Weather and other amazing sites!

I have not been able to post for the past few days. Just after my last post, I took a helicopter from Lake Bonney back to Lake Fryxell, where I was working the previous week. I met Elizabeth there to do help her study the mosses in the streams. Just after we got to camp F6 on Lake Fryxell, bad weather moved in. The wind broke the antenna for the satellite internet! No helicopter could fly in the storm, so nobody could come fix the antenna or pick us up to take us back to McMurdo. So, I didn't have any internet connection for several days. Yesterday, there was finally a break in the storm. A helicopter took Elizabeth and I back to McMurdo yesterday evening.

Although the bad weather made it sort of difficult to work, it did create some very beautiful scenery!
Weather on Antarctica is very interesting. It is the coldest, driest, and windiest of all the continents. During the winter, winds usually come from the South Pole, bringing very cold and snowy weather. During the summer (right now), wind and weather usually come from the north, bringing warmer air. Warm is relative, though. The warm summer winds are around freezing temperature!

The storm we had this past week was from the north. The air it brought was fairly warm, and the temperature stayed above freezing. However, it brought winds around 30-40 mph (which is why our internet broke). There was also a good bit of snow. At McMurdo, there was about a foot of snow on the ground. This isn't a big amount of snow by Vermont or Wyoming standards, but it is a lot of snow for Antarctica, which is a big desert! Out in the Dry Valleys, though, there was only a dusting of snow.

The clouds that come in with a storm are usually low to the ground. This low cloud layer is called a "ceiling". When the ceiling is too low, the helicopters will not fly because the pilots will not be able to see. That is why we were stuck at Lake Fryxell!

The weather in the Dry Valleys can be very patchy. It can be cloudy like this at Lake Fryxell, near the sea, but very sunny at Lake Bonney, further inland. This all depends on how the clouds move in the sky. This picture of Lake Fryxell basin shows you exactly how far the storm clouds came in this week. You can see that it on the left, the mountains are covered with a dusting of snow, and the snow gradually disappears towards the right where the cloud didn't go.

There is also a special type of wind on Antarctica called katabatic winds. These are not weather systems, like you're used to having. They are a type of surface wind. Katabatic winds come from the south, so are made up of very cold air. Cold air usually stays lower to the ground, because it is denser than warm air. Gravity keeps the cold air on the bottom. When the cold air is moving along the ground, it will get pushed higher in the air over mountains and other slopes. When the wind reaches the top of the slope, it may meet warm air traveling from the north. The cold air get pushed back down to the ground by warm air and rushes down the slopes into the valley. This rush of cold air is called a katabatic wind. They can reach 100 mph or more, and are often very destructive! They can blow away tents, buildings, flags, and people! I haven't experienced one of these yet, and I'm very glad!

As the storm clouds slowly leave the area, it becomes safer for the helicopters to fly. The storm is still in the area, but the weather was much better in Taylor Valley! Here is a picture from Lake Fryxell just before we got picked up. The clouds were still there, but the ceiling was not quite so low and we could see the sun and the tops of the mountain peaks again!
Learn more about Antarctic weather on Antarctic Connection or Wikipedia.

A lot (besides weather) has happened while we were in the field without internet. I will tell you all about it over the next few days!

How to Eat Like an Antarctican

Down here in Antarctica, eating is very important. We have to stay energized to face the cold weather, hike through the field to do our research, and keep our morale high. So I will dedicate this entry to that wonderful thing called FOOD!

When we're at McMurdo, we eat in the Galley. It runs like a cafeteria, where we load up our trays with food and sit and big tables together. There is a great staff of people that prepare all of our meals for us. The menus are similar to what you eat at home. We have cereal, fruit, and pancakes for breakfast. At lunch you can have sandwiches, fruit, or a hot dish. Dinner usually has a few options of hot foods, plus dessert. And, the most important part of eating at the Galley is Frosty Boy. That's our soft-serve ice cream machine. Frosty Boy is the most popular stop, and the crowd gets angry when he breaks down!

The funny thing about food in Antarctica is that we can't just go to the grocery store and have a big selection of fresh foods. All of our food is shipped here from the U.S. or New Zealand. What we're eating this summer was shipped here at the end of last summer. So, fresh foods are not very common here. The menu at the Galley is very normal, except most of the ingredients are not fresh. Most of the things we eat were frozen, canned, or dehydrated before arriving. Occasionally, a new shipment of "freshies" will come in, and we'll have all sorts of fruit and vegetables. You've never seen a community of people get so excited about bananas! They actually have to put signs next to the banana bowl asking everyone to please take only one.

