the farmer main house, or 3 m North from the All Sky cameras antennas of NIPR. The works are including:
Finding base pole and NIPR Japan pillar FSP-610X (base pile)
Base identifying and development
Installation and setup
GPS antenna leveling (for precise GPS positioning)
GPS antenna height from ground to dome center is about 5.20 m
Grounding the GPS antenna and MET4A cables
Testing and run the systems.
· The GPS geodetic geographical coordinates of our site is as follows:
Latitude : 64° 40’ 18.87250” N
Longitude : 21° 01’ 33.86968” W
Height : 220.2249 meter
Epoch (UTC) : 07.09.2008 09:57:46 GMT (Iceland time)
Posted by Dr. Wayan Suparta at 4:17 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 4, 2008
Lodging at Holl Summerhouse Bjarnastadir and Activities
This house is at Bjarnastadir and is situated 10 km to Augustadir or with 10 minutes car driving. This is summer house and for this campaign was only used for rest and cook after hard working in NIPR Lab. It is only Wayan alone interesting cooked, because Mardina was fasting during this campaign.
Fig. 2. Holl Summerhouse with A-ship type and their facilities and a car was hired from Reykjavik
Posted by Dr. Wayan Suparta at 4:13 PM 0 comments
Interesting of Snorri house facilities and misscelineous
Mr. Snorri Johannesson is a farmer, but he has good gain knowledge of instruments and facilities. Beside Icelandic language, he was very well in English communication. The first facility they have a garage contains of retied car and complete tools for maintenance (electric, electronic and farms). Some of electronics tools were owned by NIPR. He has one tractor and five cars. On the top in his house building was attached of his a weather system to monitor weather condition from time to time and TV antenna. The research lab facilities owned NIPR Japan were available in main house. The NIPR Japan system was established since 2001 as initiated by Prof. Sato and now continued by Dr. Akira as a leader (Husafell). Outside of Snorri house, he has more than 100 lambs, 8 horses, 3 dogs and more than 59 cows/beefs. The ground of Augustadir area owned by Snorri is about 19 hectare. Augustadir area is one road going to Snorri place. They also have 5 houses in that areas, first is main house for permanent stay during summer and at behind of main house is 2 winter houses. Around outside of main house about 10 – 200 m, there are antennas array owned by NIPR for auroral measurements, consists of two types of All sky cameras, Scanning Photometers, Magnetometers and a lab with a size of 4 m x 7 m. Total size of their main house is about 8 m x 20 m. The other two Snorri houses are for lambs and horses. Snorri old is about 61 year, but his still very strong and strong....They have one wife; Mrs. Hanna and she younger about 6 years than her husband, and they have four children with 3 daughters and 1 son. The first daughter is also a farmer, and leave at different house nearest Bjarnastadir. Their son currently was study at Canada and he is final year of undergraduate student, and the other two daughters are study in Denmark and Norway.
Fig. 3. Some facilities and activities around Snorri House and NIPR Lab
Situation and preparation of GPS installation at Husafell, Iceland
During the mission, there are many public services ('khidmat masyarakat') have done here:
1. Checking all the equipments from UKM Malaysia
2. Site development in the behind of Snorri main house
3. Installation of GPS antenna and MET4A sensors
4. Both GPS antenna and MET4A cables are grounding
5. A levelling step action for GPS antenna position
6. Testing of system and quality data verification
7. Instruction to Snorri how to keep the system and data management
8. The system was running starting from 12 September 2008 with their manual maintenances.
Posted by Dr. Wayan Suparta at 3:21 PM 0 comments
Initial results of lower-upper atmosphere measurements at Husafell, Iceland
On 9 September 2008, we are concentrated in the Lab to check the quality of both GPS and MET data. As reported here, the weather was quite pleasant, surface temperature was between 7 - 13 degrees Celsius on average, relative humidity was between 50 - 85 %, surface pressure was between 980 and 995 mbar, majority of wind in Augustadir area was flown from East and North-East (from Hills) with average speed of about 10-15 m/s and some time the winds can be stronger reached to 60 m/s. Some time small rainy, haze, cloudy at around Husafell were clear seen making a Husafell colder. During this campaign we also can saw the small aurora event above the Snorri house on 8 September 2008. Outside of our Holl summerhouse, the wind much strongest during at night, making us afraid stay there....but still be tried to enjoy.
Figure 4: Meteorological conditions at Husafell; and VTEC and satellite elevation angle measurements
As we can seen in the vertical total electron content (VTEC) variation, during this season (late of Summer in Iceland), VTEC variation was peaked from 16:00 to 18:00 GMT. Local time in Iceland was similar time with Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) at London, where Local Time (LT) = Universal Time (UT), or 8 hours late from Malaysia Local Time. From this figure was cleared seen that the VTEC variation was peaked during the day or in which the sun was active. Precipitable water vapour (PWV) will be calculated later from satellite elevation angle and surface meteorological measurements to show the amount of Husafell PWV content and their variation. Total satellite elevation angle at this site was observed between 50 and 80 degrees and the GPS satellite were visible 5-12 satellites and the GPS receiver can track them at 5 – 11 satellites.
Posted by Dr. Wayan Suparta at 3:07 AM 0 comments
Last day at Augustadir, Husafell was 12 September 2008. We move from summer house to Snorri house at 08:12 AM and from Snorri house to Reykjavik at 09:56 AM. We go together by four persons: Wayan, Akira, Mardina and Takamitsu. The driving car from Snorri house to middle of Reykjavik (Geysir) was Wayan. Because very tied working at Husafell and driving, so that to reach the Reykjavik town from Geysir was replaced by Akira-san to drive us. It was first time for us (Wayan and Mardina) driving car with left side in Iceland. During in Iceland we all also going to Husafell water falls; this was Akira-san idea to brought them for swimming. Before last day, we also go to natural earthquake cape guided by Snorri. He was brought us to the beautiful location with his car at Husafell about 1-2 hrs. Húsafell is a perfect holiday resort for the whole family as well as for all nature lovers. The main spots of natural beauty in the area include the water falls Hraunfossar and Barnafoss and the caves Surtshellir and Víðgelmir. Further on last day, before reach to Reykjavik we all also stop over the two natural occurred earthquakes at Pingvellir and at Lite Geyser to see the natural and fantastic booming gas (eruption) of geyser at Geysir. Last journey was stoped at the highest waterfall in Iceland at Langjokul. The journey was continued to Reykjavik in order to back the car rental and lodging back in guesthouse Isafold at Barugata 11.
From left: Akira, Gunnlaugur, Brindis and Wayan; Mardina cannot seen (she between Akira and Motoba)
Further in the research publication with this project, who using the data and will be write a paper are invited and encouraged, or in strong word, his/her must include the authors name: Wayan Suparta, Mardina Abdullah, Akira Kadokura and Gunnlaugur Bjornsson in their paper publication. We would like to thanks our gratitude to the institution or personal for supporting this collaboration project and the successful of GPS installation at Husafell, Iceland.
- Prof. Dato’ Dr. Bahurudin Yatim, Director of Institute of Space Science (ANGKASA)
- Vice Chancellor Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
- Prof. Natsuo Sato and Dr. Akira Kadokura from National Institute Polar Research (NIPR) Japan
- Prof. Gunnlaugur Bjornsson and Brindis Brandsdottir from Science Institute, University of Iceland (SIUI)
- Mr. Snorri Johannesson and his family at Augustadir, Iceland
- MARP and ASM
- All every body included in this project, direct or indirectly support for the successful of first MoA and technical expedition at Husafell, Iceland.
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