Cryologging the Cryosphere
When Adam Garbo of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa saw a lack of data coming from the cryosphere, he turned to an affordable, open-sourced solution he dubbed the Cryologger.
Project Requirements
- Robust hardware that can withstand harsh Arctic conditions
- Power efficient for extended periods of remote operation
- Inexpensive and uses off-the-shelf components
Collecting data from a frozen, remote part of the world
It’s safe to say the Arctic is a pretty inhospitable place. Temperatures can fall as low as -40°C and during the winter months it can be dark for 24 hours a day. Although infrequently visited, the Arctic, and the cryosphere (all the frozen parts of the planet), remain important places for science to study.
In an environment undergoing rapid environmental change, there is an alarmingly small amount of data being collected – in part because of reliance on expensive and proprietary commercial data acquisition and telemetry systems. Scientist Adam Garbo knew there had to be a better way. Focusing his research on “low-cost, open-source technology to help study the cryosphere,” Garbo set out to create an affordable and open-source solution to this deficiency of data. This is the idea behind the Cryologger. Configured for a number of different research applications, such as an iceberg tracking beacon, an automatic weather station, and most recently, a glacier velocity measurement system, the Cryologger is a flexible and powerful tool.
Garbo describes the Cryologger as, “an Arduino-based data logging and telemetry platform constructed using off-the-shelf components. One of the main goals of the design is that it remains inexpensive, modular, and user-friendly.”
“The Artemis Processor is very power-efficient, which makes it well-suited for processing the incoming data from the GNSS receiver over long durations. The GNSS antenna has also proven to perform just as well or even better than more expensive commercial antennas.”
How it works:
In parallel to the advances in hardware Sibert was seeing, the free and collaborative Centipede Network of reference stations providing real-time corrections was introduced and is quickly growing in France. It reached him at the beginning of 2021. When it arrived, Sibert said, “I added a hc-05 Bluetooth module to my device to get corrections through my smartphone. It is astonishing to have a real-time position with an announced accuracy of a few centimeters.” Then, another breakthrough occurred - “Mid 2021, I got the Sparkfun RTK Express. It is more convenient than my device thanks to its compactness, integrated battery, and configurability.”As both a caver (a person who explores caves, often referred to as spelunking) for more than 30 years and an ambitious contributor to an open-source map project (OpenStreetMap (OSM)) since 2009, Eric Sibert has a long-standing passion for positional accuracy. In all that time, Sibert has been on a quest to find an accurate and portable tool that allows him to easily switch between these tasks - a quest that has proven to not be so simple.
To meet his requirements, he would need a tool that could be taken into remote caves, but also provide extreme accuracy for correcting street-level data. This dilemma ended up being a drawn-out and fruitless endeavor for quite some time. “I’ve been watching for years for potential GPS chips providing raw data at a low price. I made some attempts in the mid-2000s with the SiRF III chip.
Early Success:
The Cryologger project is already providing researchers important information about glaciers in the Canadian Arctic, which will be used by the University of Waterloo and University of Ottawa to validate maps of glacier motion made from satellite imagery. Garbo says, “these maps allow us to look at how the flow of the glacier has changed over time, and help us to better understand how glacier motion is evolving in a warming climate.”
Data recorded in the summer of 2021 showed, over the course of a few days in the month of August, that the speed of a glacier more than doubled from 0.75 m (2.5 ft) to over 2.5 m (8 ft) per day! Adam and his team are still investigating the cause of this surge, but they believe it was caused by a big rainfall event in the area.
Garbo feels the Cryologger is exemplary of how inexpensive open-source hardware and software can provide a robust method for improving collecting in-situ data in the cryosphere. New development ideas are already underway, with one concept turning the beacon into an ocean drifter buoy once the ice melts. Follow Garbo and his Cryologger on their open-source journey by visiting his website where you can follow the drift tracking beacons in real time. In addition, you can find more detailed information on all of his projects on GitHub.