Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: **69° 44′ S **Longitude: 92° 45′ W Air temperature: -2.2 °C (28 °F) Wind chill: **-21.4 °C (-6.5 °F) **Wind speed: 25 to 30 knots Barometric pressure: 966.3 mBar Relative humidity: 94.2%
**Antarctic trivia **(answer at the end of this journal entry): Why do scientists go to Antarctica to study meteorites?
A weather system moved in yesterday afternoon from north. Unlike the northern hemisphere, air masses moving in from the north are warm and wet. We’ve had mostly southerly winds (winds are named from the direction they originate) this past week which has given us dry, but cold conditions. The "norther” we’re experiencing now has made temperatures more comfortable (-2 °C) but brought in strong winds (up to 30 knots) and more humid conditions.
Even a large ship like the Palmer is affected by these winds. We’ve been pulled away from the ice floe most of today so that the crew doesn’t have to keep maneuvering the ship to counteract the northerly wind flow which is pushing us away from the ice edge. The ship’s engines use a lot of fuel and are stressed more than they need to be just keeping us at the ice edge, so it’s better to let the wind push us to the other side of the lead we are in. We needed to bring some equipment and people aboard from the field this afternoon, so the ship was maneuvered close enough to the floe to swing a basket over the side with the crane to maneuver people and gear. It’s amazing that a 30-knot wind can "push around” a ship that weighs almost 14 million pounds!
Beverly, Martin, and Jeremy get a lift onto the ship from the crane operator.
2nd mate Rachelle during her shift at the helm of the Palmer.
Most of us are working on the ship today because of the difficult access to the ice, but the ever hard-working Belgian-Canadian group is in the field again. They are finishing their fourth round of data collection – a couple of days in the lab and then they’ll start the fifth and final round.
We decorated Styrofoam cups today in preparation for a fun experiment at sea. The cups will be lowered with the CTD to the bottom of the ocean, and then brought back to the surface. Water pressure increases with depth; my quick calculation shows that the cups will experience almost 5700 pounds of pressure per square inch, so they’ll no doubt look different when they return to the surface. Who says scientists don’t have any fun?
Decorated cups awaiting a trip to the bottom of the ocean.
I’ll post another picture of these cups when they return from their "journey to the bottom of the sea.”
This evening we’re doing a continuous CTD – the CTD unit is lowered to a certain depth, returned to the surface, and then lowered again. This will go on for several hours tonight. This is called a CTD "yo-yo” – and results in a tremendous amount of data being collected. We joked about doing an around-the-world or walk-the-dog yo-yo trick with the CTD, but Victor, one of the operators of the CTD computer system, didn’t think our joke was too funny. Victor, we think you’ve been sitting in front of a computer too long…
**Answer to today’s Antarctic trivia question: **Why do scientists go to Antarctica to study meteorites?
More meteorites have been found in Antarctica than the rest of the earth combined! Meteorites that fall to Earth often aren’t spotted – perhaps they drop into the ocean or thick vegetation, or look like rocks and so aren’t collected. When a meteorite falls onto Antarctica it becomes trapped in the snow and ice and is very visible. Moving ice and wind bring meteorites trapped under the ice to the surface. Scientists believe that some of these meteorites may be bits of the moon or Mars that were knocked off by collisions with large objects. These meteorites may hold clues about whether life exists in other parts of our solar system.
Signing off from Ice Station Belgica…more news tomorrow!