Now that we’ve cleaned up some of the clutter in our lab space to make room for some leg 2 work, here is a (very) brief tour of our equipment. Most of our measurements are carried out in the “Triple Lab”; so-called because it is the size of three sea cargo containers. The Triple Lab is located on the fourth deck of Oden. As the main deck (övre däck) is the lowest deck where you can be outside, it “feels like” the fifth deck to me. Unfortunately, the lab is not the most exciting thing to look at; our primary equipment is three laser spectrometers, which look like black boxes from the outside. Because they are black boxes on the outside.

There are two windows, facing forward. It’s possible to look out the window and see the meteorological mast, where two of our air sampling inlets are located. (A third inlet is on the triangle at the very front of the ship – see my blog #2. The fourth air sampling inlet is located two decks above the Triple Lab, on the deck above Oden’s bridge.)

Inside the Triple Lab is a small room, occupying about 1/4 of the Triple Lab. We call this the “laser room”, where we have most of our equipment. It’s sound insulated because of the many air pumps, which make quite a din. Just outside the laser room we have our computer for controlling and monitoring the equipment.

Our laser spectrometers provides real-time methane and carbon dioxide concentrations. We send this real-time view to a station on Oden's bridge, for the cruise chief scientists. Similarly, the real-time dissolved methane in the water just below Oden was sent to the bridge from Marc’s WEGAS system (also a laser spectrometer system). The WEGAS system is located three decks lower, in the main lab. This combination of real-time methane-in-air data and methane-in-water data allowed for some days of “methane hunting” (looking for areas of very high methane) earlier during Leg 1 of SWERUS-C3. One of our laser spectrometer, built by Aerodyne Research in Massachusetts, is dedicated to measuring the atmospheric concentration of the three most common methane isotopologues (see my blog #5).

Our equipment will run in nearly unattended mode, with some daily monitoring, during Leg 2 of SWERUS-C3.