sunset_over_sea_ice (Original)

Gratuitous fieldwork video alert! This is a very short clip from fieldwork last year. Although the focus of my work is the glaciers and the snow, being in the environment gives opportunity for many other interesting observations. In this case, the cold sea ice allows a very cold and stable boundary layer to form in the atmosphere immediately above which gives all sorts of interesting optical effects. Here's one I spotted on our way back to camp one evening. Sunset over the sea ice in NW Greenland. The very clean atmosphere means sunset has a much whiter colour than at lower latitudes. The thin low mist over the surface of the ice sheet shows a very cold stable boundary layer with a different refractive index which is why the sun's shape is distorted in the first frames.