Packing for a three-month trip sounds easier than it is. I have been packing and unpacking in preparation for my adventures in Antarctica and I think I am finally ready to go! Here is a video of the packing experience (packing is now known in my household as the Duffel Shuffle). It’s a good thing my bags are packed because I leave on Monday, November 9th. Enjoy!

The previous winter-overs running the Atmospheric Research Observatory, LTJG Marc Weekley and engineer Patrick Cullis (aka Cully), were there to greet me at the ski-way, and help me with my bags. Winter-overs are people who stay on station for the 8-9 long months in which there are no flights into or out of the Pole. Temperatures are just too cold during this period for flights. Many winter-overs like Marc and Cully spend the S. Hemispheric summer months here as well making it a full year. After a few days of turnover with Marc and Cully (who were extremely patient and helpful for having just spent a winter in isolation), I was able to catch up with Marc for an interview on his thoughts, feelings and advice on spending a year at the South Pole.

Photos courtesy of:

Patrick Cullis, all aurora shots
Brian Vasel, the tower with low sun
Emrys Hall, view of ARO from tower
ME, the plain looking shot of the tower

Chief Scientist Ken Taylor and science tech Anais Orsi looking at layers in backlit snowpit.

A one-meter long piece of ice core illuminated with a light. The green netting on the core is used to help hold the ice together in case it spontaneously fractures.

The bubbles visible in this piece from an Antarctic ice core sample contain carbon dioxide and other gases that were trapped in the ice when formed thousands of years ago. Researchers carefully crush the piece and capture the gases that escape when the bubbles break. This allows them to better understand what carbon dioxide levels were over time.

Heidi Roop, a science technician, will be working with more than 100 scientists to recover a 2-mile-long (3.5-km-long) ice core from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide. Imagine, that’s a column of ice twice as tall as the Grand Canyon is deep! The properties of each layer of an ice core reveal a slice of climate history. As layers and layers of ice are collected and analyzed, the story of the earth’s climate is disclosed. The WAIS team estimates that this ice core will reveal climate changes that have happened as far back as 100,000 years, a time when woolly mammoths still walked the earth.

During the 2009–2010 season, Heidi will be helping the WAIS team uncover new chapters of the climate story by drilling deeper into the ice. The WAIS scientists will be able to decipher the climate year by year back approximately 40,000 years and at decadal (10-year) resolution from 40,000 to 100,000 years, making it the most detailed ice core record ever collected in the Southern Hemisphere. With the ability to extract annual (1-year) to decadal climate information such as past greenhouse gas concentrations, the climate record developed from WAIS can be directly related to ice cores from Greenland. By comparing records from the Southern and Northern hemispheres, our understanding of global climate change will be more complete. The earth’s climate history will be known in more detail than ever before—and it’s bound to be an interesting story!

Early drill and recovery attempts of the buried glacier ice.

Sediment lenses cross cutting through a 30 cm ice core.

The outstanding question is how old is the ice? Ash deposits overlying the ice are dated to as old as 8.1 Ma (million years ago) which would make the underlying glacier the oldest ice yet discovered on our planet. To further convince skeptics that the ice is indeed old, the principal investigators of the grant (David Marchant, Boston University, and Michael Bender, Princeton University) are attempting to date the age of the ice directly.

An in-situ ash wedge in debris overlying buried ice. The wedge is approximately 30 cm across and 40 cm tall. Such deposits can be dated to give a minimum age for the overlying glacial debris.

To understand how this is done we need to go back to when the planet was forming 4.6 billion years ago. Since the formation of the earth, there has been a slow release of gas from the interior of the planet to the atmosphere (i.e. degassing via volcanic activity). One gas in particular is an isotope of Argon. This isotope does not decay thus its concentration is slowly building up in the earth’s atmosphere over time. Atmospheric gas trapped in old ice would have less Argon isotope compared to recently formed glacier ice. The principal investigators will use this technique to analyze the gases trapped within the glacier ice we collect during this field season and determine an age of the ice. If indeed it is the oldest ice yet found on earth, we will have the opportunity to directly measure important greenhouse gases such as CO2 at timescale millions of years back into earth’s history.

One afternoon a young adult female polar bear wandered by the ship. She appeared out of the blowing snow and walked past the stern, fairly close to the ship. An hour later she reappeared and approached the ship, walking up the fantail until she was directly below the railing. Scientists and personnel from the ship were pressed at the railing above, and she just seemed to be curious, sniffing the wind and looking back at us, occasionally pawing the broken ice at the ship’s waterline.