When we're at the field camps, we cook for ourselves. Each field camp has a stock of dehydrated and canned foods, and we also pack in our own. Here's what our "pantry" looks like at Bonney Camp right now. We have a big selection of dehydrated grains, such as rice, pasta, cous cous, and potatoes. There's also canned meats, dehydrated soups and vegetables, lots of fruit juice, and canned beans.
There are, of course, some favorite camp foods that are popular to eat. Cabin bread, which is basically a giant cracker, is used to replace real bread. It doesn't go stale (because it basically comes stale). Mike eats 3 pieces of cabin bread each morning, topped with peanut butter and jelly. Look at how happy it makes him at 7:00 AM!
If you're eating lunch at the camp, the most popular food is Ramen soup. Many days we're in the field during lunch, and pack something to carry along. Usually we bring beef jerky, granola bars, dried fruit, and chocolate. Cadbury chocolate bars and Slim Jims are a field camp "must have." Sometimes, to prevent your taste buds from getting bored, you find that a little creativity goes a long way. Here's Mike's new lunch-time invention: Slim Jim flavored Ramen!
We are also able to bring frozen meat and vegetables to the field. So, dinners are usually much better than breakfast and lunch. We can bring out chicken, fish, pork, and mixed vegetables: things that we didn't have to add water to before eating! Our frozen foods are stored in our camp "refrigerator", which is just a cellar outside. It generally stays below freezing, so it works perfectly and requires no electricity!

Dinner is definitely my favorite meal, and it's always fun to see how gourmet you can cook using only non-perishable products that have been sitting around camp for years. Here at Bonney Camp, we've even started the Iron Field Chef competition. So far, I'm winning. Tonight for dinner, I made spaghetti with a salmon and clam cream sauce, followed by spice pound cake topped with pecans and a sugar glaze. It's not bad, given the fact that we're a five hour airplane flight from the nearest city! And it totally beats Mike's Slim Jim Ramen...

We had a very curious visitor today. A skua has been hanging out around our camp, hoping to find some food.

A skua (pronounced "skoo-uh") is a fairly large sea bird that lives along coasts in polar areas (both Arctic and Antarctic). They look a lot like seagulls, because they are related. They are pretty big. When their wings are outstretched, they are 4 feet wide. That's almost the height of your average second grader! Skuas are mostly brown and very strong fliers. Because they're so big, they don't glide very much, so flap their wings a lot. They can swim, and have webbed feet like a duck.
Skuas are migratory, meaning they fly to a new place to breed and have chicks. Antarctic skuas fly here to breed in the late spring, around October. They nest on the ground or among rocks along the shore. They usually lay two eggs at a time, which hatch in December or January.

Skuas are hunters that eat meat, especially fish. To help them hunt, they have a very sharp, hooked beak and claws on their feet. But, they will also eat just about anything they can find or steal! They will eat eggs and dead animals, such as seals and other birds. They also steal food from other birds. Around the camps on Antarctica, skuas will steal food from the scientists if we're not careful!

When an animal eats whatever it can find, it is called a scavenger. Skuas are scavengers, which is why this guy has been hanging around our camp. He's hoping we drop some food that he can steal! So, we have to be very careful not to leave anything edible behind. It is illegal for us to interfere with any of the wildlife, including skuas. We are not allowed to feed the skua, shoo him away, or do anything to make it change its behavior. The skuas are not afraid of us, because we won't do anything to them, which means that they harass us instead! They fly around our heads while we're doing field work, and will even fly right at people![Photo credit: Wikipedia]

The skua that visited us today also visited Ross and Elizabeth at the other end of the valley at Lake Fryxell. He reportedly investigated the contents of their backpacks. Ross said the skua attacked Elizabeth, but this picture doesn't look very threatening:
Because skuas will scavenge whatever they can find, it is used as a slang term around McMurdo and Antarctica. Our lost-and-found is called the "skua bin" because people will dig through it to find clothes or other useful things for themselves. If you eat someone else's leftovers at dinner, you might be called a "skua."

Unfortunately, this particular skua visiting us did not get anything to eat! He's been around for about two days, but will hopefully fly back to the ocean soon. That's the only place he's going to find something to eat!

Learn more about skuas on Wikipedia or Antarctic Connection.

Always Time for Fun!

We work very hard here on Antarctica, but sometimes we have fun, too! Here are some photos of people having fun during the past week.

