Published in the Antarctic Sun
Nine people and three small planes recently arrived at McMurdo Station after a journey of over 11,000 miles (17,700 km) from Canada to spend four months flying in the Antarctic.
Each year, three de Havilland Twin Otter airplanes owned and operated by Kenn Borek Air travel from the company’s base in Calgary, Alberta, through North and South America and across Antarctica to support the U.S. and Italian programs on the Ice.
This year the planes left Calgary on Oct. 23 and flew to Boise, Idaho, where two were inspected before continuing on to Houston, Texas, where they spent the night before flying to Grand Cayman Island for the second night of the journey. The trip affords them a luxury they don’t have in Antarctica.
“Every night we go out for dinner and relax,” said Kenn Borek’s chief Antarctic pilot Sean Loutitt.
Leaving Grand Cayman, they flew the three planes over Panama and on past the Equator to Guayaquil, Ecuador.
Though government procedures in that area of the world can be difficult to deal with, three similarly-painted planes get friendly attention.
“They’re pretty smooth for us,” Loutitt said, though he noted that Ecuadorian officials inspect the planes carefully with drug dogs.
After a night in Ecuador, they leave the next morning for Arica, Chile, just over the border from Peru.
“We don’t land in Peru,” Loutitt said. “It’s hard to get landing permits.”
But they do just fine in Chile, with help from a few locals, including an air traffic controller who assists with paperwork.
“We seem to have built a good network of friends in Chile,” Loutitt said.
After a night in Arica, they normally fly halfway down the length of Chile to Puerto Montt.
This year the pilots were in a bit of a hurry to make it to McMurdo as soon as possible to start work. They continued to Punta Arenas, an extra 800 miles (1,200 km).
In Punta Arenas, they changed into their cold-weather clothes. They learned the weather was bad at Rothera, the British Antarctic Survey base on Adelaide Island, their next stop.
After a day’s layover, strong headwinds made what is normally a six-hour flight take eight hours. The winds, Loutitt said, included a 50 mph (80 kph) direct headwind, and crosswind gusts of over 80 mph (129 kph).
The gravel runway at Rothera is normally covered with snow in October, but this year it was not. Instead of just changing landing gear from wheels to skis on the snow-covered gravel runway, they had to shuttle planes one by one to a glacier runway for the conversion.
“Nine of us were working on this for 12 hours,” Loutitt said.
After Rothera, the usual flight path calls for the planes to refuel at Patriot Hills before continuing to the South Pole. This year, though, two of the three went directly to the Pole, while one
stopped at Patriot Hills to refuel and check the fuel cache the U.S. Antarctic Program maintains there.
All three made it to the Pole that day, Nov. 1, but then the weather came in.
“The next morning we woke up and couldn’t even see the airplanes,” Loutitt said.
Two days later the fliers were able to make it to McMurdo to begin the season’s work, which will include flying over 100 hours per month, supporting deep-field camps and aerial surveying
projects. One plane continued north to the Italian station at Terra Nova Bay.
At the end of the season, the planes will fly back to Canada again to work during the boreal summer before coming back down again next year.
“It’s a trek,” Loutitt said. “It’s actually kind of fun.”
Sunday, November 12, 2000
Sunday, November 5, 2000
Cracking up: Sea ice under stress
Published in the Antarctic Sun
It’s strong enough to land planes on, too thick for a small drill to get through and cracks under pressure.
Sea ice is vital to the early-season research based at McMurdo Station.
Scientists base themselves on the frozen ocean to study the marine world. And when it breaks up and blows north, it leaves a spectacular expanse of open water.
David Cole and John Dempsey have forged a partnership out of the study of fracture of sea ice. Their work has involved lab work and field research in Alaska and now Antarctica.
Cole, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, and Dempsey, from Clarkson University, are studying how ice behaves when under stress, in the breaking process.
Their project has faced some difficulty this year. The sea ice is thicker than usual, which is hard on their equipment.
They were expecting to find some ice as thin as 36 inches, and have equipment that can cut ice up to 84 inches, though very slowly. The thinnest they’ve found is 45 inches, with most of the ice 55 to 60 inches thick.
The amount of time required to cut through this thickness of ice is more than the team has.
