I am always on the move or shoveling, it seems. So far I have dug six 2 meter snow pits at various stops on the traverse. I dig the pits in order to get a close look at the surface snow and the layering caused by different weather and snow deposition events, and because these top 2 meters are fragile enough that the don’t always survive when shipped as cores back to the lab at home. The surface snow holds clues as to what is going on in the ice below. Some of the layering we see in surface pits is seen in deeper ice cores.

We can also get an idea of how much snow has fallen in a given area (thickness of the layers we see) and what processes (wind scours, snow fall) are going on at the surface. It’s a low-tech, labor-intensive way of getting a lot of information. Labor intensive because it involves digging a 2m deep by 1m wide by 2m long hole. I figure I’ve dug about 10 tons of snow so far, and made over 1000 different measurements of density, grain size, air permeability (ease of air flow in the snow), and thermal conductivity (ease of heat flow in the snow). These measurements give a physical basis for interpreting the climate record found in ice cores and the information that can be retrieved about the Antarctic plateau from radar and remote sensing signatures, which depend on, among other factors, grain size and density.

One of my snowpits.

So I’ve been doing a lot of digging on this trip. It is good because if anyone needs to find me I’m either in one of my pits or in the science tent, a nice Weatherhaven tent constructed on the back of one of the sleds that is a mobile snow laboratory, complete with light table for looking at the layering in cores, and all my other equipment, including speakers for my iPod. I hate to admit it, but it’s a nice, more comfortable set-up than the cold room (basically a walk-in freezer converted into a laboratory) I work in back at home. Most days, it is -15 deg C (5 deg F) to -20 deg C (-4 deg F) in the tent, which is unheated to preserve the snow samples I work on, and out of the wind and pretty nice.

In addition to the work I’ve done in the snow pits, I’ve been able to help out with some of the other projects going on around camp. I usually help Tom Neumann with the hand coring we have to do. At each site, we collect what we call Beta cores, which will be cut up, melted, and tested for beta radioactivity. The peak in radioactivity signals the height of atomic bomb testing in the 1960s. This radioactivity was transported through the atmosphere here to East Antarctica in 1963-1964 as snow fall. In this way, we can date the layers in the snow, since we know that the layer with the highest radioactivity is from that year. A bit unsettling perhaps, but very, very useful.

Some of my Arctic teammates hand coring in Greenland last season.

I also helped Dr. Ted Scambos from the National Ice and Snow Data set up a string of temperature sensors we dropped down the last 90m hole we drilled. The temperature at different depths gives an indication of past temperatures, and can be used to determine if this area of Antarctica is getting warmer or colder—this is important since there are no direct measurements of temperature over time here (since there is no one here to make the measurements!)

It’s fun to help out with the other projects, as it gives you a different perspective on what everyone is working on. I also have been logging the boreholes that Lou is drilling with a borehole optical stratigraphy (BOS) system, which is essentially a camera used to record the reflectance of the layers in the hole. I have also been driving the vehicles when we are on the move, usually Jack, which is pulling a load of food and the living module where we eat. This is usually a bit boring as our top speed these days is around 10 km/hr (6.2 mph), which allows for Kirsty to make good measurements using her deep radar system. Faster than that and she does not have as good of a signal. Other times though, like when we are going through a white out, where at times you lose all perspective of what is up or down or where you are, or when the sastrugi are large enough that they cause the whole train you are pulling behind you to lurch sickeningly behind you in the rear view mirrors, it’s a bit stressful. We drive in 6 hour shifts, which gets tiring as well.

The living module speeding along at 10 km/hr.

Jack is a bit difficult to drive. Kjetil, one of the mechanics who was at Camp Winter, where the vehicles were all fixed after last year’s problems, had explained to me that each vehicle is a bit different. The vehicles were all named after famous sled dogs, and the names seem to suit them, which is odd as well. I was skeptical until driving a couple different vehicles. I began by driving Chinook, which is relatively easy to drive. You want to drive in 5th gear, just speed up, put him in 5th, set the remote throttle knob on the dash so that you have about 1900 rpms, and down the ice cap you go.

Jack, on the other hand, is super touchy. It takes about 5-10 minutes of wrangling with the throttle knob to make him stay in 5th, sometimes even 4th. Moving the knob up or down even less than a millimeter sends him either bolting off at 13-15km/hr (way faster than we want to go), or zooming down through the lower gears if the rpms fall off. And then it takes even more finessing of the throttle knob to find Jack’s “sweet spot” where he’s keeping up with the others, but using as little gas a possible. This sweet spot of course is different from day to day as the surface conditions change, soft snow making it harder for him to pull his heavy load, and hard flat snow making him want to take off and pass everyone else. Even better, Jack changes speeds pretty drastically even with the remote throttle in the same position as the surface conditions change. As Svein says, “Jack is special.”

