I have just embarked on a two month research cruise around the coast of Antarctica. Because I like to communicate, I've set up a blog where I can send email which can then be viewed by everyone! It's a little one-way -- I won't be able to see your comments and/or read email until I get back, but it'll have to do. I am participating in a research cruise as part of the US Antarctic Program on the Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP) to coastal Antarctica. Hopefully I will post photos after we return. In the meantime, Laurie Padman's photos on previous Anslope research cruises should be pretty close to what we're looking at.
Cruise background and goals
The primary objectives of the cruise are to investigate how the ocean is influencing the WAIS (West Antarctic ice sheet), and vice-versa. The Amundsen Sea is the most striking indicator of this interaction. In the Amundsen Sea region of Antarctica, the continental shelf bathymetry as well as Southern Ocean dynamics allows warm water to flood the continental shelf at depth, transporting heat to the continental ice sheet.
Unlike most of the larger ice shelves surrounding Antarctica, the continental shelf does not pose a barrier to the relatively warm, salty water (called Circumpolar Deep Water, or CDW) surrounding the continent at depths of over 300-500m.
Physical and chemical measurements of water mass characteristics can determine the characteristics of both the “warm” water and can provide quantitative evidence of the glacial meltwater. This cruise aims to assess physical characteristics (mainly temperature and salinity) as well as nutrient and chemical samples that can be used as tracers of glacial meltwater.
Observations in this region will be critical to the completion of my Ph.D. research -- the validation of my numerical analyses will require extensive interpretation of CTD casts and tracer measurements (both under and near ice shelves). Participation in this process is the best way to bridge the gap between model analyses and the data.
Schedule
We leave the U.S. in late January to travel to New Zealand. The NBP is scheduled to leave from McMurdo base (Antarctica) on February 3, 2007. As presently scheduled, the NBP will travel from McMurdo to the vicinity of Cape Adare in the NW Ross Sea. We then spend the rest of the time working on the Amundsen shelf and slope, focusing, to the extent allowed by the perennial sea ice, on the ice shelf fronts, on 2-3 N-S transects, and on the continental shelf break. When time is up, the ship heads to Punta Arenas, Chile and is scheduled to arrive in late March.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Stanley S. Jacobs, Senior Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Have a safe and happy few months!
Chris
********************************************
Christopher Little
Princeton University
Department of Geosciences
Guyot Hall, Room 28
Princeton, NJ 08544