“Because of ice thickness we can’t do the research we proposed,” Dempsey said. “We probably need a Ditch Witch,” a trenching machine for cutting through the ice faster.
Right now it takes too long to cut blocks the size they need. The biggest piece they’ve been able to study was three meters square. They would like to be studying deformation and fracture of blocks of sea ice up to 30 meters on a side, 100 times larger than they can get.
“The underlying theme of our research is to look at scale,” Dempsey said. Without large blocks of ice to study, they can’t get the data they would like.
Cole’s part of the study happens first. He wants to know how ice deforms when under stress. His work stops when the ice actually cracks, but the information he gathers helps Dempsey watch the right area of a floe when they do crack it.
“It starts with the microstructure,” Cole said.
The way ice crystals form and align themselves as the ocean freezes makes a difference in how the ice will crack, even months later. When there is a small current, ice crystals line up in one general direction.
That, in turn, makes the ice relatively weak in one direction, so it tends to crack for long distances in straight lines, Cole said.
“The properties are different depending on the direction,” Cole said. “It’s not just a homogeneous material.”
Some things are very different in the field from in the lab. For example, brine drains out of the ice when it’s brought into the lab, which changes the characteristics of the ice.
They have a camp about three miles (five km) from the ice edge, on fast ice. Their cutting area is a short distance away, but on much thinner, floating ice.
Cole and Dempsey and their two students mark out an area in which they want to work. They cut a block free of the ice sheet and then cut a starter crack, into which they insert a balloon-like loading device.
This “flat jack” has a computer-controlled inflation valve, which lets the team vary the pressure in the crack. The computer is set to stress the block of ice until they are ready to break it.
“We don’t want to accidentally break it,” Cole said.
As the ice deforms, they monitor it for stresses and tensions, as well as how it deforms in response to the pressure on the crack. Some of these processes, Cole said, vary with the size of the piece of ice, while others do not.
Eventually, though, they are ready to break the floe.
Ice breaking
“Ice fracture is a very complicated process,” Dempsey said.
They have learned that at the tip of a crack that is about to break further, a series of micro-cracks form. They have equipment listening for the noise of those tiny cracks, to warn them before the block actually breaks.
Cole always looks carefully at the structure of the ice as well as these micro-cracks, to estimate where the block will break.
“It’s nice to have nature verify your direction,” Cole said. But he’s never sure if he’ll be right until the chunk of ice opens up entirely,
“Until you come down and try to do some tests you don’t know,” Dempsey said. “There are so many different types of ice.”
The ice thickness affects the breakup, but the more significant factor is the nature of the ice itself, which depends on how old the ice is, how it formed, local landforms and other environmental factors.
“We’re getting different ice wherever we move,” Dempsey said.
The models Dempsey and Cole have made about the behavior of ice under tension are based on smaller, more homogeneous sections of ice. They are checking to see how well those models predict the behavior of the ice they find in McMurdo Sound, and in larger sections.
They’ve wrapped up for this season, but are ready to come back and keep working, perhaps with better equipment and ice conditions.
“We have two field seasons,” Cole said.
It’s strong enough to land planes on, too thick for a small drill to get through and cracks under pressure.
Sea ice is vital to the early-season research based at McMurdo Station.
Scientists base themselves on the frozen ocean to study the marine world. And when it breaks up and blows north, it leaves a spectacular expanse of open water.
David Cole and John Dempsey have forged a partnership out of the study of fracture of sea ice. Their work has involved lab work and field research in Alaska and now Antarctica.
Cole, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, and Dempsey, from Clarkson University, are studying how ice behaves when under stress, in the breaking process.
Their project has faced some difficulty this year. The sea ice is thicker than usual, which is hard on their equipment.
They were expecting to find some ice as thin as 36 inches, and have equipment that can cut ice up to 84 inches, though very slowly. The thinnest they’ve found is 45 inches, with most of the ice 55 to 60 inches thick.
The amount of time required to cut through this thickness of ice is more than the team has.
“Because of ice thickness we can’t do the research we proposed,” Dempsey said. “We probably need a Ditch Witch,” a trenching machine for cutting through the ice faster.
