What do arctic researchers do on a day-to-day basis?

Submitted by RMEMBR_OW t3_zlgsxc in askscience

I'm writing a science fiction story set in the arctic. Is there a data-gathering or equipment maintenance "chore" that would necessitate a researcher to go outside on a daily basis?

I really don't know the first thing about the equipment or tasks of researchers in the arctic. If I have a "weather station" in the story, does it make sense for someone to go out there on a daily basis to manually "perform maintenance" or "collect data"? Should I ditch the "weather station" idea and take a different approach? Any sort of insight here would be welcome.

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RMEMBR_OW OP t1_j0aqonq wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#934,590)

Thanks, this is some helpful stuff. I hadn't even thought about adding solar panels to the equation, that definitely seems like a plausible reason to have one of my characters go outdoors. The constant snowfall is also something that I hadn't considered, could easily be used as a plot device. I appreciate that you took the time to comment :D

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cuicocha t1_j0c8qxx wrote

Lots of data still has to be collected by hand. For example, I know people who measured the amount of water flowing in streams (on land in northern Alaska/Canada). In small streams, this is done by manually pouring maybe a cup of salt solution in the stream, then measuring electrical conductivity a few tens of meters downstream of there (conductivity is a proxy for salt concentration). It can take several minutes to complete the measurement, and if there's snow in the way, you have to shovel that out first.

Snow shoveling is a good mundane Arctic task; any time you want access to the ground, you have to shovel snow. Solar panels may need to be cleaned periodically too, and in many places they need to be mounted pretty high so they don't get covered in snow in the winter. However, anything that runs year-round north of the Arctic circle will need more than just solar panels + typical battery bank to run through the winter.

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epi10000 t1_j0cz0rq wrote

If you're running just a basic weather station then there aren't really too much daily activities. These kinds of stations are run mostly remotely with periodical maintenance and checks of course. However, if there is more advanced atmospheric research going on, then sure. Especially if you have stuff like mass spectrometers running you often want to check up on the instruments daily, as the arctic is a pretty hostile environment for research instruments. Also, with stuff like mass specs the amount of data you gather can be huge, and the internet over at remote artic or Antarctica isn't great so you tend to gather the data still often manually.

And more generally what you do on a daily basis as a research in the arctic is often do through the data you have already gathered, see if you needed to make some changes to your measurement setup, run calibrations and performance checks on your instruments and prepare the gathered data to a whatever end use you might have for it.

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