IceChaser: Chasing Snow in Antarctica

The first full week of being in Antarctica is already drawing to close and it has flown by (primarily because of how busy we have been). The theme of the week has been training. Lots and lots of training. Since I arrived, we have had a science in-brief meeting with the NSF Science Representative and the NSF Station Manager, the work center supervisors and any other personnel who would be helping support our work. We also had the Light Vehicle training (how to check out and safely drive the vehicles here), Fire Safety, Waste Brief (what can and cannot go down the toilets as well as what can and can't be recycled), Medical Brief, Lab Safety Orientation, Lab IT Meeting, Antarctic Field Safety (how to light the stove and put the tent up if you get caught in the field in bad weather), BFC (Berg Field Center) Allocation for equipment we will need to take into the field, Environmental Field Brief (there is no "P" in Antarctica ... refer back to Waste Brief), Outdoor Safety Lectu...

As you can tell from the title of this post, I have made it to McMurdo! The first day (Tuesday) was a busy day that began with the shuttle departing the hotel for the airport at 5:45 am. We showed up to the airport about 20 minutes later and immediately went to the clothing distribution center to begin putting on all of our gear, labeling our luggage and packing our boomerang bag (more details on this shortly). We also filled out our departure card, which had our name and passport information and allowed us to get our "boarding pass". Once we were in our gear, it was time to grab a cart, load up our luggage, carry-on(s) and boomerang bag, and line up to check in for the flight. Checking in involved handing our passport and departure card to one of the Air Force crewmen and then weighing our checked luggage and our boomerang bag. The combined weight of the luggage and boomerang bag could not exceed 85 pounds, otherwise you had to ship stuff back, leave it, or move stuff ...

I said I wouldn't be updating my blog again until I got to Antarctica, but enough has happened since then to warrant a quick post. First, a couple of updates. Mark has joined me here in Christchurch and we met up Saturday evening after he got in. Last week's flight to McMurdo did not happen as planned and the group that was supposed to fly down on Friday was delayed until today, which is the day we were supposed to fly down. That meant we were also bumped a day and are now scheduled to fly down tomorrow. Mark and I briefly spoke to some of the people who arrange the travel here and they said there were problems all the way back in September with getting people to the ice that has continued to have a rippled effect until now. (One of the first groups was apparently delayed getting to the ice for nearly two weeks.) The good news is that all of our equipment (all 11 crates and palettes) has shown up here in Christchurch and was scheduled to fly down to the ice with today's fli...

My deployment date to Antarctica (October 30th) is nearly here and I have arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand (a little early to see a few sites before heading down to the ice). I've had a few people ask how you get to Antarctica so I thought a short post on how to actually get there would be appropriate. Our main base of operations will be out of McMurdo, which lies roughly south of New Zealand. The U.S. also has a few other stations around Antarctica (notably Palmer Station, south of Chile and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at the South Pole). The only viable options for getting to Antarctica (aside from the cruise ships that leave out of Argentina) are to take a military boat or aircraft. For our purposes, we will be boarding a ski equipped Air Force LC-130 aircraft that will depart from Christchurch and land approximately 7 hours later in McMurdo (assuming we don't have to turn around and head back to Christchurch halfway through the flight if weather conditions turn ba...

Now that the flurry of getting all of the equipment packed and shipped has passed, I have some time to post an update. It seems most appropriate to begin by giving a few more details on the project and what we hope to accomplish. First off, this project is being funded by the National Science Foundation and is a collaborative effort between the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado (CU). I am managing the project on the NCAR side and Mark Seefeldt is managing the project on the CU side. The overall purpose of the project is to show that we have the ability to measure snowfall in the Antarctic environment. The "snowfall" I'm referring to is not necessarily snow depth though. What we are interested in is how much Liquid Water Equivalent (LWE) snowfall is falling. LWE sounds complicated but it is simply the amount of liquid water you would get if you melted all the snow. You can also achieve this by weighing the amount of snow that ha...

Thank you for visiting my blog dedicated to my research and travels to the coldest continent on the planet: Antarctica. It has been a dream of mine to visit this place for many, many years and I am excited both for the journey ahead and the opportunity to share that journey with you. I would like to invite you to subscribe to my blog and invite any others you believe would be interested. I will be posting updates with more details on the research I am involved in, as well as passing along the stories and photographs of life in Antarctica while I am there. As of now, I am scheduled to leave the U.S. at the end of October and travel to New Zealand, and then on to Antarctica to begin a 3-year project focused on measuring snowfall. My team members and I are currently under a hard deadline to ship all of our equipment by September 5th and are busy preparing everything to make sure the sensors and communications are working. Once the sensors have shipped, I'll have more time to update th...