Right now it takes too long to cut blocks the size they need. The biggest piece they’ve been able to study was three meters square. They would like to be studying deformation and fracture of blocks of sea ice up to 30 meters on a side, 100 times larger than they can get.
“The underlying theme of our research is to look at scale,” Dempsey said. Without large blocks of ice to study, they can’t get the data they would like.
Cole’s part of the study happens first. He wants to know how ice deforms when under stress. His work stops when the ice actually cracks, but the information he gathers helps Dempsey watch the right area of a floe when they do crack it.
“It starts with the microstructure,” Cole said.
The way ice crystals form and align themselves as the ocean freezes makes a difference in how the ice will crack, even months later. When there is a small current, ice crystals line up in one general direction.
That, in turn, makes the ice relatively weak in one direction, so it tends to crack for long distances in straight lines, Cole said.
“The properties are different depending on the direction,” Cole said. “It’s not just a homogeneous material.”
Some things are very different in the field from in the lab. For example, brine drains out of the ice when it’s brought into the lab, which changes the characteristics of the ice.
They have a camp about three miles (five km) from the ice edge, on fast ice. Their cutting area is a short distance away, but on much thinner, floating ice.
Cole and Dempsey and their two students mark out an area in which they want to work. They cut a block free of the ice sheet and then cut a starter crack, into which they insert a balloon-like loading device.
This “flat jack” has a computer-controlled inflation valve, which lets the team vary the pressure in the crack. The computer is set to stress the block of ice until they are ready to break it.
“We don’t want to accidentally break it,” Cole said.
As the ice deforms, they monitor it for stresses and tensions, as well as how it deforms in response to the pressure on the crack. Some of these processes, Cole said, vary with the size of the piece of ice, while others do not.
Eventually, though, they are ready to break the floe.
Ice breaking
“Ice fracture is a very complicated process,” Dempsey said.
They have learned that at the tip of a crack that is about to break further, a series of micro-cracks form. They have equipment listening for the noise of those tiny cracks, to warn them before the block actually breaks.
Cole always looks carefully at the structure of the ice as well as these micro-cracks, to estimate where the block will break.
“It’s nice to have nature verify your direction,” Cole said. But he’s never sure if he’ll be right until the chunk of ice opens up entirely,
“Until you come down and try to do some tests you don’t know,” Dempsey said. “There are so many different types of ice.”
The ice thickness affects the breakup, but the more significant factor is the nature of the ice itself, which depends on how old the ice is, how it formed, local landforms and other environmental factors.
“We’re getting different ice wherever we move,” Dempsey said.
The models Dempsey and Cole have made about the behavior of ice under tension are based on smaller, more homogeneous sections of ice. They are checking to see how well those models predict the behavior of the ice they find in McMurdo Sound, and in larger sections.
They’ve wrapped up for this season, but are ready to come back and keep working, perhaps with better equipment and ice conditions.
“We have two field seasons,” Cole said.
Sunday, October 29, 2000
Playhouse yields to communications building
Published in the Antarctic Sun
Construction crews this week tore down the McMurdo Station playhouse, also known as
Building 64, with a little help from the wind in Thursday’s storm.
Built in 1958, it was one of the original station buildings. It was the same age as the gym, the bowling alley/ceramics room and cargo building 73. The Mechanical Equipment Center, building 58, was also built that year.
The metal Quonset hut known as the Playhouse was used for many things during its life.
It was used as a steel shop during the construction of the Crary Lab, a warehouse for the station store, winter storage for heavy equipment, and a home to the general field assistants in the 1980s, McMurdo operations manager Bill Haals said.
He also remembers when the building was shortened by about 15 feet, resulting in an informal name change for Building 64.
“It was called ‘Building 63 and fifteen-sixteenths,’” Haals said.
The playhouse was also used as a temporary heavy shop in 1982-83 after fire destroyed the regular heavy shop.
“It’s been used for a lot of different things,” said McMurdo construction coordinator Woody Haywood.
Now, however, the area will be used to build a communications center, consolidating Internet, telephone and satellite operations. Those facilities are now spread throughout town.
“We’re creating a new building that will be the hub of communications at McMurdo,” Haywood said.
Construction on the new building will begin during the winter. Until then, the workers will clear the site and prepare it for new construction.
