Southbound Flight

Hello, again! I have spent the last two days in Christchurch, New Zealand. As many of you know, that means I am on my way back to Antarctica. This will be my sixth trip overall and third trip in three years. I flew commercial from Denver to Christchurch with stops in Los Angeles and Auckland, New Zealand. That trip took approximately 25 hours from gate to gate, including a 13 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland. I left Colorado Thursday mid-afternoon and arrived into Christchurch around noon on Saturday. The lost day is due to crossing the International Dateline and I will regain that day when I return to Colorado. On Sunday morning I went to the Clothing Distribution Center to go through some initial training and to pickup, and verify fit, of the issued extreme cold weather gear. Our flight south to Antarctica was scheduled for today. However, early in this summer main body season there have been numerous delays. Included in those delays was the flight that was supposed to go on Friday. That flight did not go so that it went today (Monday), pushing our flight to tomorrow. I spent the extra day with a day trip to Akaroa, which is about two hours away from Christchurch. I have found that one extra day in Christchurch is often nice as it gives me a chance to reset and further prepare for the Antarctic field season.

Visiting Akaroa during my bonus day in New Zealand while waiting for the southbound flight to Antarctica.

Not only is it my third trip in three years but it is also the third project that I will be working on in Antarctica. Two years ago I did repairs, maintenance, and installation of automatic weather stations. That trip was done at about the same time as this trip, which is early to mid summer for the Southern Hemisphere. The project a year ago was flying a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, aka: drone) to take measurements of the lowest 1500 feet of the atmosphere over successive flights in a 12 hour period. That trip was at the end of the winter through early spring (late August to early October). This year is a new project funded by the National Science Foundation with a goal of being able to measure precipitation using a collection of low-power instruments at remote locations in Antarctica. Precipitation has been an elusive measurement for the meteorology and climatology of the Antarctic. There are two primary reasons as to why this task has been so challenging. The first is that there is not a lot of snow that falls in the Antarctic. Antarctica is the driest continent. The second reason is that it is difficult to distinguish between blowing snow and falling (precipitating) snow in Antarctica. We can measure accumulation at a given location by putting a stake in the snow or by bouncing sound waves off of the surface to measure the changing snow height. The tricky part is determining what of that accumulation is due to precipitating snow. In a future post(s) I will explain why these measurements are significant and how we are planning to make these measurements of precipitation.

This year's project is also unique because it is the first National Science Foundation project where I am the lead. I have lead, or co-lead, previous field seasons but this time I am responsible for the overall project as well. One of the tasks I had to do is to design a sticker for the project. Stickers are a really big deal in Antarctica as they both share a little something of what the project is doing, as well as provide something to give to the support personnel who play a big part in the success of the project. With the help of a friend, I was able to put together the design of the project sticker. The "O-456" is the project number and for many of the support workers that is how they identify the project.

The sticker for project O-456, the Antarctic Precipitation Project for 2017.

My southbound flight is scheduled for 10 hours from now. I have a 5:45 AM shuttle but pickup to take us to the Antarctic Passenger Terminal. That is where we will start the process of changing into cold weather gear and checking our baggage for the southbound flight. If all goes well, in 16 hours I will be walking on the snow of the Ross Ice Shelf at Phoenix Airfield.

Mega on the Ice - Antarctica 2019

Monday, October 30, 2017