Howdy All! I know it's double-dipping to do so, but I thought I'd post a bit that I wrote for an educational "blog" for gradeschoolers and K-12 teachers in RI I've been working on as part of my gig as a Rhode Island Space Grant Fellow. Some of this might look a little familiar, and if the tone seems a little funny, apologies. Think of it as edutainment.
This will likely be my last post from the Ice for this season--the close of another chapter of my life in Antarctica. Even on the cusp of flying North tomorrow, and soon back to friends and family, I already am begining to miss this place. The mountains and valleys I lived in for the past nine weeks are blue and white and gold as I look at them across McMurdo Sound, and I'd like nothing more than to be on the helo I can hear idling on the helipad below the lab. Of course, now the real work begins--analyzing data and samples, and really making the most of the time I have been able to spend here. I have spent the last two and a half months learning to watch the sky and the wind to tell how tough it will be to survive another day. Challenging as it was to work and live down here, the bigger challenge looms ahead, writing up results, and convincing the world that there is an important environmental message written on the walls of the Dry Valleys.
Thanks to everyone for letting me share my adventures, and I'm looking forward to winter/spring Game Days. See many of you soon!
cheers,
Joe
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December 14, 2006
Howdy All!
Greetings from the South Fork of Wright Valley, Antarctica (77.56388 S, 161.28250 E)! Today marks my forty-second consecutive day in field. Some members of our team are heading into McMurdo Station late tonight, and have been kind enough to carry this message in with them on the helo. [Note: Amazingly, right in the middle of the third paragraph of this post, we heard the low rumble of a helo approaching up-valley—three hours ahead of schedule. Due to thick weather gathering over McMurdo, the nice folks at Helo Ops (Helicopter Operations) decided to make a daring dash through snow and fog to pick up our team members from the various camps so they could redeploy north, off the Ice, the next day. Sadly, that means this post won’t make it out until January 5 at the earliest, when we are planning on breaking camp and heading back to town.]
It’s been an exciting month and a half. November was spent in Beacon Valley (77.86349 S, 160.59129 E), an extremely cold, arid, and high valley at the far edge of the McMurdo Dry Valleys. We hit temperatures of –24 degrees C during the coldest of the nights. Of course, the sun never really sets in polar regions during the summer, but the sun remains low in the sky much of the day, meaning it is obscured behind the valley walls for a portion of each day. With careful planning we were able to place our camp in one of the shadows between ten in the evening and about seven in the morning—a good time to be asleep, wrapped up in a sleeping bag, fleece liner, thermals, mittens, thick socks, and a wool “sleep cap.” Besides the cold, the winds were constant during the latter part of the month. High pressure air masses over the polar plateau and the coast kept winds blowing back and forth, up, and down the valley—sloshing back and forth once or twice each day. The weather is extreme, but beautiful as well. The air in the valley is so clean that you can’t see vapor when you exhale, despite the cold (there is no dust, pollen, or pollution for the water vapor to condense on, which makes your breath visible in winter in populated areas). As a result, there’s no visual cue that it’s mighty cold out!
Working and living in the cold makes me think about what it is like for astronauts working in space, on the Moon, or (in the future) on Mars. Left in just normal clothes, a person would not be able to survive in the extreme cold and winds in Beacon Valley—people are just not normally functional at such temperatures. Faced with such a harsh environment, we have two options for adapting to the cold—change our environment, or change ourselves.
The first approach is to bring our own small environment with us—in the form of a thick parka (affectionately called “Big Red” for it’s bright, easy-to-spot color), hats, wind-proof trousers, thick gloves, and air-insulated boots (called “Bunny Boots” for their bright white color and oversized shape)—gear which is bulky, like a space-suit, but no less vital to exploration. We also all wear sunglasses or snow goggles, to prevent snow-blindness (a sun-burn of the inner eye), as well as to protect our eyes from ultraviolet (UV) light (this year NASA satellites have detected the largest ozone hole on record over the Antarctic—unfortunate, because Wearing all these layers, I can keep the air nearest my body at a comfortable temperature, even in the worst weather.
The second approach is to adapt ourselves to the environment. Doing physically demanding work (digging excavations to sample the subsurface, pulling up many meters of ice-coring drill tube, or even just hiking over rugged, rocky ground) can quickly raise a person’s body temperature to the point that they would begin sweating profusely under the thick layers worn while at rest. By eating a very fat- and calorie-rich diet, we can fuel our bodies to be able to warm themselves to a comfortable temperature, even in very cold weather. It is not uncommon for members of the team to shed layers down to boots, a base layer, over-alls, and a hat while digging or hiking up steep terrain. The lesson learned from this experience is that there is no reason to ever be cold in Antarctica. Whenever I feel chilly, I just have to have a nibble of chocolate, add on a layer or two, and start moving. In no time, I am able to warm up to a comfortable temperature. This kind of reminds me of astronauts on the International Space Station and on shuttle missions exercising on stationary bicycles and treadmills to maintain muscle tone and bone mass (which can be depleted in a micro-gravity environment): humans physically adapting their behavior to meet the challenges of an extreme environment.