The workers, Haywood said, haven’t found any material of historical significance, though he said they might when they tear up the floor later in the season. He said the crew would help preserve anything they find.
“When we do find some of that old stuff we just throw it in the bars so people can look at it,” Haywood said.
The workers are on the South Pole construction crew, working while they’re in town, before heading to the Pole. When they go, Haywood said, McMurdo construction workers will complete the project.
Construction crews this week tore down the McMurdo Station playhouse, also known as
Building 64, with a little help from the wind in Thursday’s storm.
Built in 1958, it was one of the original station buildings. It was the same age as the gym, the bowling alley/ceramics room and cargo building 73. The Mechanical Equipment Center, building 58, was also built that year.
The metal Quonset hut known as the Playhouse was used for many things during its life.
It was used as a steel shop during the construction of the Crary Lab, a warehouse for the station store, winter storage for heavy equipment, and a home to the general field assistants in the 1980s, McMurdo operations manager Bill Haals said.
He also remembers when the building was shortened by about 15 feet, resulting in an informal name change for Building 64.
“It was called ‘Building 63 and fifteen-sixteenths,’” Haals said.
The playhouse was also used as a temporary heavy shop in 1982-83 after fire destroyed the regular heavy shop.
“It’s been used for a lot of different things,” said McMurdo construction coordinator Woody Haywood.
Now, however, the area will be used to build a communications center, consolidating Internet, telephone and satellite operations. Those facilities are now spread throughout town.
“We’re creating a new building that will be the hub of communications at McMurdo,” Haywood said.
Construction on the new building will begin during the winter. Until then, the workers will clear the site and prepare it for new construction.
The workers, Haywood said, haven’t found any material of historical significance, though he said they might when they tear up the floor later in the season. He said the crew would help preserve anything they find.
“When we do find some of that old stuff we just throw it in the bars so people can look at it,” Haywood said.
The workers are on the South Pole construction crew, working while they’re in town, before heading to the Pole. When they go, Haywood said, McMurdo construction workers will complete the project.
Waste not wanted
Published in the Antarctic Sun
McMurdo Station is the largest human settlement on the continent of Antarctica. More than
1,000 people will call it home this summer.
It’s an around-the-clock operation that generates sewage 24 hours a day. That waste is piped into the ocean less than 200 feet from the shoreline.
Two researchers are studying the impact the sewage outflow has on the McMurdo Sound ecosystem and on the quality of drinking water at the station.
John Lisle and Jim Smith are examining samples of ocean-floor sediment, the seawater, Weddell seal feces and McMurdo’s drinking water for evidence of human bacteria and viruses.
The first two are primary sources for a baseline indicator of how much pollution the sewage is introducing into the slow-moving ocean off McMurdo Station.
Seal feces help show the degree to which human bacteria have become part of the ecosystem, possibly causing disease in the seal population.
The drinking water studies are the first to test for viruses in McMurdo’s fresh water supply. The station’s water is regularly tested for bacteria and other contaminants, including lead.
The three major indicators the pair are looking at are fecal coliform bacteria, a common indicator of water quality used in judging safety of beaches and shellfish, clostridium perfringens, a bacterium associated with human sewage, and human enterovirus, which is found in human
feces.
Seal exposure
Lisle and Smith will compare the genetic material in bacteria in sewage and in similar bacteria in seal feces to see if the human bacteria are exchanging genetic information with bacteria in seals.
“Nobody knows if seals normally have clostridia,” Lisle said. He said they are also trying to find some seals that would not have been exposed to human waste, to give them a baseline level of clostridium bacteria in seal feces.
They hope to learn whether human diseases are being transmitted to the seals.
Two teams of researchers studying Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound are helping the pair by collecting samples of seal feces.
Outfall sampling
Science support diver Rob Robbins is collecting samples of water and the ocean floor around the sewage outfall.
Previous work has shown clostridia in sediment layers containing fecal coliform, and defined the physical extent of the pollution from the sewage outfall.
One of the problems was the concentration of waste in a location where the water doesn’t do much to dilute it.
“There aren’t very high current speeds here , ’’Smith said.
The end of the pipe, Robbins said, is 180 feet offshore in an area where the bottom is 60 feet deep. The pipe is raised four feet off the sea floor.
