Ramblings to and from Antarctica

Postscript - Novo.

2012-03-06T15:24:00.003Z

On the way home I spent two nights at Novo. Novo had changed quite a bit since my transit in December, far more snow drifts around the buildings.

We were on the last flight out of the season and the camp was starting to close down, disastrously this meant less access to tea drinking. Not a lot to do except sit and wait until it was time to leave. The view more or less didn't change for two days:

The Kindle was a godsend.

Welcome home.

2012-02-29T20:30:00.001Z

Well, I am back home. We left Halley on Sat morning, four days earlier than planned to get ahead of a big storm that was coming. The four hour flight on the Basler to Novo had great views again, but the plane needed to fly high to get above some cloud and being un-pressurised it left most of us with headaches. We had two nights waiting at Novo, not a lot to do other than wait. Novo is much further north than Halley and as a consequence gets more dark at nights at this time of year so it was good to see the southern stars again. The flight to Capetown is six hours and somehow the contrast between the cold barren Antarctic and the heat and bustle of Capetown seems greater coming this way rather than going into the Antarctic. Just one night and one good meal in Capetown before the long haul back to the UK and the wonderful welcome home from my family.

I'll keep posting blog updates and some more pictures (particularly of the inside of Halley VI) for a while....

Halley VI - Inside

2012-02-24T11:05:00.000Z

Halley VI has been a building site for most of the season, and even now most rooms either have work needing to be done or are full of boxes that need unpacking. With the station looking more and more impressive day by day, I have delayed putting up pictures of the inside of the station until the last possible moment. Now is very close to the last possible moment, I will probably leave here on Sat morning. This is what the dinning room looked like in January.

And now it looks like this:

Here is the main corridor with the fire fighting kit, inside the yellow boxes are the breathing apparatus used.

This is a bedroom, in summer they house two people but in winter only one. They are quite compact but have lots of clever little nooks and crannys to keep things in.

The showers are nice.

We have some really nice facilities for maintaining the science such as our electronics workshop.

On the the top of the science modules we have some flat grillage space which is a really easy place for us to deploy and run science equipment from.

Up here we have a number of GPS antennas, VHF antennas for communicating with remote science experiments, the dome that talks to the daily meteorological balloon, and a machine that measures the height of the cloud layers.

Halley Birds

2012-02-23T07:00:00.000Z

The most common birds at Halley are the emperor penguins that breed at the coast:

Adelie penguins visit quite often, but don't breed anywhere near here.

We often have skuas visit Halley, at Halley they are quite friendly because they don't breed here. At Rothera where they breed they are more aggressive, here are a pair attacking me as I needed to walk past to their nest on the way to a science facility last time I visited Rothera.

Two other type of birds fly around Halley in the summer - I haven't managed to get good pictures of them myself but here photos that I have got off the internet to show you what they look like:

Snow Petrels nest in the Therons mountains about 150 km south of Halley. Large numbers of them fly high over Halley but sometimes one or two come close to the ground, they really look very pretty and delicate.

Snow Petrel - photo E. Andersson

Smaller than the snow petrel is the Wilson's storm petrel.


Wilson storm petrel - birdinfo.net

Halley Up

2012-02-21T13:30:00.000Z

Halley VI buildings have just been raised to keep them out of the constant snow accumulation for another year. Here is the view of the modules before raising.

And a similar view after raising about 2.5m

To raise the buildings the legs are lifted in turn and snow bulldozed under each one.

Once all the legs are sitting on a high lump of snow then the hydraulics lift the who station up. The whole area is then bulldozed and groomed to a smooth surface. This is me standing in front of the south end of the station now that its all been lifted up and the snow surface groomed.

Ozone measurements

2012-02-20T07:30:00.000Z

Halley is famous for being the place where the ozone hole was discovered. In spring the ozone values values over Antarctica are low because of the action of chlorine from CFCs. Halley has a very long, continuous and high quality record of ozone measurements,

Here is Jon Shanklin taking the first Ozone measurement at Halley VI, he has good claim to be the person who discovered the ozone hole and the machine he is using (called a Dobson) is the actual one that confirmed the low ozone values.

Lifting the lid on Antarctic Toilets

2012-02-19T07:00:00.000Z

Occasionally I give talks about the Antarctic, and one question that every audience seems to ask is 'how do you go to the toilet in Antarctica?' Well the answer at Halley VI at least is in the same way you do everywhere else, more or less. This is one of our toilets:

You might notice no handle, but a just a small button. This is because its a vacuum toilet, press the button and there is a swooshing noise and off go the contents down a vacuum pipe - it uses far less water than a normal flush. Despite living on floating ice water use is a big issue, snow needs to be moved into the melt tank which means work and it needs to be melted which means energy, so we try very hard to keep water usage to a minimum. The urinals are similar:

For some strange reason these are at the perfect height for 9 year old boys, I don't know if that is something to do with our plumbing or our future employment policies!

