Finally the weather lifted, and Operation IceBridge made a series of flights over the Antarctic Peninsula and a crucially important flight over the South Pole.

All was going without a hitch, until we arrived in Chile.

As the Arctic IceBridge season wraps up, we can reflect on what was accomplished during this part of the largest airborne survey ever flown of Earth’s polar ice.

The Greenland ice sheet is vast, but with each flight we are filling in another small piece in the grid of understanding this remote area of the Earth.

To add an element of challenge, we must navigate around the volcanic ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano as we fly.

ESA’s CryoSat-2 is designed to collect new insights into the role of ice in the Earth system. Our April 20th mission plan was to underfly the satellite over the Arctic Sea Ice.

A break in the weather, and we are back in the air monitoring sea ice. The ice cap is starting to thin.

The NASA ICE Bridge mission shifts north, from Antarctica to the Arctic

It is always bittersweet to reach the end of a field season. While it is good to be going home, and I feel privileged to have seen the amazing sights I have seen, the data that we have collected shows me there is a sobering trend.

The ICE Bridge mission has been so successful that eight flights will be added keeping us in Chile until Thanksgiving.