Since the new Crary aquarium was built five years ago, it flushes 250 gallons of cold seawater through the system each minute, Robbins said.
It used to be that the pile would grow over the course of a season to the height of the pipe. Now, Robbins said, with the increased flow from the aquarium in Crary, the waste has spread more thinly over a large area.
“Now it’s this huge field of effluent. It’s mostly poop out there,” Robbins said.
“Most of the pieces are about as big as your fingernail.”
Robbins talked about the spiny sea urchins that like to try to camouflage themselves with debris from the ocean floor.
Normally, they use other animals or bits of coral or other normal sea-floor debris. Near the outfall, though, Robbins said, “You see them with pretty interesting things.”
“I like diving at the outfall,” Robbins said. “You see things you’d never see anywhere else.”
Drinking water quality
The sewage plume extends beyond the intake for McMurdo’s water supply, but this has not been a problem in the past.
“The drinking water quality’s always been fine,” Smith said. But they are testing the water in a new way.
“This is the first time that viruses have been looked at,” Lisle said.
Both are clear, though, about the outfall’s role in transmitting contagious disease on the station.
“You can’t get the Crud from the sewer,” Smith said.
The samples of drinking water will be sent to the University of Arizona for analysis of viral presence; the results will not be available until the scientists return home.
Sewage treatment
“With the Antarctic Treaty, all the treaty signers are held to various standards for pollution and waste,” Smith said.
Some Antarctic bases do treat their waste already, including an Australian base, Smith said. New Zealand is planning to build a sewage treatment plant at Scott Base. McMurdo’s current macerator system meets the treaty requirements.
“Doing sewage treatment down here is a real challenge,” Smith said. Other places, he said, use big lagoons or oxidation ponds.
“ You can’t have that here. It’d just freeze solid,” he said.
Blasting began last week for McMurdo’s new sewage treatment plant, which will be running in 2003, said NSF facilities manager Frank Brier. The sludge from the plant, Brier said, will be sent back to the U.S. for disposal. The water leaving the plant will be treated to kill viruses and bacteria to prevent further pollution of the ocean.
“What is discharged (from the plant) is not drinkable but it’s clean,” Brier said.
McMurdo Station is the largest human settlement on the continent of Antarctica. More than
1,000 people will call it home this summer.
It’s an around-the-clock operation that generates sewage 24 hours a day. That waste is piped into the ocean less than 200 feet from the shoreline.
Two researchers are studying the impact the sewage outflow has on the McMurdo Sound ecosystem and on the quality of drinking water at the station.
John Lisle and Jim Smith are examining samples of ocean-floor sediment, the seawater, Weddell seal feces and McMurdo’s drinking water for evidence of human bacteria and viruses.
The first two are primary sources for a baseline indicator of how much pollution the sewage is introducing into the slow-moving ocean off McMurdo Station.
Seal feces help show the degree to which human bacteria have become part of the ecosystem, possibly causing disease in the seal population.
The drinking water studies are the first to test for viruses in McMurdo’s fresh water supply. The station’s water is regularly tested for bacteria and other contaminants, including lead.
The three major indicators the pair are looking at are fecal coliform bacteria, a common indicator of water quality used in judging safety of beaches and shellfish, clostridium perfringens, a bacterium associated with human sewage, and human enterovirus, which is found in human
feces.
Seal exposure
Lisle and Smith will compare the genetic material in bacteria in sewage and in similar bacteria in seal feces to see if the human bacteria are exchanging genetic information with bacteria in seals.
“Nobody knows if seals normally have clostridia,” Lisle said. He said they are also trying to find some seals that would not have been exposed to human waste, to give them a baseline level of clostridium bacteria in seal feces.
They hope to learn whether human diseases are being transmitted to the seals.
Two teams of researchers studying Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound are helping the pair by collecting samples of seal feces.
Outfall sampling
Science support diver Rob Robbins is collecting samples of water and the ocean floor around the sewage outfall.
Previous work has shown clostridia in sediment layers containing fecal coliform, and defined the physical extent of the pollution from the sewage outfall.
One of the problems was the concentration of waste in a location where the water doesn’t do much to dilute it.
“There aren’t very high current speeds here , ’’Smith said.
