To start out this week, I got a few questions that I’ve answered below. Feel free to keep them coming my way! Happy to talk about my experience.
What kind of science research are you and the group doing? We we supposed to have two science group come out to camp, but due to the late put-in, we only got one. This group is from University of Wisconsin-Madison and they maintain approximately 60 Automated Weather Stations across Antarctica. So, they came out to us to fix several of the stations that have either been damaged or buried in snow and they also put in a new one – Kathie – which I got to be apart of and I share below. As far as my science, the weather observations I’m taking not only support the aircraft and other missions out here, but go into overall climatology and modeling.
Does the group or individuals have dinner in a tent or temporary building together? Yes! We have a heated space to eat in. We had a module building the first few weeks of the season before WAS took it away to Byrd Camp. We currently have a heated tent. See pic below!
Do you get to eat with fellow members each night or only on weekends? I eat with everyone for lunch and dinner unless otherwise in the middle of flight ops and then I grab my food and head back to my workspace. Breakfast and Sunday’s we are on our own- per the chef’s contract. But otherwise, he cooks lunch and dinner each day. We have plenty of snacks and hot drinks through out the day/night as well.
Do they give a “polar bear fur blanket to sleep in? Lol. No. There are no polar bears in Antarctica anyways. Our issued sleep kit consists of: 2 sleeping bags (1x -40F mummy bag, 1 x 0F square bag), a fleece liner, pillow, and a thick foam mat underneath a thermarest pad. Most nights, I uses fill a hot water bottle for bed and I do have heated socks and a beanie if needed. Lately, I’m just in base layers in my fleece liner and square bag with a beanie on. Depending on temp is whether I’ll need something else or not. But usually, my tent is above freezing, so I’m comfy enough. The more challenging part is the 24/7 light. I wear an eyemask, put the beanie over my eyes and often cover my face with a sleeping bag to block light. But yes! I really do sleep in an unheated tent every night!
This week we had the AWS folks from the University of Wisconsin-Madison out in the field to do work on some Automated Weather Stations here in Western Antarctica, which is already a very data sparse area. In addition to supporting their flight operations, I got the opportunity to go out on Tuesday to establish a brand new weather station named Kathie!
Kathie AWS is located at: 77°59’41.5″S 97°15’59.5″W and can be seen in the map below in red in relation to WAIS Divide. Truly the middle of nowhere!
Kathie AWS is a 14 foot tower that runs on both solar and battery. To get started we had to dig a hole about 5 feet down in order to place the base, then the bottom section of the tower was placed in the holes of the base and we back fill the hole in. From there, the top section is mounted on via the rigger. The tower is supported with three anchor points that were dug about 3 feet deep and placed at a 45 degree angle. From there, the AWS folks mounted the various weather sensors and she’s ready for operation! This tower should be useable for the next 2-4 years before it becomes complely reburied in the snow. It was a long day, but I was truly grateful to be apart of the set up and to be somewhere in Antarctica that we were probably be the only six people to have set foot in this spot.
Otherwise, this week was very busy continuing to support flight operations, which can make for incredibly long days. We are getting to the tail end of our time out here as the sun angle gets lower and the temperatures dip down quite a bit. Looking at around another two weeks here before we head back to McMurdo. Coming up next is our carpenters, electrician, and UT will be flying out to help shut down and winterize camp over the next few weeks. So, slowly we will be losing access to water, power, and internet, but it just means we are closer to being done!
I hope everyone has a great week! Feel free to ask any other burning questions 🙂