Once in the vacuum tube everything, and water from the showers, washing machines, sinks etc all goes to the sewage plant where it is biologically treated. Here is the sewage plant.

The output from the sewerage plant is clean water that is piped into a hole in the snow and some sludge which is automatically incinerated (and helps to provide heat for the station).

If you fly away from the station into what we call deep field then the situation is a little more difficult. No nice, warm, clean toilets to use out in the middle of nowhere, you can pee onto the snow but, er, solid waste needs to be brought back in a special container to incinerate on station.

So now you know.

Blogs

2012-02-17T18:00:00.000Z

With less than 2 weeks to go at Halley, I though I would reflect on the subject of Blogs - a bit of a pun and here's why. The avatar that I use (the little picture that goes with my name) is this picture (click on it for a higher res version):

It's a picture that I took in 2008 in Antarctica near a place called Sky-Blu. This is a remote experiment that measured the very small current that flows from the ionosphere to the ground - Antarctica is probably the only place on the ground that you can measure it. It is of interest because of a potential link between this current, cosmic ray attenuation, cloud formation, and hence climate. I was on a servicing visit and had just landed on the Twin Otter aircraft that you can see at 1pm on the photo. The first thing we do on such visits is to photograph everything and this was the first picture looking up at the stainless steel hemispheric domes that measure the current - I like the picture.

Here is the background picture that I use for this Blog, it is of another cuddly penguin taken at Reptile Ridge near Rothera station.

Blogspot tells me lots of interesting things: My blog gets about 40 hits a day, the most I have got is 215. Most readers are from the UK, or other countries that I know that I have relatives or friends in, but also some of you are from Russia, Romania, Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, India, France - who are you all, leave a comment. Comments are very easy to leave, hit the number of comments link at the bottom of a post, from there it will ask you to select a profile - if you don't recognise any of the options choose either anonymous or name/URL, in name URL just type your name and hit submit.

People who are referred to my blog by google, most often search for Cherry Picker!

A tough run

2012-02-15T19:47:00.000Z

On Saturday there was a 1/2 marathon, one lap around Halley V and then from Halley V to Halley VI - this was of course symbolic, all running from the old station to the new - although it was straight into the teeth of a 20 knot wind despite the sunshine. Here we all are at the start.

Twenty eight runners, walkers, and skiers. Kirk on the left in shorts, made it about 50 yards until he decided that his attire wasn't warm enough! I have put an arrow to show where I am.

And they are off:

And here I am at about half way. The field has thinned out, so for most of the run it was a lonely and windy run with the buildings of Halley VI not seeming to get any closer.

Overall, a tough run, no personal bests but everyone felt hugely satisfied to have completed the distance.

Balloons

2012-02-14T07:00:00.000Z

Halley's scientific records are especially valuable as they go back to 1956 and they are very high quality. Since 1957 there has been a daily balloon flight. This is where a package of meteorological instruments are sent to about 30km altitude by attaching them to a helium filled balloon. The instruments send their data back to Halley by radio where the the data is both stored for future research use and also transmitted onwards to contribute to the big global models that are used to help weather and climate forecasting everywhere.

Here is Penny filling a balloon with helium.

And here we are launching the balloon from Halley V on a bit of a grey day.

Here is one of the first balloon launches from Halley VI.

Although the ground temperatures have not changed much over the last 50 years, the atmosphere above Halley has warmed significantly. Here is a graph from a scientific paper about the data from Balloons from this part of Antarctica - SignificantWarming of the Antarctic Winter Troposphere, J.Turner, T. A. Lachlan-Cope, S. Colwell, G. J. Marshall, W. M. Connolley, Science2006.

1000hPa near the bottom is close to surface level, 50hPa near the top is nearly 20km altitude.

Halley VI - part 3.

2012-02-12T09:00:00.000Z

We have a cameraman, Kirk Watson, who is documenting the build of Halley VI, eventually there will be a film produced. Kirk managed to get a really good photograph of Halley VI from the air using a model aeroplane. This is the picture, made from several video stills stitched together. Click on the image to get the highest res image I could upload on our rather slow internet connection.

Halley VI from above - photo Kirk Watson

Here is a lower res version of the same photograph annotated with what's what.

Annotated Halley VI from above - photo Kirk Watson

And while I am using other peoples photos, here is a nice one by Chris Walton, the winter Chef in 2011. When this photo was taken in the beginning of Oct 2011, Halley VI was covered in snow and frost. Halley VI should never look like this again now the generators are running, even the small amount of heat loss from the heavily insulated walls will keep them clear of snow.

Halley VI modules in winter colours - photo by Chris Walton

Heart of Halley.