Svein has also encouraged me to try different things: monkeying with the throttle, driving in the tracks of vehicle in front of me, driving out of the tracks of the vehicles in front of me– which I guess makes the drive at least engaging if not relaxing at times. It’s a game to see which driver can get the lowest fuel consumption, as in, “I was getting 32 liters/hour, see if you can beat that.” Anything to make the time go by, I suppose. In a way, Jack reminds me of my dog at home, Baker. He’s stubborn, has a mind of his own, and is a bit crazy at times.

The driving-in-others’-tracks approach.

Besides driving and shoveling, the recreational activities I have managed are knitting (I knit Christmas ornaments for everyone on the traverse and yes, we had a tree—turkey, ham, gravy and stuffing too—we just celebrated on the 27th since that was a more convenient day for us) and skiing. A lot of the people on the traverse like to ski as recreation. It gives us some time to ourselves and away from camp where you can appreciate that you are in the middle of nowhere for a little bit, before scurrying back to the relative comforts of camp. I know that some have a goal of getting out to where they can’t see camp anymore, which no one has managed yet.

I had the full set of Arrested Development DVDs that I would watch at night in my bunk (not wanting to subject the rest of the group to American TV), but I’ve watched all the episodes now, and read the book I brought along, John Behrendt’s Innocents on the Ice, about his Antarctic traverse during the IGY in the 1960s.

It’s fun to think about the differences between our traverses. They definitely had a rougher set-up, while we ride in relative comfort. To be honest, we ride in relative comfort even in modern-day traverse standards, with a kitchen. They had a camping stove, shower (showers are pretty much unheard of in remote camps even today), a separate sleeping module (they slept in benches and sleeping bags in the vehicles) but got to see some fantastic, mountainous scenery, seeing some of the mountains for the first time. They were exploring totally unknown areas, with little warning if they were crossing crevassed areas unless they had a plane to do reconnaissance. We are covering places that haven’t been visited before, but have a pretty good idea of what we are getting into from satellite images, and have a great crevasse detector (Svein, our mountaineer, who operates a radar system that can detect them).

IPY

This Ice Stories Web site was created in celebration of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007–08, but what exactly is that? The IPY is a large international scientific initiative with a history that spans more than a century.

Portrait of Karl Weyprecht. Photo courtesy of the Alfred Wegener Institute.

The inspiration for the first IPY, held in 1882–83, came from Austrian scientist, explorer, and naval officer Karl Weyprecht. He realized that studying the poles was an important way to understand meteorology and geophysics, but he also knew that it was a big undertaking; it couldn’t be done by one nation alone. Inspired by this idea, a group called the International Polar Commission was established in 1879; it organized the first IPY.

Twelve countries, including the United States, participated; they collectively completed fifteen polar expeditions: two to Antarctica, and thirteen to the Arctic. They probably spent more time trying to survive than they did doing science. There were also problems with countries publishing their own data rather than doing it cooperatively with other nations. But this first IPY was still very valuable. It set in motion the important idea of a collaborative, international scientific effort to study the poles, a spark that rekindled fifty years later.

The Dutch ship Varna got stuck in pack ice in January 1883 during the first IPY. Though the ice crushed the vessel, the scientists were able to continue their research by creating a makeshift observatory on the ice.

American Admiral Richard Byrd created an inland research station as part of the second IPY (1932-33). Photo copyright Ohio State University Archives.

The second IPY (1932–1933) was more scientifically successful than the first. It was proposed and promoted by the International Meteorological Organization as a way to study the newly discovered jet stream (a current of rapidly moving upper atmosphere winds) and its global effects. New inventions—airplanes and motorized sea and land vehicles—made life easier for the scientists. This time, the number of participating nations jumped to forty. Despite challenging economic issues (this IPY took place during the middle of the Great Depression), it brought advances in our understanding of magnetism, atmospheric science, and radio science and technology. Forty permanent observation stations were built in the Artic, and the second U.S.-backed Byrd expedition built the first inland research station in Antarctica.

A 1958 U.S. postage stamp commemorates the International Geophysical Year (IGY).

The second IPY was followed, in 1957–58, by the International Geophysical Year (IGY), a major scientific event that propelled our scientific understanding, particularly of geophysics, far forward. It was proposed by prominent post–World War II physicists, who wanted to use some of the latest technology developed for the war—radar, computers, and rockets—for scientific research, particularly in the upper atmosphere. Sixty-seven countries and more than 4,000 research stations participated.

A member of the U.S. Navy repairs a radio at McMurdo Station during the 1957-58 IGY.