The end of the pipe, Robbins said, is 180 feet offshore in an area where the bottom is 60 feet deep. The pipe is raised four feet off the sea floor.
Since the new Crary aquarium was built five years ago, it flushes 250 gallons of cold seawater through the system each minute, Robbins said.
It used to be that the pile would grow over the course of a season to the height of the pipe. Now, Robbins said, with the increased flow from the aquarium in Crary, the waste has spread more thinly over a large area.
“Now it’s this huge field of effluent. It’s mostly poop out there,” Robbins said.
“Most of the pieces are about as big as your fingernail.”
Robbins talked about the spiny sea urchins that like to try to camouflage themselves with debris from the ocean floor.
Normally, they use other animals or bits of coral or other normal sea-floor debris. Near the outfall, though, Robbins said, “You see them with pretty interesting things.”
“I like diving at the outfall,” Robbins said. “You see things you’d never see anywhere else.”
Drinking water quality
The sewage plume extends beyond the intake for McMurdo’s water supply, but this has not been a problem in the past.
“The drinking water quality’s always been fine,” Smith said. But they are testing the water in a new way.
“This is the first time that viruses have been looked at,” Lisle said.
Both are clear, though, about the outfall’s role in transmitting contagious disease on the station.
“You can’t get the Crud from the sewer,” Smith said.
The samples of drinking water will be sent to the University of Arizona for analysis of viral presence; the results will not be available until the scientists return home.
Sewage treatment
“With the Antarctic Treaty, all the treaty signers are held to various standards for pollution and waste,” Smith said.
Some Antarctic bases do treat their waste already, including an Australian base, Smith said. New Zealand is planning to build a sewage treatment plant at Scott Base. McMurdo’s current macerator system meets the treaty requirements.
“Doing sewage treatment down here is a real challenge,” Smith said. Other places, he said, use big lagoons or oxidation ponds.
“ You can’t have that here. It’d just freeze solid,” he said.
Blasting began last week for McMurdo’s new sewage treatment plant, which will be running in 2003, said NSF facilities manager Frank Brier. The sludge from the plant, Brier said, will be sent back to the U.S. for disposal. The water leaving the plant will be treated to kill viruses and bacteria to prevent further pollution of the ocean.
“What is discharged (from the plant) is not drinkable but it’s clean,” Brier said.
Sunday, October 22, 2000
Science roundup
Published in the Antarctic Sun
As summer returns to Antarctica, scientists and science support staff around the continent gear up for the prime research season. On the U.S. research vessels Laurence M. Gould and Nathaniel B. Palmer and at McMurdo, South Pole and Palmer stations, over 600 researchers will work on over 130 separate science projects. Here are some of the highlights of the upcoming science season:
ITASE
The International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition will continue its journeys in East Antarctica, looking at shallow ice cores, showing climatic data from the past 200 years or so. (Corrected: West Antarctica.) Most global climatic data shows general trends of warming and cooling through Earth’s history, according to Bernie Lettau, the NSF science representative at
McMurdo Station. But climate also includes smaller areas. Global fluctuation is punctuated by more localized changes.
“There still have to be regional differences,” Lettau said. ITASE will continue to look at the actual data for the recent history of Antarctica.
SOAR
The Support Office for Aerogeophysical Research will fly over the area of Lake Vostok and Russia’s Vostok Station to study the area more closely. The information will be used in preparations for further study of Lake Vostok.
“It’s so they can make some educated decisions about what to do,” said Crary Lab supervisor Robbie Score.
The Crud
John Lyle is studying the McMurdo Crud, the illness that can strike McMurdo residents each season. The viruses survive in the air as well as in the sewage outfall into McMurdo Sound. They are not native to the area, and so they affect the water quality and the wildlife around the station.
“What they’re trying to do is see how our viruses influence the indigenous populations,” Score said.
Sea ice
John Dempsey of Clarkson University is studying the structure of sea ice, including how it forms and how it breaks up. The group is based near the edge of the fast ice of McMurdo Sound.
“They’re cutting a floe out and they’re going to start a crack and put weights on either side,” Score said.