2012-02-10T08:00:00.000Z

One of the key points this season was confirming that HalleyVI was the station that would winter in 2012 and that Halley V would be shut down. Once this decision was made then no end of science experiments, equipment, food, vehicles etc moved across to Halley VI. However the heart of Halley moved across when the communications and the surgery moved across.

The comms room

The comms room contains all the radio equipment, HF radios for talking to planes and ships, VHF radios for communications locally around the station, and of course the equipment that we use to connect to a satellite for internet and phones.

There is a fully equipped doctor's surgery, which we hope never to use of course, but its comforting to know its there if it is needed. Here is the doctor, Kaz, giving Penny a checkup in the new surgery at Halley VI.

Did you see Penny in the comms room, she was making herself hard to see.

Weather

2012-02-08T07:00:00.000Z

This is the view from my bedroom window. At the bottom are the containers which arepart of the temporary accommodation, then middle right are the modules of thenew Halley Station. On the middle left, behind the snow mounds are thecontainers that contain all the building materials for the station, they willsoon disappear. Between the temporary accommodation and the modules there is aline of black flags. This photo was taken on a nice sunny day – but you can seefrom the flags that it is breezy.

My view on a nice day

Weather getting worse

People walking to work in poor weather - you can just see them on the flag line

Penguins

2012-02-05T08:00:00.000Z

One of the amazing things about Halley is the large emperor penguin colony nearby - this was only 12 km from Halley IV (the first of the Halley stations that I stayed in), about 16km from Halley V, but its nearly 32km from Halley VI. Unfortunately events have conspired against me getting down to see it this year (so far at least), but yesterday a solatory Adelie penguin wandered up to the station so that gave Penny a chance to meet a real penguin.

The weather wasn’t very nice and Penny has decided thatbeing a real penguin would be far too cold and far too smelly too. On my lasttrip to Antarctica, which was too a much warmer place called Rothera thepenguin I took from home on that trip met a Chipstrap.

Hereare the emperors.

The chicks come in all shapes and sizes:

Thin Chick

Fat Chick

And of course, the rare large nosed vareity

Halley 6 - part 2 Cabooses.

2012-02-03T12:59:00.000Z

Much of the science at Halley comes from equipment situated in shipping containers that we call cabooses. This one is the Superdarn caboose:

Superdarn is a big radar that looks out over a large part of Antarctica, measuring the position and velocity of charged particles in the Earth's ionosphere, the highest layer of the Earth's atmosphere, which tells scientists about the Earth's interaction with the space environment. Another Caboose we have is the Optical caboose, it contains experiments that look at optical phenomena such as the aurora.

Halley gets a lot of aurora - of course you can only see them in the winter, now its summer with 24 hour daylight and we can't see them - here's a picture of aurora taken at Halley in winter.

You will notice that the optical caboose looks remarkably similar to the Superdarn radar caboose, in fact we have five cabooses that all look very similar - although they are all customised for their particular function. The advantage of running science from cabooses is that they can all be positioned in the ideal place compared to the rest of the stuff around the station. So for instance the optical caboose is over a km from the main station to guarantee that it is very dark, the radars are a km in a different direction so that the large radio pulses they send out don't interfere with the sensitive experiments that are in another caboose over 2 km away in the other direction.

You might be wondering why the cabooses are yellow. Well they are very heavily insulated to minimise energy use in winter when they need to be heated, but in summer when the temperatures are warmer we tend to need to cool the electronics inside, if the cabooses were a dark colour then they would absorb lots of heat from the sunshine and would be difficult to keep cool. Ideally we would paint them white to keep them cool, we tried this once but white cabooses are too hard to see against the snow. This particular shade of yellow doesn't heat up much in the sunshine and is easy to see in both sunny and bad weather conditions.

Inside the cabooses look like a crowded science lab, full of electronics and computers. Here I am inside the optical caboose.

Here is DJ inside a caboose that we call the EMQA caboose - that stands for ElectroMagnetic Quiet Area, it's where we run the sensitive scientific radio receivers from.

And here's Ollie and Neil inside the MFradar caboose - that's another radar - this one measures the wind in the atmosphere from 40km to 100km up.

How many times did you see Penny?

Saturday nights, caves and BBQ's

2012-02-01T07:30:00.000Z

Saturday nights have traditionally been a special night in Antarctica, the chefs make a special meal and everyone else makes a bit more of an effort to be presentable.

On this particular night we had a quiz, our team (ably assisted by Penny) did reasonably well, 3rd out of 10 - we bombed on the sport and celebrity culture. A couple of weeks ago it was a lovely sunny night and with no wind, it felt remarkably warm so we had a BBQ.

Last week it was one of the science team's birthday. Sam, exactly half my age. He has been spending much of his free time hacking out a snow cave and decided to celebrate by squeezing 14 of us in there.