This young adult female bear walked past the ship, eventually coming right up to the ship.

The polar bear, standing just below us at the stern of the ship.

The railing of the fantail where folks are standing is about 5 meters, 15 feet, above the ice where the bear was standing, at the aft end of the ship, the fantail. It was a wonderful chance for people to see this bear up close.

The wind finally dropped below 20 knots for a day and we flew for the bear – only to encounter heavy fog that prevented us from finding her. We located another bear that was a lower priority and we successfully captured her, yielding good data. The next day the fog dissipated and we flew for our priority bear again, but she had moved over 30 miles and we could not locate her until we received a satellite transmission at the end of the day. We remained in the area because this bear was one of the two top priority recaptures remaining, and we successfully located her twice, but both times she was traveling in large areas of broken ice which were unsafe for captures. The temperatures remained warm throughout this period, rarely dropping below 25 degrees; the water temperature remained warm as well, and sea ice simply was not forming very fast.

Poor ice near one of our priority bears.

This is a frustrating aspect of field work: success relies heavily on weather, and the bad luck of encountering stretches of poor weather can put an entire field season on hold. The only thing that can be done is planning. We planned a long field season to provide multiple opportunities to recapture each bear, and we planned on capturing secondary target bears as necessary. Thus, even though strong winds and fog really reduced our flight opportunities and poor ice reduced our capture opportunities, we had successful recaptures of target bears and we were able to process new bears as well.

The poor ice conditions we have encountered are remarkable. Air and water temperatures remained very warm throughout October, slowing the formation of new ice as winter begins. The current distribution of sea ice in the Beaufort is much more typical of late summer than early winter – we have not had to break heavy ice at all in the last 10 days. It is inaccurate to state that this warm October has been caused by climate change; climate refers to long-term patterns of average conditions, not day-to-day weather. Even in a world with an enhanced greenhouse gas effect, some autumns will be colder than normal and others will be warmer than normal. However, climate change is changing what is considered “normal.” As the earth’s climate warms, particularly in the Arctic, the type of weather we are experiencing may become common.

Graph from National Snow and Ice Data Center. Extent of sea ice over the entire Arctic is currently low compared to the 1979-2000 average, in fact, it is nearly as low as the same date in 2007, when the extent fell to a record low.

Today we disembarked from the ship, using helicopters to ferry people and luggage back into Barrow. Although the trip ended on a frustrating note, overall, it was a very exciting success. Every piece of data we gathered is unique – almost nothing is known about polar bears during this time of year, particularly bears out here on the pack ice far out at sea. I cannot wait to return to Laramie and receive data from our shore-based capture crew, which recaptured bears on the coast during the last several weeks. Before any in-depth analyses, it will be informative simply to compare data sets from the bears on ice to the bears on the coast, to see if differences are striking.

Gareth Morgan and Kate Swanger passing time at LAX.

Twenty-four hours after leaving Boston we were eating breakfast in Sydney and we finally arrived in Christchurch; the total travel time from Boston to New Zealand lasted 29 hours 32 minutes. A full day to say the least!

Flying from Sydney to Christchurch over the southern alps, New Zealand.

Tonight we will rest up at the hotel, enjoy a good meal in this beautiful city, and begin reorganizing the gear for the trip to Antarctica. Tomorrow we will head to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) located just a few blocks from the Christchurch International Airport to collect (and test out) our Extreme Cold Weather Gear (ECW). It has been a hectic 36 hours but the team is getting along great and I am very excited to be headed south on Tuesday if the weather holds out.

At the top of Observation Hill

I’ve gotten out and done a little hiking up Observation Hill, and Hut Point. Observation Hill provided some great views of the scenery around McMurdo including Mt Erebus and Mt Discovery.

Sun shining on Mt Erebus

There was also a cross at the top erected by Capt Scott’s rescue team after finding the remaining men of the expedition frozen in a tent only about 10 mi south of one of their placed food and fuel depots.

Cross dedicated to Capt. Scott

Down at Hut Point, I was able to go inside the Discovery Hut which was one of their staging areas during the winter. It was extremely well preserved because there really is nothing down here to eat away at the wood structure. It’s just too cold. Inside there where tons of crates of biscuits for, some seal carcasses, and a lot of other supplies labeled for “Capt Scott’s Antarctic Expedition.” Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of the inside because I left my memory card for my camera in my laptop (oops).