At the start of December, a small group (four of us) took off for a satellite camp here in the near-by Wright Valley: about a degree east and half a degree north of Beacon Valley. The weather here is considerably warmer—to the extent that I’m down to a tee-shirt, over-alls, and a baseball cap (although we’ve had a couple of days of snow, which have put a damper on this Antarctic “beach weather”). The science here is just as exciting as in Beacon. We are putting sensors in all over the valley to monitor conditions in the atmosphere, surface, and sub-surface. We are using satellite images and air photographs to plan our traverses and sampling locations, in much the same way that remote observations of the Moon were used to plan the surface operations of the Apollo program.
That’s all for the moment. I need to get on the radio to make contact with the main camp back in Beacon Valley. More later!
January 11, 2007
Greetings once again from McMurdo! It’s been a busy week since the team pulled in from the field, but I thought it would be fun to add one last post from the Ice.
The holiday season was busy in the field, with team members moving from camp to camp to finish off last minute projects involved with ice core drilling and using a seismic survey to find out the depth of ice on which we have been living for the past few months. Weather turned out to be our biggest opponent once again (although the snow was lovely—big fluffy flakes being driven on the wind). Thick weather in summer (snow-fall, clouds, and high winds) may be an early indication of a changing climate in Antarctica. Many people wonder how global warming could produce more snow-fall in Antarctica (after all, that sounds like global cooling). One possible answer is that as the environment warms, Ross Ice Shelf (a thick slab of floating ice which lies between the Dry Valleys and the Southern Ocean) is reduced in size, meaning the liquid ocean lies closer to the Dry Valleys than it used to (You can think of the edge of the ice-shelf as being kind of like a shore or beach, although you wouldn’t want to swim there, as the ice-shelf ends in a cliff of ice above water which is about ready to freeze). With less distance between the open ocean and the valleys, wet air can be more easily carried inland on the winds. When the wet air from the coast meets the cold air from the polar plateau, we get snow in the valleys. Living in a changing climate zone has really brought the effects of global warming close to home for me.
One funny thing about the snow storms is that the clouds form very low in Beacon Valley (actually, Beacon Valley is quite high up—close to 1.5 km, or 5,000 feet above sea level). The clouds form at a common altitude, which produces a most unusual effect (see clouds.jpg)—rather like living in a photograph which has had the upper part torn off! After the storms, the weather was unsettled, although very lovely (unsettled.jpg).
Beyond the snow, winds were a big problem back in Wright Valley. With the stormy weather coming in from the coast, we experienced the first “katabatic” wind storm of the season. Katabatic is Greek for “moving downhill,” which is exactly what these winds do. When the air on the polar plateau cools off rapidly, it becomes very dense. Given a slight push (say, from a storm on the coast), this air starts to move down-hill under the pull of gravity, going faster and faster as it falls from the polar plateau towards the sea. (If you’ve ever seen a hanging roll of paper towels or toilet paper unravel catastrophically, the process is similar. As more paper falls off the roll, it tugs at the remaining paper on the roll, which spins faster and faster, until the whole roll is unraveled and you have a big mess) The Dry Valleys are the pipe through which these winds move—a direct line between the polar plateau and the sea.
When the katabatics come, camp battens down and prepares for an exciting time. We pile extra stones on the tents to keep them on the ground, and add extra stakes to reinforce our tent ropes. Everything that could blow away (even big, heavy objects like coolers of food and solar panels) gets tied down, or weighted down with rocks. The winds come in bursts, which howl past at more than 30-40 miles per hour, shaking the tents like an enormous train is rushing by. Thankfully, our preparations paid off, and nothing was lost, although it was a very loud three days during the duration of the storm.
We took off, ending the field season, just after the wind-storm. Flying back to McMurdo base, we could see two ice-breaking ships working along the coast. They are breaking a channel in from the open water, through the ice, to McMurdo, so that a cargo ship can arrive next month with all the food and fuel for next year. The boat then picks up all the trash produced at the station (and at the South Pole), and removes it from the continent. Everyone is excited when the ice-breakers come, as it means open water extends right up to the base. This means all the living things which live along the Antarctic coast can come in to visit the station. So far dozens of seals have come in to take a peek at what the ships are up to, and close to a hundred Adelie penguins have made a social call to Hut Point (near McMurdo) (adelie.jpg). Seeing wild-life is exciting down here, but really underscores the need to keep the continent as pristine as possible. Antarctica is their home, and we are just visitors.
That’s all for now, I think. There’s a busy day of last minute work to be done here, before packing and cleaning can begin. If the weather holds, I’ll be flying north to New Zealand tomorrow and will arrive in time to see my first sunset in almost three months. It will be good to be back home, but I can’t wait to return to this wild, cold, beautiful place.
Thanks for reading!
Joseph Levy