The camera flash doesn't do the colours in the cave justice, so here is one with natural light.

You could just see Penny's nose at the bottom of the last two pictures. And here is Sam, the birthday boy, with Penny.

Halley 6 - first bit

2012-01-28T08:00:00.000Z

In an earlier post (22nd Dec) on Halley 5, I mentioned the two problems of building on a iceshelf - the constant accumulation (that plagued Halleys 1 to 4, but was overcome with Halley 5) and the flow of the ice to the coast where the only destiny is to become an iceberg - which is what would happen to Halley 5 if we didn't remove it first.

Halley 6 is designed to overcome both of these problems. Firstly it built on legs that keep the station out of the snow. Each leg is actually a large hydraulic ram, once a year, each leg can be sucked up in turn and snow bulldozed underneath; once every leg is on a new snow mound every leg is extended with the result that the whole station is lifted up a 1.5m higher than it was before.

Secondly, to overcome the inexorable movement to the coast, the whole station is made to be relocatable. The idea is that every 10 to 15 years the modules could be separated and towed to a new location. This would be a big job and we would need to rebuild all the towers etc - but it will be far easier and cheaper than building a new station.

HalleyVI in Jan 2010

We know the modules can be moved, because they were built in at the Halley V site and then dragged the 16km to the location for Halley VI.

The first module being towed in 2010/11

The biggest module being moved - nearly 200 tonnes.

More to follow....

More Antarctic exercise and saunas.

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000Z

I have already talked about skiing and running but another very popular form of exercise at Halley this year is the Spinning bikes.

And what is better after a spin, ski or run than a sauna. Here is Penny in our sauna, it's built on site from waste materials but you wouldn't really know it - it works just as well as any sauna.

This is what it looks like on the outside.

The heater might look like a water heater and an old tool case but it works! And for the hardy there is plenty of snow to roll in outside.

Big vehicles at Halley - part 2

2012-01-21T08:00:00.000Z

The last post was mainly about our pullers and pushers. We have one type of puller left to talk about, the John Deere tractor, we have two of these.

John Deere Tractor

These have a special adaptation for Antarctica, with a Soucy track in place of each wheel. The John Deeres are very versatile, they can tow nearly as much as a Challenger, they can work in temperatures nearly as cold as a dozer, and they also can lift loads with their front forks.

Because we have so many loads to lift associated with the build of Halley VI and the demolition of Halley V, for the duration of the project we also have a JCB forklift, also with a track conversion.

JCB forklift

The JCB will be sent out at the end of the build/demolition, probably next year. Our biggest crane the Mantis will also be sent out at the same time.

Mantis Crane

The Mantis is our heaviest vehicle on the iceshelf - it weighs 24 tonnes and can lift 30 tonne loads. Once the Mantis has been sent out, we will still have two Nodwell cranes, capable of 5 tonne lifts.

Nodwell Crane

Although the Nodwells are far smaller cranes, they are far better at moving around on the snow. The other vehicle we have is the excavator, this is great for digging snow but the bucket can also be used for lifting small loads for which it is very quick.

How many times did you see Penny?

Big vehicles at Halley - part 1

2012-01-18T09:00:00.000Z

In the previous post I showed the mobile elevated work platform, or cherry picker as its usually known. Halley always has lots of big vehicles, they are needed for lots of tasks like moving cargo from the coast to the station and pushing snow around the station. At the moment we have some extra vehicles to help build the new station and to demolish the old. So here is rundown of what we have. We have two Cat Challengers, they are our most powerful machines with 325HP 9L turbo diesel engines. They can tow 40 tonne loads and are fast, without a load they can reach 40km/hr. Unfortunately they are thirsty and can burn a 1L of fuel per minute! Like all our diesel engines here we run them on aviation diesel (called Avtur) which does not freeze or wax.

Cat Challenger

The problem with the Challenges is that they can only really do one thing, that is tow heavy loads long distances in summer. The vehicle of choice in winter is a D5 dozer, metal tracks, engine heaters and simple engine management means it will work no matter how cold. It's very heavy at about 14 tonnes so it can pull heavy loads, but its very slow with a maximum speed of about 8km/hr. We have two dozers.

A D5 Dozer

The dozer can only really seat one person and it is too heavy for towing loads on seaice. Snowcats are lighter (our lightest being just 5 tonnes) and can carry people - our biggest seating 9 in comfort. Some snowcats have their engines at the back, like this one which is used to groom snow to make it smooth.

While some snowcats have the engines in the front. This one is towing a load on the seaice, the driver leaves the door open in case it breaks through the seaice (which doesn't happen very often!). In total we have eight snowcats.

Did you see Penny?

