Of good luck and bad luck...

For many, 2020 will be remembered as quite a unique year, as many around the world are affected by the coronavirus pandemic and stay home for work, schools are closed, and everyone adapt to the unusual situation. In particular, for scientists, 2020 will be the year of the cancellations of not only international conferences, but also measurement campaigns.

Last year, I was trying to organise a measurement campaign in Switzerland in 2020 for my project, but for various reasons, this was not possible. As an alternative, we decided to bring reactivity instruments (for both OH and ozone reactivity, the very first time this combination has been ever used to our knowledge) to Pallas in the Finnish Lapland in late March.

As Anssi and I were preparing for the trip, COVID-19 slowly took on the news' cycle and Switzerland got hit quite badly by the pandemic. Did we just dodged a bullet? I guess we took a lucky decision without knowing. Still the first cases of COVID-19 were reported also in Finland at the same time and the first measures to contain its spread were taken.

Searching for advice from our unit leader regarding the risk of being quarantined and not able to bring our instrumentation to the North, she asked if the trip could happen as soon as possible, a week earlier than planned. The goal of the trip was to bring our instrumentation, but also to bring some equipment for our colleagues who were planning to come later this year to Pallas for their own installation at a close-by location, Kenttärova. In the end, we got authorization from our research programme's director to travel. We drove the roughly 1000km to Pallas with a van from work. We did not interact with many people on the way or there, besides some people in restaurants, hotels, and supermarkets, and Päivi Pietikäinen from Metsähallitus, who helped us at the site, but we were already aware of practising "social distancing" and washed our hands as much as possible.

Figure 1: Anssi and myself getting ready to bring some of our material to the measurement cottage with the sledge pulled by the snowmobile (left). The measurements cottage in Lompolojänkkä (right). (Pictures: Arnaud Praplan)

The idea to bring instruments to the measurement site this early, is that the cottage hosting the instruments is located in a swamp and while there is snow, it is just easier to access the site with a snowmobile, bringing equipment on a sledge (see Fig. 1). While the most important part of the campaign will take place in June-July (hopefully), we can until then try to detect emissions of reactive chemical compounds from the snow cover. By the way, there was still about 115cm of snow while we were there (see Fig. 2), the measured record since beginning of measurements in 1911!

Figure 2. Snow depth in Sodankylä in 2020 (red), 2019 (blue), median values for the period 1911-2020 with the 5-95% confidence interval, as well as minimum and maximum values for the same period. (Courtesy: Mika Rantanen / @mikarantane)

Our installation went well. We were lucky that despite the fact that the trip wasn't at all planned according to the weather, it was sunny most of the time (both for the long drive in each direction and the installation). Not everything was perfect as we had to improvise because we did not have all the parts we needed, but in the end we were in a situation where we were actually getting some data already.

While we were gone, the orders to work remotely from home arrived, so after we came back to Helsinki we stayed home and checked the instruments remotely. Unfortunately one of them stopped working. And now that the capital region (Uusima) has strict travel restrictions in place to other parts of the country, it is even more uncertain when we will be able to be there in person to try to fix the problems.

Also a about a week after we left there was a storm who broke a tree next to the measurement cottage. Luckily, it seems that no damage occurred to the existing permanent measurements at the site and even though the tree fell towards our soil enclosure, it luckily missed it and the enclosure is undamaged!

Figure 3: The tree next to the cottage got snapped by a storm. No harm was done, but our soil enclosure (currently on the snow cover) was missed by a hair, it seems. (Picture: Päivi Pietikäinen)

Uncertainty is a main component of science. Scientists make hypotheses and go on to test them. Often, unexpected results occur, requiring new hypotheses. Logistics can also be an uncertain variable: what if something breaks during transport or gets stuck at customs for longer than you expected? This is why every funding agency asks scientists to write about risk management: What parts of the project are low- or high-risk? What are the alternatives if a risky part of your project turns out not the way it was expected? This is why Isobel Roswell wrote "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" in her post on EGUblogs regarding field work.

However, who could have prepared for the situation we are in now? I don't think that anyone wrote anything about a global pandemic in their project's risk assessment. 

While this situation will affect everyone, scientist or not, and that it sparks a lot of anxiety for many, hopefully there will be lucky moments to boost our morale, but also I do hope that scientists will not be let down by governments and scientific research will get the support it needs to be able to resume soon, when it will be safe to get back to a "normal" situation.