On Sunday, June 20, I flew to San Antonio, Texas to participate in a teacher training class on Polar and Planetary science. I was invited to attend by Sr. Stephen Ackley, the Principal Investigator for my Antarctic expedition. Dr. Ackley and his wife Jackie picked me up at the San Antonio airport and took me to their lovely home. Each morning, we would take an early morning walk around the neighborhood, seeing least 15 deer and their new fawns! Very different from my San Fernando Valley neighborhood! Then we were off to the UTSA campus for our class.
About 25 teachers were lucky enough to participate in this course. Most of the teachers were middle and high school teachers from the San Antonio area, and they were very interested to hear about PolarTREC and my participation in Dr. Ackley's research.
Dr. Stephen Ackley teaches about polar sea ice.
Let me share with you some of the information I learned that week:
Antarctica covers an area of about 13 million square kilometers. When you add the winter sea ice, it grows to an area of 19 million square kilometers. By comparison, Australia covers about 7.5 million square kilometers. Antarctica and its sea ice covers an area roughly the size of the continent of Africa.
Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest place on Earth! 70% of the world's fresh water is frozen in its ice.
The ocean around Antarctica is changing. The salinity in the Southern Ocean has been decreasing according to measurements taken from 1995-2005. This "freshening" of the Southern Ocean is linked to increased glacial ice melt, more precipitation, less sea ice formation, and change in winds.
The temperatures around the Antarctic Peninsula have risen an average of .5 degrees C per decade over the last 50 years. This equals an average temperature rise of 2.5 degrees C in the last 50 years. By 2100, it is projected that sea levels will rise by .4 meters (40 cm) due to temperature change.
These are some factors which affect the sea ice we will be studying on our expedition.
I also learned some fascinating information about sea ice and the observations we will be doing on the Oden. We will be making hourly observations from the ship's bridge as the ship moves through the pack ice.
We will be recording ice types (there are 13 types), ice floe size (8 sizes), topography (8 types with several sub-categories), snow type (11 types), ice concentration, ice and snow thickness, and visible open water. It amazed me to learn there were so many ways to describe and classify ice!
My favorite activity of the week was getting to use the Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) device we will be taking on the expedition to make sea ice measurements The EM 31 is both a conductor and receiver which uses electromagnetic waves to measure the distance from the surface of the snow or ice to the salt water. It is used by carrying it while a person walks, following a set transect on the ice and stopping to take a reading,. then walking, then stopping for a reading. I got to practice using it out on the UTSA campus.
Anne Marie Wotkyns learns how to use the EM31, an Electromagnetic Induction instrument which will be used to conduct sea ice measurements on the Oden expedition.
I will describe these methods in more detail once I am out on the Oden using them in the field.
Lesson learned: There is a lot more to ice than just frozen water!