Cherry Picking

2012-01-14T14:47:00.000Z

Mobile elevated work platforms, or cherry pickers as they are known, are very useful pieces of kit and extensively used at Halley for accessing high objects. One job we had this season was to cable up one of the large radars known as Superdarn. It measures the position and velocity of charged particles in the Earth's ionosphere, the highest layer of the Earth's atmosphere. Because the movements of these particles are tied to the movements of the Earth's magnetic field which, in turn, extends into space, Superdarn provides scientists with information regarding the Earth's interaction with the space environment. The radar itself has 16 large antennas mounted on high towers, here is the cherry picker reaching up to one.

And here is Penny trying hard not to fall off one of the antennas while I work cabling up.

Small Vehicles at Halley

2012-01-11T01:00:00.000Z

We have a large number of small vehicles at Halley. Mostly snow mobiles, more commonly known as skidoos. This is me riding an AlpineII skidoo between Halley V and Halley VI, we tend to ride around station without crash helmets but on journeys off station we wear crash helmets.

The sledge I am towing is colloquially known as the Pope Mobile, and very comfortable it is too. The Alpine II is quite pokey, 500cc engine. We have several differnt types of skidoo, the very comfortable Tundra (smaller 250cc engine).

And the fast Scandic, best of both worlds 500cc engine, double ski, single narrow track.

We also have a whole host of different sledges that we tow behind the skidoo, some for cargo and some for people - like the thing we call the happy sledge, which can take 8 people.

We also have a couple of tracked 4x4's, here are Sam and Neil having fun on one. They aren't as easy to maintain or use as a skidoo, are slower too, but they can haul bigger loads.

Did you see Penny?

Planting trees

2012-01-07T18:03:00.001Z

Halley VI is being completed, in the meantime most of the station facilities and power aren't yet available so the science team is concentrating on outside work. One of the tasks is to build an array of antennas for one of the scientific radars called the MFradar. To start with we had to survey the position of each of the antenna, for this we had to perform a sunshot to get true north so we could then use compasses and theodolites to mark the position of each antenna and its support pole. Here is Julius surveying.

Once we had flags marking the intended positions, we drilled holes using a ice drill.

And then lifted in the poles using a crane.

In total we planted 25 poles, here are some of them:

Tower Raising

2012-01-06T15:42:00.000Z

This is our Clean area lab - known as CASLAB, it is used forair chemistry and for air to ice energy transfer studies. The whole area aroundit is kept very clean; normally no vehicles come within 1km of it and even thenonly in the direction that the wind doesn't blow from. About once every coupleof years we have to use a crane to get new legs onto the CASLAB but we try veryhard to do everything in the clean area without vehicles.

There is a tall tower next to the CASLAB, 31.5m high, whichwill have lots of scientific instruments placed upon it. Like all things atHalley, the snow accumulation reduces its height by about 1m or so a year andit needs raising to keep the instruments at the correct height.

This tower has a clever way of extending that doesn't needany vehicles. A frame is wrapped around the tower.

The tower sections are then unbolted from each other and thetower winched up in the frame.

Then a new section is bolted in the gap.

The frame is removed, and volia the Tower is now 1.5m higher at 33m.Here is the team - me, I am the one in the orange boiler suit and orangehelmet.

Cats on Contrast.

2012-01-04T21:39:00.001Z

Today I needed to drive the 16km from Halley VI back to Halley V in a snow cat. First thing in the morning was slightly foggy but with the sun nearly burning through - horizontal contrast poor, surface contrast good. This is the view from the snowcat, you can see clearly see the first drum of the drum line that I was following but the next drum and the horizon are very faint. The tracks of other vehicles that have driven the route are clearly visible.

Ok, I'll stop going on about contrast.

Back to school

2012-01-03T21:39:00.001Z

Back to school - but not for me! Wishing all the children and teachers who go back to school this week the best of luck - especially those in Willingham.

This photo was taken in front of the big red living module of Halley VI. More on Halley VI in later posts.....

Antarctic Pixies

2012-01-02T16:39:00.001Z

Halley is a remarkably sunny place - it actually gets more hours of sunshinethan the UK, and of course most photographs tend to get taken on sunny days.When its cloudy or snowing then it gives a chance for the Antarctic Pixies tocome out and play

Someone asked about how pilots can judge the ground, the answer is they needboth horizontal and surface contrast. In the photo above you can't see thehorizon which we call no horizontal contrast, you also can't see any detailsin the snow surface, so that's no surface contrast. When there is no horizontalor surface contrast you don't want to be landing planes! In fact even walkingaround can be tricky as you can trip over piles of snow without seeing them atall.

The photo below is still poor surface contrast (which is better than nil),but now has good horizontal contrast. The pilots land planes in those sort ofconditions but only at sites they know are crevasse and sastrugi free. Sastrugiare irregularities in the surface of the snow caused by the wind.

