the voyage with Polarstern to Jubany

Once again by ship, we left the continent to our next expedition to Jubany. For Hilke it would be the first trip to the Antarctic and we were both very excited, also because we were now travelling on board of the Polarstern. Facilities there are amazing, the food really good and since the weather actually started out with calm sea, low winds and a lot of sun due to high pressure systems that accompanied us to our next destination South Georgia, it felt more like being on some sort of a cruise rather than coping with the hardship of an Antarctic expedition. On board were a whole lot of different Biologists and it was really interesting and fun to watch other's scientists work as well as the very colorful life on board.

South Georgia is one major breeding region of Wandering Albatrosses, and it was fascinating to see those huge and elegant birds sailing around the ship and above the water with their wide spread wings just about to touch the water  surface. There also are colonies of King Penguins and Rockhoppers as well as Maccaroni Penguins. We saw several whales like Fin, Humpback and Minke Whales but also a lot of seals and birds. The next stop was somewhere in front of the South Orkneys that unfortunately were not spotable from the ship due to the heavy fog and low cloud cover, sometimes less than 100m above the sea. Low pressure systems finally had caught up with us and we went through some storm with winds of about 10 Beaufort. But for a ship as big and stable as Polarstern this had not that much influence on our well-being and in the whole we really had a long  but very nice journey and a warm welcome to our research area at Jubany.

Our second expedition to King George Island - 2011

Friday February 04, Hilke (IMCOAST diploma student) and I left for our next campaign to King George Island. This time our route was a stopover in Madrid and Santiago de Chile to Punta Arenas, the southern tip of Chile. This way we would be able to board the research vessel Polarstern which will drop us off in Jubany. Our departure from Germany was accompanied by fizzle rain and a wet cold that gets underneath every sheet of clothing; a weather very common to the Rhineland. The next stopover in Madrid we barely recognized besides long walks to one end of the airport (to get through security check) and back to the other end (to get back to the gate we left), and finally we arrived in Santiago 30 degree and sunny. We spent some one or two hours just enjoying the sun in the otherwise very unappealing surroundings of an international airport. But the sun made up for everything and we just stood enjoying and watching the planes' departure or landing.

The flight to the Southern end of Chile was very remarkable by the different shaping of landscape and the gradual changing, but dramatic landscape. We flew by salty deserts and smoking volcanoes, agriculture landscape mosaics, glacier tongues and fiords in heavy covers of clouds. I hope some of the pictures we took from out of the planes' window will show.

The arrival in Punta Arenas was pretty smooth and we had a nice sunny Sunday to get a little accustomed to the Southern summer, the long days and the different environment. It still feels very strange though...

Tomorrow we will fo on board the Polarstern and again everything will change on our way towards our destination, the Antarctic research station Jubany. We are already looking forward to meeting friends and colleagues but also to work some more on our stations and do some improvements.

Our second expedition to King George Island - 2011 - Departure from Bonn

 

 

 

Successful conclusion of our field trip to King George Island

The automatic weather stations needed some more work like removing bugs from programming of data loggers and smaller changes in installations. After that, we finalized the installation of our transects of mass balance stakes including measurements with differential GPS and snow layer parameters. We installed our camera system along the beach that will hopefully yield estimates of glacier calving by photogrammetric analysis.

Our way back to the continent would be an eventful trip with the Zodiacs to Russian Bellingshausen station right next to the Chilean Frei Station at Maxwell Bay. On the way, we got the chance to visit the Korean station. We took the Chilean military flight with a Hercules out to Punta Arenas far in the South of Chile. Next week, we will be again in Buenos Aires, the starting point of our exciting travel, meeting up with colleagues from the Argentine Antarctic Research Institute and other friends we got to know, to exchange data and to discuss joint works for our next field trip. This will be February / March next year, not too far away, and we are already looking forward to a lot more great experiences and interesting work.

 

Hanging out ...

Here's a nice view on a relaxing seal from Barton glacier on the other side of Potter cove. We drove with the skidoos on the glacier around the bay to install transects of aluminum stakes for mass balance measurements.

 

 

Successful installation and start of micrometeorological measurements on Potter Glacier, Warszawa Icefield

On Friday 12 November 2010, we started the meteorological measurements on Potter Glacier. The past two days, we have beautiful weather and sunshine. Next to working on removing all bugs from programming and installation of our automatic site, we started with differential GPS measurements and installing transects of mass balance stakes on the ice dome of "our" glacier.

 

 

 

Set-up of an Automatic Weather Station on Potter Glacier, Warszawa Icefield

The first two days here were exceptionally good weather as it turns out. We found a nice place for the set-up of our station, did the transport of all equipment and started with the installation of masts. During the following days the weather turned back to 'normal' with heavy winds and low cloud cover. As it turned out, our site was situated just a bit too high on the glacier, and every time, Matthias and I went to our site, the snow drift started just about a hundred meters before our measurement site.. So we digged out the mast tripods, herings and cases that were by then covered with a thick snow layer, and moved the whole equipment to a new site a bit lower. A lot of work but with the promise of more days with good working conditions. These are few anyway.

Since nearly all heavy material is now on the glacier, we park our skidoos at the end of a snow field near the beach and walk home. This makes a wonderful start and end of a working day, since it is a beautiful shore with a grand panorama on the glacier. We walk by penguins, sea elephants and see a lot of sea birds sailing against the wind. 

We used the bad weather yesterday for extra preparations and the calibration of our eddy covariance system. This directly measures atmospheric turbulence and fluxes of energy like latent and sensible heat as well as carbon dioxide. Today is just another day with heavy winds. Nevertheless, we went to our site but the glacier was in a thick cloud layer as low as 200m or less. The multiple reflections between snow cover and cloud layer make it impossible to see any contours (also called 'white out'). We drove to our station by GPS. Since within the clouds the winds were heavily loaded with graupel and snow pellets, work was impossible without getting snow and humidity into every piece of equipment.

For tomorrow the forecast looks good, and we hope to get everything up and running by then.