Oct. 30, 2015:  Working in severe weather conditions is a common experience in Antarctica. We landed under clear but hazy skies, weather conditions about -5°F with 15-20 knot winds. Over the next two hours, conditions worsened to -15°F with 40 knot winds. When visibility dropped to 50ft, the pilot ordered a rapid pullout, leaving the station’s servicing unfinished.  

Friday, 3 November 2015 Anja and Jerry drove out on the Castle Rock loop road with Paul Carpenter, Chief Engineer at PASSCAL, to their test “facility” today to install a couple of seismometers for testing and burn-in. PASSCAL (Portable Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere) is the group from New Mexico who are providing the seismometers and data loggers that … Read More

Reading this blog you might have recognized that we have a lot of time because we can’t fly due to the current weather conditions. However, we collected some of the data loggers by now and started to analyze the data. Nevertheless, there is some time for recreation with lots of opportunities around McMurdo! The big board on the way to the mess room … Read More

Nov. 3, 2015:  Just returned from our two-day survival “Shakedown,” (It used to be called Happy “Camper,” for some unknown reason). This course is a two-day (one-night) course in surviving on the Ice while awaiting rescue. This course is required of all groups heading out into the “deep field” camps. It started out with a two-hour lecture at the Science … Read More

To be able to reach our stations on the Ross Ice Shelf we have to fly with a Twin Otter. Every morning we are ready at 7 am and wait for the phone call that confirms our flight. After 4 days of being ready and eventually hanging around at the office because we didn’t fly we finally took off to go to … Read More

San Diego -> Los Angeles -> Sydney -> Christchurch, NZ (25 hours of flying) Made it to Christchurch and the next morning arrived at the US Antarctic Program (USAP) offices for a preliminary briefing (only one of many to come) and to be outfitted with our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) in a small … Read More

At the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf the a vertical wall about 40 m tall rise up. Ice has a density 9/10 of water, so 90% of the ice is below seawater.

The first 2 weeks in Antarctica was focused on general training, driving snowmobiles, camping etc. We here became friends with Geophysicist Andrew Slater, who has a well-written blog on our work. http://penguinchasing.blogspot.dk/2014/11/science-seismology-on-ross-ice-shelf.html

Photos by PI Ralph Stephen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.