What a relief

2011-12-31T09:07:00.001Z

Our ship, the Ernest Shackleton, arrived on Boxing day; bring with it all the cargo, food and fuel for the year, and some more staff too. The ship moors up in a creek against the seaice from where the cargo can be dragged up on the iceshelf.

Below is a stock BAS photo that gives a better idea of the creeks.

When I first came to Halley many years ago, relief involved much manual handling and manpower but now big machines do all the hardwork. The cargo is craned onto a sledge at one end, pulled by CAT Challengers or John Deere tractors to the other where it is unloaded by crane. It is about 30km from the coast to the Halley VI site. Here is a CAT Challenger pulling 3 fully loaded containers.

The cargo is laid out in a long line at the Halley VI site so that each dept can find their boxes.

One item off the ship that is eagerly anticipated is fresh fruit and vegetables. Its only been 4 weeks since my last fresh fruit but that first Orange tasted really good, for the winterers (that's the people that are on a 15 month tour) this will be their first fresh fruit for nearly 10 months.

Landing in a Twin Otter

2011-12-29T15:48:00.000Z

Here is a short video of the landing we did at the field site - its actually a lot smoother than it looks but its hard to old a camera steady as you plonk down. You will notice that we are landing on to tracks, the procedure is that the pilot 'trails skis' - that is makes a landing but doesn't slow down and takes off again. The pilot can then check that no crevasses have opened up on the tracks before doing the landing proper.

Flight to pick up GPS unit.

2011-12-27T17:47:00.000Z

On Christmas eve, I had a really good flight to pick up a GPS system that had been put out 2 years ago. It is part of a network of GPS receivers that we have all around the Brunt Iceshelf to monitor how it moves and what stresses and strains there are in the ice itself. The units close to Halley transmit their data back by VHF radio, but this particular unit is too far away for that so had just been recording data for later pickup. This GPS was placed to help understand the way that tides affect the flow of the huge Stancomb Wills glacier, which flows at about 2km a year and is a big influence on the Brunt. Our flight took us from Halley V to Halley VI so that Kirk who is filming the rebuild could get some aerial footage, and then along the hinge zone for about an hour to the GPS unit, then onwards to N9 so that Ben our vehicles guy could see the possibilities for unloading the ship there, we then followed the route from N9 to Halley VI to look for crevasses (one nice big one) and then finally home to Halley V.

Here we are about to set off, Penny waving and myself wearing the warmest hat in the world. BAS has four ski equipped Twin Otters like this.

Here is Penny in the plane with Bear. Bear belongs to the Ian the pilot's wife (she wintered here at Halley in 2005 along with Bear) and goes on every flight with him - that's one well travelled Bear!

We were prepared to do lots of digging to retrieve the GPS unit but in fact it had hardly buried at all. Here is Ben by the GPS.

Only the GPS antenna and the solar panel are visible, the GPS and the batteries are buried in the snow. This particular GPS doesn' t have wind power or enough battery power to run right the way through the polar winter but it should get about 9 months of data every year.

Can you see Penny?

On the way home, the light showed up the groomed route from Halley V to Halley VI. The iceshelf seems very big and empty from the air.

All in all a good day.

Christmas in Antarctica

2011-12-26T16:57:00.000Z

Christmas began on Christmas eve - I had been out flying all day (more of that in a later blog post) and just got back in time for Christmas carols.

On Christmas day I opened my presents from my family, my Christmas stocking makes a nice home for Penny.

Christmas was a lovely, crisp, sunny and no wind, and I had a lovely long run, longer than I could have fitted in if I had been at home. Most people on Christmas day phone their loved ones at home - exciting as Antarctica is, everyone misses their loved one especially on Christmas day. Our phone is an Iridium satellite phone which is impressive technology but actually quite difficult to hear when a party is happening at the other end.

The treat for the day was a big sit down meal for everyone.

Penny particularly enjoyed the South African Merlot, while I was happy with my Christmas badge.

Oh yes, and it was white

Halley no 5

2011-12-22T17:14:00.004Z

Here is a satellite image of the Brunt Iceshelf where Halley is located - if you need reminding where Halley is on a larger scale then I have put the globe view below. The Brunt iceshelf is about 50km wide and a 100km long, it is made of freshwater ice of about 200m thickness floating on the sea. If you made a 1 to million scale model it would be about the same size and thickness as a playing card. There has been a permanently manned research station here since 1956.

