MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS. Elena Stripnik’s dearest dreams have always been about the Arctic. Her childhood was in Kerch (in the Crimea). In the early 1970s she came to the North and chose not to return. She stayed in Arkhangelsk.
The Arctic dream
For many years, whenever I need any information or comment on processes in a river or in a sea, I call Elena Skripnik. Nobody else could explain them so clearly. All those waves, coming tides, Arctic winds, cyclones and anticyclones - they seem alive. Watch them closely if you want to understand them.
Besides, you should love the wild nature. Elena Skripnik loves them all, since her childhood. She was the first among school students, who knew clearly what she would be doing - she would work in hydro-meteorology.
Elena remembers her father, a pilot. He used to pilot aircraft with the open cockpit. "I fly and sing," he used to say about those flights.
"My dad was a dreamer, he loved the nature. He could wake up me and my brother early in the morning or at night to bring us to the balcony so that we could see an emerging thunderstorm. When the first satellite was launched, he took us to the sea coast, to a rock, to show where it was flying," Elena said.
However, making the Arctic dream come true was not easy. She learned that girls were not allowed to study glaciers. Students in ocean studies also were only boys. Thus Elena decided to study aerology in Leningrad (presently - St. Petersburg). She took a distance-learning course.
For exams she came to St. Petersburg, where she enjoyed going to theaters and museums. After the second year, together with a friend she traveled to Odessa, where they came across the Odessa Hydro-Meteorology Institute. She wandered the building to find the Hydrology Department’s dean.
"I open the door and see a young man, relaxed, legs on the table. He asks: "How can I help you?" I thought he was a student. But later on I realize he’s the dean. I say: "I’d like to continue education at your institute." He replies: "If within one month you pass seven exams and 14 tests, you are in." My decision is - sure, I’ll do it," Elena said with a smile.
The freedom
She continued studies at the Odessa institute. During the final year, she learned girls are never sent to work in the Arctic. To Amderma, the Nenets Region’s north-west, about which she had been dreaming, went three boys. The Arctic-most destination, where a girl could go, was Arkhangelsk. She began working there in 1972.
"We came there in August, the heat was unbearable, I was waiting for a real winter, but in vain - that year the winter was warm: it rained even on the New Year," she said, adding it took her quite a time to get used to the local dialect. "I had a feeling they spoke as if "inside" themselves."
The Pomors, whom the girl imagined as very romantic people, turned out to be rather distanced. The young specialist got accommodation in a wooden house without any conveniences, though in a very scenic place on the Solombalka River.
"I can see now that if back then I had a comfortable accommodation or a hostel room, I wouldn’t have understood many things about Arkhangelsk. I had a feeling of freedom, when I do not need to explain anything to anyone, how I live, why and what I achieve. It was a strange feeling for me, coming from Crimea, where ambitions and prestige matter a lot. I feel comfortable in Arkhangelsk, though now I do not really like the city, but this inner freedom - I have the feeling only here. People here would open to you only if they like you."
After four years in Arkhangelsk, Elena and her husband, a meteorologist, were about to move to Leningrad to take post-graduate courses. Quite unexpectedly she learns the hydro-meteorology service was organizing a branch in Amderma. That very Amderma, in the very Arctic - her big dream. Elena wrote a letter to Artur Chilingarov (a Polar explorer) saying - we are specialists who would love to work there.
"I tell my husband - no, we are not going to Leningrad. Chilingarov replied - I’m waiting for you. We pack books in boxes, send them, and were allowed to have a week off - we rush to Kerch, and from there - right to Amderma," she said.
A swimming suit and a cezve
Formally speaking, Elena Skripnik has made a major input in year-round navigation in the White, south-eastern Barents and south-western Kara seas; in the Ice Berth operation on the Kara Sea’s shore and in the Ob Bay.
At times, they had to dig their way out from the house. To the parents, who lived in Crimea, Elena sent pictures of unbelievable trees in the tundra. They are only a few dozen centimeters high, but they are real trees - they never grow higher in the tundra.
Any hydrologist or ocean scientist works routinely with tables and maps, comparing various data. Next moment, a specialist may be onboard a plane to explore the ice, or onboard a nuclear-powered icebreaker. In Amderma, Elena got onboard the Sibir icebreaker to see how forecasts work when an icebreaker escorts vessels.
