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Wednesday, 02 January 2008 06:35
Approaching the Pole of Inaccessibility for New Year’s
Written by US-Norway Traverse
Written 31 Dec 2007
3730 meters above sea level
Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 30 to - 38 °C
The kilometers we logged today, the last day of 2007, brought us near to the Pole of Inaccessibility, which is the place on the Antarctic continent that is farthest from any coast. As 2007 came to a close, we reminisced about our journey, which started a month and a half ago from the Norwegian Troll Station near the coast of Dronning Maud Land.
On this traverse so far we have drilled three deep ice cores and many shallow ice cores, in search of clues to our changing climate. We have worked toge...
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Tuesday, 01 January 2008 06:58
Polarstern: Good catch in the final run for 2007
Written by Polarstern Expedition
Sunday, 30 December
Lecture room, 10 a.m. “Can you deploy the corer a bit faster?” – “Sure, we try! One point five down is ok.” Time is in short supply, we are nearly at the northernmost point of our western transect at 62°S. To make good use of the workfree period on New Year’s Eve, we would like to steam eastwards during that time.
That was a few days ago. The urgent requests of the expedition leader have worked wonders in the meantime. At the end of today, we are several hours ahead of schedule. The switching between the different plankton nets is running like clockwork, and w...
Tuesday, 01 January 2008 00:31
Japanese-Swedish Antarctic Expedition: Report 14
Written by Sweden/Japan Traverse
The Swedish part of the Japanese-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, JASE: Report no 14
The Japanese traverse group left on December 30 for their journey towards Syowa station. The Swedish group will take off at January 1. During the stay here we have had social exchange and performed maintenance of vehicles, snow studies and radar, GPS and radiometer studies at the site of a subglacial lake. During this stay we have also had an exchange of scientists. Two Swedes are now joining the Japanese expedition and we now have two Japanese members in our team.
The temperature has now dropped somewhat and varies on a daily basis between -25 and -35 degrees C. The annual mean temperature at this site is -55 degrees C, so winters must be tough here.
Tomorrow we h...
30th December 2007
I’m looking carefully at my map of sampling stations because today we come closest to the continent and the Mertz glacier. We have been tantalized by the awesome and mysterious continent but have not been closer than 9 or 10 nm.
Station 47 takes us to a depth of 1200m while at 49 we will sample at 180m, the shallowest site.There is great interest in what these different habitats will reveal.
At 47 I watch Rob guiding his deepwater video camera over the seabed. He explains how the shape of the sea-bed reflects the ancient drift of the Mertz glacier. It’s rough country down there, the gouged and scoured valleys are scattered with rock carried by the ice. Life in the abyss is sparser but how wonderful it is to observe this ne...
Monday, 31 December 2007 03:51
Enormous amounts of freshwater is stored in Antarctica
Written by US-Norway Traverse
Written 30 Dec 2007
3710 meters above sea level
Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 29 to -37 °C
The ice in Antarctica holds two thirds of all freshwater in the World, including lakes, rivers, groundwater, glacier ice and moisture in the atmosphere. While the average ice thickness is around 2000 meters, the deepest ice has been measured to 4776 meters. Still, large parts of Antarctica are not well mapped with respect to ice thickness. This figure is important for estimating Antarctica’s role with respect to global sea level. Thus, on the traverse we use low-frequency radar to measure ice thickness alon...
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Sunday, 30 December 2007 19:27
Norway-US Antarctic Traverse: We have left Dronning Maud Land
Written by US-Norway Traverse
Written 29 Dec 2007
3689 meters above sea level
Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 32 to -38 °C
Originally, seven countries made claims in Antarctica. These were Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and United Kingdom. One region of Antarctica has not been claimed by any nation. Argentina, Chile and United Kingdom have overlapping claims at the Antarctic Peninsula. Norway’s claim has an undefined border both in the south and in the north, spanning from 20 W to 45 E. Norway claimed Dronning Maud Land in January 1939 to protect its whaling interests. We left Dronning Maud Land today and will be in the Australian sector on the remaining time of the expedition.
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Yesterday morning at 1:45 am we all headed off to the US Antarctic Program passenger terminal at the Christchurch airport in New Zealand. I’d had about 4 hours sleep so was feeling a little groggy, but not too bad. We managed to get changed into our cold weather gear and were on the C17 transport plane by 2:30am. I was glad that we were on the jet, rather than the Hercules prop plane, the jet is way faster and has a cavernous interior. With only 30 or so of us on board there was plenty of room to spread out too.
The plane was chock full of supplies for the Antarctic. Bottles of compressed gas but also a huge quantity of beer. I sat facing a 75 cubic feet of Guinness, one of only 10 or so pallets. We sat on the plane for what seemed hours, before being told that one of the ...
Sunday, 30 December 2007 00:42
Polarstern: Secrets of deep-sea isopods
Written by Polarstern Expedition
Thursday, 27 December
We are happy. Happy about our successful first step on the way of teasing secrets out of freshly caught deep-sea isopods from 3000 m depth. Which means, we have extracted DNA and after the first successful runs prepared extractions all day long, highly motivated. How we got there:
After META, our epibenthic sledge, had brought the samples for us on deck, we divided the sample immediately by weight and live-sorted one-half in the cooling container at 0°C and preserved the other half in precooled alcohol at –20°C. While live sorting we got a first impression of the creatures that awaited us: bristle worms (Polychaeta), amphipods, several forams and, among many other taxa, our target group, the isopods. (By then we were exhausted but ha...
Saturday 29th December
I worked through a CTD shift with Esmee. What an insight into the nature of research it offered; a water sample is much more than a bucket over the side.
The CTD equipment stands as high as your shoulders and holds a 'rosette' of vertical cylinders within a metal frame. Each cylinder can be opened individually at a nominated depth. Data from several electronic devices bolted to the frame indicating salinity and fluorescence, and temperature and depth is assessed during the CTD's descent and the optimum sampling depths identified.
A crew winches the equipment out the side hatch of the CTD room, while nearby in the instrument room the descent is guided down and back 'firing' the cylinders electronically to open and fil...