Well, sleeping in below zero temperatures at high altitude and 24-hours of sunshine was a little harder than I expected. I used my neck gaiter to block out the sun from my eyes and it did a wonderful job. But, I kept getting up every hour or so. Hopefully, I will get used to this new environment soon.
Although I am a little sleepy, I am still able to take you on a brief tour of our camp.
Here's a quick picture of the "Tomato". I'll explain what it is a little later in this journal entry.
The Tomato
I’ll begin the tour with “tent city” where our tents are located.
Tent City in the fog at Summit camp
Right now, Brandon, Hannah and I are 75% of the occupants of tent city. Based on this information, can you figure out how many people are sleeping in tent city?
Most of the researchers are doing their work outside of camp or are finished for the season. Don’t be sad for us. We won’t be lonely. We have many visitors that will be visiting us over the next two weeks. I will write more about these visitors when they arrive. It is pretty exciting.
Besides tent city, we have the “Big House”. As you probably guessed, it is one of the biggest buildings at Summit.
The Big House at Summit camp. Why does it have that dome?
Now, you probably got the impression from my journals that we are roughing it out in the wild. That isn’t exactly the whole story. We do work and sleep outside. However, the Big House is heated. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner here and this is where I write my journals. Every morning at 8:00 a.m. we have a camp meeting with our camp manager, John, to review what is happening at the camp today.
During the day, Hannah, Brandon and I take several trips to our satellite camp that is affectionately called the “Tomato”. The Tomato was the first picture in this journal entry. The Tomato is used as a base for air and snow research at Summit camp. Don’t you think it looks like red submarine?
It is about ½ mile from the Big House.
View of the Big House from Inside The Tomato
From this spot, we walk to different parts of the ice sheet to take snow samples. That means we fill jars up with snow and then take them back to the “Tomato”. Some of these jars we bury in the snow to take back with us to Atlanta. Some of these jars we take into the Tomato and melt the snow until it becomes liquid water. We then pour the water over a filter to trap any little particles that landed on the ice sheet.
To learn about the aerosols that are floating in the air above our satellite camp, we go to the “TAWO” building or (The Temporary Atmospheric Weather Observation building). This is where the scientists keep the instruments that measure the size of the particles and how much sunlight is being absorbed or reflected by the particles.
Brandon and Hannah entering the TAWO building at Summit camp.
And, last but not least, we have a “rabbit hole”. This is our underground snow lab to keep some of our snow samples cold. It is a constant -28 degrees Celsius down there. It is a room that is about 4 feet wide by 8 feet wide and 6 feet deep.
PolarTREC teacher Kevin McMahon is peeking his head out of the rabbit hole at Summit camp.
I hope you enjoyed the tour.