One of the difficulties of building on a ice shelf is that the surface continuously accumulates. If you put something down on the Brunt iceshelf then a year later it will be a metre under the snow surface, another year later it will be another metre deeper and so on. This is exactly what happened to the first research station built here, it was buried and effectively crushed by the weight of the ice and snow above it. A series of research stations was built over the years, and despite being increasingly strong they all suffered the same fate - the weight of the ice and snow caused great crushing damage and it was difficult to operate a deeply buried station. In 1990 BAS built the 5th reincarnation of the Halley research station but on legs so that it kept clear of the ever increasing snow. Every year the station would be jacked up (the legs extended upwards and the whole station moved up the legs) to keep it at the same height above the snow. Here is what the main platform looked like in the 2001/2 season which is when I last visited Halley.

The second major difficulty of building on an iceshelf is that the ice flows, Halley V (as the 5th Halley is known) is moving closer to the iceberg calving point at about 350m per year. In fact it is already very close to a point known to be open water in 1958 (the earliest reliable ice edge survey), and this is why we need to build a new station, despite Halley V being in good condition. Once the construction of the new station started we stopped raising Halley V above the snow each year, and this is what it looks like now.

A big noisy plane taking off from Novo

2011-12-19T08:13:00.001Z

This is a bit of video that I took at Novo of the Ilyshian76 taking off. I like the way the Russians stand so close to the runway.

Music, skiing and Yargonburger

2011-12-17T08:08:00.002Z

I listen to far more music when in the Antarctic than I do in the UK. I have decided to start at one end of my collection while in the office (Be Good Tanyas playing as I type), and come from the other end when running or skiing. Sitting between YES and XTC (alphabetically at least) is Yargonburger - fine music to ski to.

Big Birthday in Antarctica

2011-12-15T10:28:00.002Z

Just over a week ago it was my birthday - 50. My family had made me a parcel which I eagerly opened on the morning. Full of cards and small presents to remind me of home, which of course made me feel quite homesick. One excellent thing was a bunting where each flag had a different birthday message from one of my family or friends. Many thanks to everyone who contributed. This is it up in our temporary site office - and yes it is as cold as it looks, we have power for the computers but no heat yet.

However, one of the excellent presents my family got me was the warmest hat on the planet.

It was quite a warm day on my birthday without a breath of wind so I took the opportunity for a run around the station perimeter. If you can't be with your family on your 50th birthday then its not so bad to be running in Antarctica.

Not exactly home sweet home.

2011-12-13T20:49:00.000Z

This is where I will be spending the most of the most of the next three months - it is the temporary accommodation at the Halley VI site. Here is the view of the buildings from one side:

And the other:

It consists of a big red double height living unit with a tent extension and a lot of containers to add the extra bedrooms needed this season because of the number of staff needed for the construction.

Here is my bedroom. At the moment I am the only occupant of a room for four - it seems small now, its going to be very crowded when the other occupants arrive on the ship.

You might just be able to spot my birthday bunting (its particularly nice to see Matthew and Brendan's flags from my bed - more about that in my next post) and of course penny.

This is the downstairs of the big red living unit, the food servery, with two of the most important people on station, the chefs Ant and Trev.

This is the inside of the dining area in 1/2 of the tent:

And here is the other 1/2 of the tent, the recreation area with a table tennis table, table football, dart board, gym and spinning bikes, and of course a TV (just to the right out of picture).

Tractor driving

2011-12-11T20:39:00.001Z

Martin (our head of vehicles down here) gave me a John Deere tractor driving lesson.

Flight from Novo to Halley

2011-12-10T09:53:00.001Z

Halley doesn't have any blue ice so any panes landing there have to have skis, ours was something called a Basler - that's a DC3 (also known as a Dakota designed in 1935!) but now with modern turboprop engines and modern avionics. Here is a view from the front taken at Novo.

And the same aircraft from the back - note the square windows.

The flight from Novo to Halley is about 900km. That's about 4 1/2 hours flying.

The Basler is quite comfortable inside - but no loo!

Penny had a go at flying.

The route from Novo to Halley goes over several mountain ranges. Some of the most dramatic being the granite spires of the Hofmanfjella.

A quick reminder - you can click the pictures to get a higher res version.

As my blog posting as not been realtime, here are my travel dates.

Left Heathrow 26th November 21:30
Arrived CapeTown 27th 07:00
Left CapeTown 30th 23:00
Arrived Novo 1st December 05:00
Left Novo 2nd 20:00
Arrived Halley skiway 3rd 00:30
Arrived Halley site 3rd 02:00

More from Novo

2011-12-08T09:09:00.001Z

Some of you may have noticed that I am not posting in real time - I am nearly a week behind. Mostly this is lack of time, internet connection etc. I am already at Halley and eventually my posts will catch up to me, in the meantime here is the last post about Novo. There are quite a few interesting vehicles at Novo airstrip - this is an old Russian armoured personnel carrier, they still use it and several like it to ferry people about.

This is a fuel carrier that they use to refuel the planes. Novo is unusual and useful because the blue ice strip is just 14km from the coast and hence easy to get fuel to (and far cheaper than flying it in).