Discovery Hut

There is one more trail I would like to do before I go but I might save it for another time. There is a Castle Rock loop trail that is suppose to be very good but not all of it is open yet and it is a little more extensive hike. I have already dragged my checked bags up to cargo so all I have is a carry on as I wait for my flight. Otherwise, there is not a whole lot for me to do here during the day. I’m ready to get to the Pole, settle in and start working.

The gym is below the foc’sle, meaning it is below the main deck very near the bow. The floor in the gym slopes upward; I tried the treadmill for the first time, and decided to do a “hills” run. So, the already-leaning treadmill slowly tilted more then less, repeatedly, every one to two minutes, while I ran in place for 25 minutes. We were breaking moderate ice (probably around a foot thick) so the ship was rocking unpredictably as well, particularly when we encountered pieces of thick multi-year ice (many feet thick). By the time I stepped off the treadmill and tried to walk across the gym I was tilting pretty far myself. I walked slowly, from equipment to equipment, bracing myself as I went.

The gym is located near the bow of the ship; the bulkheads (walls) around the gym are on the outside of the hull, so the sounds of breaking ice can be incredibly loud. Last week I was in the gym when we were breaking very thick multiyear ice, and the sound was like being inside of a thundercloud. I would have had to yell to be heard by someone standing next to me, and the screeching and crunching completely drowned out my ipod. The large white tube in the corner runs from the foc’sle above to a room below the gym. The anchor chain is spooled below, where it is paid out or retrieved by a diesel powerplant up to the deck, where it hangs over the side and is attached to a 9000 lb anchor.

I have participated in other aspects of normal life aboard the ship as well. Last week I caught one of the movies shown nightly in the theatre: about 35 well-padded seats that rocked, as in a real theatre, facing a big-screen television. I got a haircut at the barbershop – there is even a striped pole in the hallway. “Pie in the face” voting took place across the ship for a week, and personnel who received the top 5 votes each took a turn sitting in a chair, surrounded by the crew, one night in the hangar. A vigorous auction took place for the right to be the person to actually sling the pie (gently; no broken noses were allowed). Last night I played bingo in the mess deck after dinner. Around 30 folks show up, once a week, and everyone plays three cards at once.

For most of my downtime I am trying to keep up with the course I am taking this fall (Biochemistry), reading research articles and preparing for an upcoming conference, and otherwise doing what I would be doing at my desk back in Laramie. Unfortunately space is fairly tight on the ship and desks are hard to come by so I do most of this work sitting on my bunk, which is just about 2 inches too small to allow me to sit all the way up.

I cannot view the dispatches myself, but it was passed on that someone asked about our rooms. Our room contains two bunkbeds (“racks”), four closet spaces (mine is visible at the right), and a chair. It is probably around 10 feet by 10 feet. The beds are narrow and long, and they lift for more storage space directly beneath the mattress. A vent in the ceiling delivers fresh air.

Recently, after the two days of transit the ship was hove to in very thick ice near Banks Island, which is in the southwestern corner of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

This view from the helicopter shows an area that may show up in a satellite image as mostly-covered with ice, but once we get out there and see it the ice pans are small and separated by open water, making it impossible to capture a bear.

This is the view from the portside main deck this morning, facing south. Thick, multi-year ice from the central Arctic flows south into this area, so the ice conditions are much better for captures. The ridges indicate areas where multiple ice pans have crashed together, and because they are thick pans the broken pieces stack up high where they catch windborne snow.

For captures, we need calm winds, good visibility, thick continuous ice, and a good bear location. Those factors came together to allow us to recapture an adult female we first sampled on May 8th. She was in excellent condition, carrying lots of food reserves in the form of body fat: she had about 6 cm of subcutaneous fat near her rump. All of the sampling went well, but it was slow, partially because of the cold. Temperatures were around 15 degrees (Fahrenheit) during the sampling, which took several hours. It was our first fairly cold day, and a good reminder of the difficulties we may encounter if it gets much colder. Temperatures have continued to drop; as I write, it is 8 degrees with a windchill of -11 degrees.

This 22-month old cub belonged to one the bears we recently recaptured.

This adult female had two 10-month old cubs with her. We waited in the helicopter as the bears walked past, until they got into a good position for a capture.