This group of researchers are called the "Stream Team." They monitor all of the streams in the Dry Valleys. They drive the ATV across the lakes, so that they can get to the streams quicker. Sometimes, I think they just like to have fun with the ATV's, though.
Here's me playing my guitar one evening on Lake Bonney.
Ed insisted upon being the prettiest one at the New Year's Eve party.

Why is Bonney so Bonny?

The past couple of days, Mike and I have been doing field work out at Lake Bonney. The weather has been very sunny for the past couple of days, which has made our work much easier! Most of the work that we do, such as the elevation transects and nutrient additions, are done at more than one lake. This is because the different lakes in the dry valleys are each slightly different. They have different amounts of nutrients, different elevations, and other important soil properties, so they support different amounts of life. To understand the entire valley, we have to do our experiments at more than one lake. So, everything that we did last week at Lake Fryxell has to also be done here. Mike and I have walked two elevation transects. We also measured the respiration from soils under the nutrient addition experiments. Since I've already told you about those projects, I will show you some other neat things around the Bonney Basin.

First, we went out onto the lake ice so that some other people working there could show us what they're doing. They wanted to look at the bottom of the lake. This is pretty hard to do, since the lake is covered with ice year-round, and is 120 feet deep. They drilled a hole in the ice so that they can see into the water. They dropped a camera down through the hole on a very long cord so that they can see the bottom of the lake! The lake water is very clear and the sun shines all day during this time of year, so there are actually things living on the bottom of the lake! Algae, which are very small primitive plants, live in mats on the bottom. This is similar to the green slimy stuff you see around lakes in the U.S. I don't have any pictures to show of the lake bottom (because they just didn't turn out very well). But, here is a picture I took while standing on the middle of the lake in the late evening sun!
Another interesting area of the Bonney Basin is called Blood Falls. This is an area on the Taylor Glacier where a reddish liquid seeps out of the glacier, making it look like the glacier is bleeding. Many people have been working at Blood Falls to find out why this is happening! Scientists think that it is from sea water that was trapped in the glacier a long time ago. The sea water contains ancient red salts that are being released as the glacier is melting.
As I said before, the internet connection here is very slow. I have been able to upload some pictures, at least, but they may not be the greatest quality. I added pictures to my previous entry about soils, so that you can see what I meant by loose and rocky!

Mike and I will continue working out here for the next several days. Today, the weather became cloudy, and it is a bit colder. The work we wanted to do needs warmth. When it's warm, the soil biota are active and respire more. We want to measure respiration in different areas, but we can't do that if it's not warm! Hopefully the weather will turn warmer again tomorrow!

How to Find Antarctic Soil

Most people think of Antarctica as being cold, snowy, and ice-covered. While that is true for some parts of Antarctica (like, the South Pole, for example), that is not true everywhere in Antarctica. Some areas (like the Dry Valleys) are not covered in ice. Antarctica is a continent, which means it's made out of land, not just ice. The areas that are covered in ice still have soil underneath all of that ice. In most places the ice is incredibly thick, and you'd have to drill down for miles to find the soil. But, there's still soil under there! The areas that do not have ice allow you to see the soil directly, without drilling through any ice. That's why our group works in the Dry Valleys. We're interested in soil, and the Dry Valleys allow us to look at that soil without any ice cover.The Dry Valleys don't have ice because they are in a desert that is very dry. There is not enough snow fall each year to cover the ground completely. No glaciers remain to cover the ground.

The soils of Antarctica are not like those that you're used to seeing. Antarctic soils are very rocky and loose. There's no tree or plant roots to hold the soil together, so it is soft and loose to walk on. It's like walking on the beach, where the sand smooshes around your foot. Except here, there's a lot of rocks, pebbles, and boulders, not just sand. The rocks come from all sorts of different origins. Some of them are from volcanoes. Some of them are from the bedrock.

Mike and I came back to the field today. We are now at Lake Bonney, which is a different lake basin in Taylor Valley. While we're here, we'll hike some more elevation transects for soil samples, plus measure carbon dioxide respiration from several different plots. Unfortunately, the internet at this camp is not very good, and I am not able to upload many pictures. I will upload more when I can!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, from the bottom of the planet!

Here's the first photo of 2008:


This is the ice-covered Ross Sea and the Royal Society Range mountains across from McMurdo Station.

Today, we've been packing ourselves up to go back out into the Dry Valleys. This time we'll be at Lake Bonney, further inland from the ocean than where we were last week. But, it's been snowing here for the past 3 days, so hopefully the weather is good enough tomorrow for us to travel!