Most people going through NOVO work for various nation's research programmes but there is also a fair smattering of adventurers, some with lots of money to pursue their dreams, like driving a truck from Novo to South Pole.

Some adventurers have less money but no less challenging aims. Here are two Norwegians departing Novo who hope to ski to Pole in less than 50 days - that's how much food they have. They have kites that they hope will aid so they don't have to pull all the way. Best of luck to them.

Novo

2011-12-06T09:53:00.001Z

Novo - or Novolazarevskaya to give it its full name - is where the Russians operate a scientific research station and have a blue ice runway. Most of Antarctica has a surface of snow which is quite soft. In a precious few locations the flow of the giant ice streams of Antarctica reach a dead end because of a mountain range, and in these locations the flowing ice is pushed upwards and gives a hard enough surface to land wheeled planes on - such as the Ilyshian 76.

This is Penny checking out the blue ice - Penny by the way is one of my family's penguins and she had up until now had never been to Antarctica, you may have spotted her in the pictures from CapeTown.

Whilst waiting for the weather to be suitable for flying onwards to Halley the chief activities at Novo are drinking tea.

Or snoozing in a sleeping bag.

The research station at Novo is some 15km from the airstrip and as we were on standby to fly out we had to stay at the airstrip and wait (and wait). As well as the ice runway the facilities at the Novo airstrip consist mainly of tents and containers of various ages.

Flight to Antarctica

2011-12-04T07:18:00.001Z

Late weds night we flew from Cape Town to Novo in Antarctica.

This is a 4000km flight which takes just six hours. The aeroplane is a Russian Ilyshian76, originally designed for military transport its very capable of carrying large loads long distances, but comfortable it isn't. The passengers have no windows and the toilet is a builders portaloo strapped down at the back. All in all it feels like flying in a loud and overcrowded garage.

Lots of countries use the flight from Cape Town to Novo, the Russians who operate the service and run a station at Novo, the Indians who have a station near Novo and then the Germans, Brits and South Africans who all have stations that can be reached by further flights from Novo. In addition there a a few tourists and adventurers who use Novo as a way of getting to the South Pole. Here's some pictures of the Ilyshian at Novo.

Arrived Cape Town

2011-11-28T18:58:00.001Z

Well I am sitting in Cape Town waiting for the flight to Antarctica, we have had the flight briefings and handed over our bagage but weather in Antarctica means that we will be here for the next 48hrs.

As you can see - lovely weather here at the moment. Cape Town is quite busy and exciting at the moment as the Volvo round the world yacht race are here - now those people are mad. Cape Town has great food so I am making the most of the fresh food before hitting the more basic fare supplied at Halley. That glass of wine wasn't as big as it looks in the photo - honest.

What to take?

2011-11-17T19:51:00.001Z

A week to go and I need to start packing my personal things. The flight from Novo to Halley is very weight constrained so I can only take 20kg of my own baggage. All my cold weather gear will already be there so its just my indoor gear and any toys that I want. I am taking a kindle this year - so much lighter than dozens of books. My MP3 player obviously, my computer (so I have all my digital photos of the family and all my music collection). But what else to take? How many T shirts to last three months? What would you take?

Antarctic communications

2011-11-05T15:35:00.000Z

Antarctic communications have improved since the days of HF radio - so if Matthew wants to keep in touch he doesn't need the radio anymore.

Free poster

2011-11-02T13:22:00.000Z

The Open University has produced an excellent poster to go along with the equally excellent BBC Frozen Planet series. If they have any left they will send you one for free, if not you can down load it and print it yourself. Both options available if you click here.

Where is Halley?

2011-10-31T16:42:00.001Z

I am soon off to Halley where we aim to commission our new station HalleyVI and close down our old station Halley V. For me, this means moving all the science equipment from HalleyV to HalleyVI as well as installing large amounts of new science experiments and equipment. The whole world rests upon Antarctica (it sounds so much nicer than Antarctica is at the bottom of the world!), and here is where Halley and the rest of the British research stations are.

Click on the image to get a bigger version.

Word Cloud

2011-10-18T12:39:00.001+01:00

Here is a word cloud of my emails last week - why, well because I can.....

A future Antarctic explorer

2011-06-12T11:36:00.000+01:00

Brendan wants to know all about it is like in Antarctica. If he keeps visiting this blog then he will find out!

Brendan sledging in Bristol

Halley VI

2011-06-10T16:00:00.001+01:00

Here is where I will be working in the 11/12 season. HalleyVI on the Brunt Iceshelf.

The station is nearly complete and in this coming season the science equipment will all be installed.

Climate Change Report and Summary from Australia.

2011-06-10T14:54:00.000+01:00

The government of Australia has issued general report on climate change, well worth a read