Decoding ice cores
A team at South Pole Station is looking at how atmospheric particles end up in icecore sediments. Interpreting ice cores, Lettau said, requires an understanding of how the layers form. The team, led by Doug Davis of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is specifically targeting sulfur chemistry because of the significance of sulfur deposits in ice.
“Sulfates in ice are a primary proxy for reconstructing the climatic history from the core,” Lettau said.
GLOBEC
The Southern Ocean Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics study group will spend their first summer looking at krill as part of a summer-winter-summer set of cruises to look at the basic element of the Antarctic food chain.
“It is intended to look at the health of these various niches in the ocean ecosystem,” Lettau said. “What do krill eat when they’re under the ice in winter? Are they happy there?”
Scott Base
Antarctica New Zealand are supporting several projects this summer season, including a study of methods of preserving the historic huts on Hut Point, Cape Evans and Cape Royds. Also this season, Scott Base will see a series of interviews designed to compare people’s expectations
about Antarctica and their actual perceptions upon arrival, several ecological and environmental studies and a study of Adélie penguin populations at capes Crozier, Royds and Bird, which is one of several collaborative efforts between U.S. and New Zealand scientists. The equipment
used in the Cape Roberts drilling project, which was stored on Cape Roberts over the winter, will be returned to Scott Base this season.
As summer returns to Antarctica, scientists and science support staff around the continent gear up for the prime research season. On the U.S. research vessels Laurence M. Gould and Nathaniel B. Palmer and at McMurdo, South Pole and Palmer stations, over 600 researchers will work on over 130 separate science projects. Here are some of the highlights of the upcoming science season:
ITASE
The International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition will continue its journeys in East Antarctica, looking at shallow ice cores, showing climatic data from the past 200 years or so. (Corrected: West Antarctica.) Most global climatic data shows general trends of warming and cooling through Earth’s history, according to Bernie Lettau, the NSF science representative at
McMurdo Station. But climate also includes smaller areas. Global fluctuation is punctuated by more localized changes.
“There still have to be regional differences,” Lettau said. ITASE will continue to look at the actual data for the recent history of Antarctica.
SOAR
The Support Office for Aerogeophysical Research will fly over the area of Lake Vostok and Russia’s Vostok Station to study the area more closely. The information will be used in preparations for further study of Lake Vostok.
“It’s so they can make some educated decisions about what to do,” said Crary Lab supervisor Robbie Score.
The Crud
John Lyle is studying the McMurdo Crud, the illness that can strike McMurdo residents each season. The viruses survive in the air as well as in the sewage outfall into McMurdo Sound. They are not native to the area, and so they affect the water quality and the wildlife around the station.
“What they’re trying to do is see how our viruses influence the indigenous populations,” Score said.
Sea ice
John Dempsey of Clarkson University is studying the structure of sea ice, including how it forms and how it breaks up. The group is based near the edge of the fast ice of McMurdo Sound.
“They’re cutting a floe out and they’re going to start a crack and put weights on either side,” Score said.
Decoding ice cores
A team at South Pole Station is looking at how atmospheric particles end up in icecore sediments. Interpreting ice cores, Lettau said, requires an understanding of how the layers form. The team, led by Doug Davis of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is specifically targeting sulfur chemistry because of the significance of sulfur deposits in ice.
“Sulfates in ice are a primary proxy for reconstructing the climatic history from the core,” Lettau said.
GLOBEC
The Southern Ocean Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics study group will spend their first summer looking at krill as part of a summer-winter-summer set of cruises to look at the basic element of the Antarctic food chain.
“It is intended to look at the health of these various niches in the ocean ecosystem,” Lettau said. “What do krill eat when they’re under the ice in winter? Are they happy there?”
Scott Base
Antarctica New Zealand are supporting several projects this summer season, including a study of methods of preserving the historic huts on Hut Point, Cape Evans and Cape Royds. Also this season, Scott Base will see a series of interviews designed to compare people’s expectations
about Antarctica and their actual perceptions upon arrival, several ecological and environmental studies and a study of Adélie penguin populations at capes Crozier, Royds and Bird, which is one of several collaborative efforts between U.S. and New Zealand scientists. The equipment
used in the Cape Roberts drilling project, which was stored on Cape Roberts over the winter, will be returned to Scott Base this season.
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