There were many breakthroughs. Important research into continental drift (when the continents change position in relation to each other) was done at this time. The Gambutserv Mountains, a huge completely ice-covered mountain range in East Antarctica, were discovered. Scientists were able to develop the first informed estimates of Antarctica’s ice mass by traversing the continent. The space age was born when the world’s first satellites (the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I in 1957 and the United States’ Explorer I in 1958) were launched. And the Van Allen radiation belts, which encircle the earth trapping cosmic radiation, were discovered. Twenty years later, in 1970, the scientific disciplines emphasized during IGY became the foundation of many of the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) programs and activities.

The twelve nations that were active during the 1957–58 IGY signed the Antarctic Treaty; their flags fly around the ceremonial pole at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station.

There was also a political outcome to the collaborative work of the IGY. The Antarctic Treaty, written in 1959 and ratified in 1961, states, among other things, that information has to be shared openly among researchers; that science done in Antarctic is for peaceful, noncommercial uses; and that no weapons development or testing can take place there. The Treaty also forbids mineral extraction of any kind and protects the terrestrial ecosystem of Antarctica, which makes it a much different place than the Arctic.

The IPY 2007-08 logo.

The current IPY is, technically, not a year, it’s two (March 2007–March 2009); the two years allow for two full field seasons at both poles. Like its predecessors, this IPY is also a major international, interdisciplinary scientific effort targeted at better understanding the polar regions. Thousands of scientists from over sixty countries, working on over two hundred research projects, are using state-of-the-art tools and techniques to conduct biological, physical, and social research. The goal of this IPY is to explore new frontiers in polar science, improve our understanding of the pivotal role of the polar regions in global processes, and educate the public about the Arctic and Antarctica (that’s where this Web site fits in). Its organizers also hope that this IPY will attract the next generation of scientists and engineers to the poles. The entire worldwide effort is overseen by the International Council for Science (ICSU), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

It’s hard to know what breakthroughs will come from recent data collected, but this IPY has already taken a different kind of leap forward. During the 1957–58 IGY, the majority of countries, including the United States, didn’t allow women to work on The Ice. Now, women account for almost half of all IPY scientists, and many are project leaders. (To learn more about women and the Ice, click here.)

Researchers install GPS devices for POLENET, one of the many IPY 2007-08 projects led by women.

The IPY 2007-2008 logo.

This is the fourth IPY. The first was in 1882-83, the second 1932-33, and the last– 50 years ago in the height of the Cold War– was called the IGY, or International Geophysical Year. Because of the momentum and scope of the International Polar Year (think Olympics of Earth Science, but with all the countries on the same team,) IPY research tends to be big, bold, creative and transformative. That is, IPY research tends to fundamentally change the way we understand our planet.

Sgt. Winfield Jewell reading meteorological observations at Fort Conger, Greenland, during the first IPY. Taken August, 1882.

Maybe you’ve heard of the ‘Keeling Curve’? It’s the graph that shows continuous measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in Earth’s atmosphere since 1957. This is a graph that everyone should see, because it represents actual measurements which clearly show the rapid increase in CO₂ concentrations in our atmosphere over the past 50 years.

The Keeling Curve.

In 1957, during the last International Polar Year, a young postdoctoral researcher named Charles David Keeling proposed to measure the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Fifty years later, the Keeling Curve is a major piece of the scientific puzzle which shows us that burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric CO₂ concentrations.

Dr. Keeling reading his graphs at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The CO₂ measurements, in Keeling’s words, also showed “for the first time nature’s withdrawing CO₂ from the air for plant growth during summer and returning it each succeeding winter.” He was talking about the annual ups and downs seen in the graph (the little zig-zags on the red line, and the “s” shape of the inset graph.) Atmospheric CO₂ dips as trees put on leaves (Earth breathes in) and rises again after they fall off (Earth breathes out.)

Those of us who want to better understand the Earth have tremendous respect for Dr. Keeling’s legacy and for the scientific foresight that can fundamentally change the way we understand our planet.

In May 2008, I attended the Next Generation of Polar Researchers Symposium – an IPY workshop for young polar scientists. Early career researchers (just like Charles David Keeling during the last IPY) involved with different types of research in the Arctic and Antarctic were able to discuss research ideas with one another and form partnerships for future scientific collaboration. We are the polar scientists of tomorrow (and today) and we all have ideas we’d like to put into action just as Keeling did 50 years ago.

A 1958 U.S. Postage stamp commemorating the International Geophysical Year.

To get a feel for some of the questions motivating young polar scientists, I asked each workshop participant to tell me (in one sentence!) what they hope to understand through their research. Look for that video clip in my next dispatch.