"I got onboard unexpectedly and very quickly and could not take many belongings. I was surprised to see onboard a swimming pool, and learned I could make coffee there. Someone told me: we are flying to Amderma, anything for you from there? I say: a swimming suit and a cezve (a Turkish coffee pot)! Imagine, they did it! And dropped on the deck for me a swimming suit and a cezve!"
After a few years in Amderma, Elena had to return to Arkhangelsk. The branch in Amderma was closed. The 1980-1990s were tough years for the Russian hydrology. In the Atlantic, Russia used to have so-called weather vessels, which transmitted data from certain points.
"But they were gone. Later on, specialists worked on how to read the satellite data, but the process required adaptation and adjustment to understand what the satellite has seen, what inaccuracy was on the pictures. A big job. Over 10-15 yeas of Perestroika, the hydro-meteorology service lost much, lost involvement, commitment, the people who were in love with it, and who trained further generations, lost the people who lived in villages and used to work with us as observers - nowadays, nobody is after this work."
How to make a forecast
Elena disagrees categorically with the "global warming" issue. In her opinion, the nature has periodical processes, and correct, right now we are in a "warm phase," which will be over no matter whether the humanity wants it or not.
"Those are cycles, the rhythmic nature, but there are no records from the past. Recently, Italian climate scientists wrote a petition: listen, those processes are nothing compared with human activities, do not waste money on "fighting the global warming" and do not tell lies, like it used to be with ozone. We are in a "warm" part of the cycle - the history has seen warming and cooling, strong warming and strong cooling, and they come one after another. It is a huge, giant natural process, which develops in waves."
Forecasts are based against certain methods: experts collect data for many years, find there key factors, like, for example, certain temperature and certain winds may cause growing ice, or winds of another direction will enforce the ice, and winds from yet another direction will take the ice away.
For every vessel, experts calculate the time en route, whether the ship would need an icebreaker escort, where and for how long. This is done not to have vessels wedged in the ice. Experts calculate ice drifts and other factors.
"We know regular processes: cyclones-anticyclones, how the Earth’s surface reacts, and in addition there are local specific features. For example, take the Zimnegorsk lighthouse. Somewhere nearby the wind comes from south-west, but by the lighthouse it may be eastern or south-eastern due to peculiarities of air streams. The cooled soil creates its own flow which acts locally, and thus you see two wind streams going in different directions - this is what may happen, but our young specialists normally are unaware of such peculiarities."
The task is to compare the data and to find similar situations in the past. A hydrologist, making forecasts, eyes all such factors and thus offers a forecast. However, sometimes similar situations are not to be found…
"I keep saying that forecasters must have some outstanding feeling. Close to the level of magic," Elena said laughing. "Imagine, you analyze, for example, three variants and need to pick just one…"
Unique brash ice
In 2020, a very long autumn and untypically warm winter have left the Northern Dvina River filled with young, ice crushes. Such ice may go down to the river bottom. Using explosives inside this ice is useless, as its structure is similar to cotton. Ice blasts, Elena says, are not that straightforward: specialists must find a key point to hit, or a big ice rock with a hole simply glides into the sea.
On the other hand, she calls brilliant the practice to use icebreakers close to Arkhangelsk to regulate spring high waters. Icebreakers get maximum up the river and push the ice towards the sea. However, she added, this method may be used only for a city in a river estuary.
Brash ice situation on the Northern Dvina would be tough in 2020
"Too much water. Everything is filled with water. Like layers in a cake. Freezing - melting, freezing - melting. Such ice melts unevenly. Regular crystal ice falls apart and melts easily, and here we shall have to wait for every layer to melt away. The brash ice situation this year will be interesting," she forecasted.
She retired 18 months ago. Toured the Mediterranean and returned to work. The family discussed where to move so that to live by the sea, and finally chose to remain in Arkhangelsk, in the Arctic.
"It’s fun to come to Kerch in summer, but living there all the time… I love the city, I haven’t lived there for many years, and I consider it a place where I come to swim in the sea, but I really do not know what to do there in winter… Here, in Arkhangelsk, I am always busy, here, in the North, is where I belong.".