Something I have learned during my time here in Antarctica is that sea ice takes glider piloting to a whole new level. It can be an unpredictable moving obstacle that can mean danger for a glider. So in order to have a better understanding of this obstacle I spent some time learning about the different categories of sea ice and learning how to read sea ice coverage maps. Tom Holden is the Special Support Coordinator at NIC the National Ice Center and each morning his team sends the LTER scientists a sea ice image for the Anvers Island area. We then use these images to monitor the area and decide whether or not it is safe to fly the gliders.

Typically, my image categorizes the Anvers Island area sea ice into four categories (see image Dec. 3rd). On the December 3rd image you can see an example of the sea ice being broken down into A, B, C and D. Level A ice is classified as 1-2/1oths, Level B is 3-4/10ths, Level C is 5-6/10ths and D is 7-9/10ths. The classification of sea ice is actually based on a percentage, so Level A ice in an area actually means the area is about 10-20% sea ice compared to that of Level D which means an area is about 70-90% sea ice. To go even more in depth Tom sent me the following description which explains how the age of the ice also plays a role in how they analyze the images and than categorize.

The A, B, C and D that you see on the charts, are used to designate attributes to each individual area.  Each area you see is analyzed, based upon the ice type (classification) AND the concentration.  Ice types are based upon thickness and age of the ice.  The purpose for this, is generally, older ice, is harder and thicker. The reason it is harder, is that gravity pulls on the brine content and it drains its way through, leaving nearly pure frozen water behind. New, Young ice is easily broken and Multi-year and glacial is the hardest to break.

Unfortunately, even with all this information the bottom line is still the more sea ice in an area, the more tightly it will be packed together, making it more difficult for a glider to surface. Comparing the various types and actually seeing them in real time and seeing the consistency of the ice allowed me to determine that a glider should be able to surface in Level A ice without problems. However, level B, C and D are a different story and therefore we avoid those areas.

However, aside from the fact that sea ice can be a nuisance and prohibit us from taking zodiacs out or potentially cause a glider to not surface it serves many useful purposes. Various species in both the Antarctic and Arctic use sea ice as a means of hunting, breeding, feeding and even resting. Down here in Antarctica we have seen numerous leopard seals hauled out on large chunks of sea ice napping. The same also goes for the various avian species such as the Adelie penguin.

Brian, Tina, Alex, Neil Armstrong, and Carol

This past weekend Palmer Station had a very exciting visitor, NASA Astronaut Neil Armstrong and his wife Carol. They were aboard one of the National Geographic cruises that stops by Palmer. Neil and Carol got a full tour of the station and then we got to spend some time with him and talk to him about gliders. He was very interested and even started testing the flexibility of our glider wings which made us all a tad nervous. After his visit on station, the National Geographic Crew invited us aboard their boat to watch Neil give a talk later that evening. It was quite the opportunity and we were all very appreciative of the offer.

Wednesday November 11th marked the first glider deployment for this years Antarctic field season. We couldn’t of asked for better weather, it was a balmy 30 degrees, clear sunny skies and flat calm seas. We journeyed out to Station E and after surveying the water depth in the area, we decided it was a good spot to splash RU25. After she completed a few short missions it was time for her journey to begin. The main mission is to obtain a battery curve for this glider in preparation for her flight to Rothera later in the season. However, we will also be running the CTD and optics puck and collecting some science. Enjoy the photos!

Currently here at Palmer Station there are 7 scientists representing 3 different groups. In the picture to the left starting in the back row and working our way across we have Kristen Gorman, Maggie Waldron, Brian Gaas, Tina Haskins, Alex Kahl, Jenn Blum, and Dan Whiteley. Kristen and Jenn represent B-013, their work consists of the monitoring of various seabird species around the peninsula including the Penguins. Their PI is Bill Fraser, who has been coming to Antarctica since 1974 monitoring various seabird colonies, primarily the Adelie penguin. Maggie and Dan work under Hugh Ducklow and are exploring the world of microbial ecology and population dynamics here in the Western Antarctica Penisula. AKA they are the bacteria folks on station. Lastly, you have us Phytoplankton nerds in group B-019 working for Oscar Schofield. One of the things we are trying to understand is how changes in phytoplankton dynamics, such as an increase in fresher water due to melting ice, propagate through the ecosystem – with such effects ultimately affecting fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Collecting this information involves various methods including sea water sampling, bio-optics, and the use of AUV’s otherwise known as Slocum Gliders.

This is just a little bit of fun science for everyone… NASA currently has a satellite called ICESat up in space that is about to reach its operational life expectancy. ICESat stands for Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite and it is critical because it monitors the massive ice sheets that cover the polar regions. The replacement satellite, ICESat-II, won’t launch until 2014 at the earliest. This leaves researchers with a 6 year gap but NASA has a plan, Operation Ice Bridge. NASA is launching the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice ever flown. They have outfitted a DC-8 jetliner with various sensors including ones that were not on the original ICESsat. The jet flies out of Punta Arenas Chile and will crisscross ice shelves, sea ice, glaciers and the massive western ice sheet collecting critical data for researchers. Here is a link to the article.

What was really cool for us here at Palmer is that on Saturday Oct. 31st the DC-8 radioed into our station letting us know they were going to be flying over head. So we laid out our bright orange float coats to spell out “HI” and gathered on the pier to watch them fly overhead. They later sent the overhead picture to us.

Yesterday (Tuesday) was our first sampling day here at station. We would have gone Monday but if the wind is blowing over 20 knots they don’t want us out on the water. Which is fine by us, no one wants to feed the fishy! So since the winds had laid down it was time to head out on our trusty zodiac ‘Bruiser’. As you can see Bruiser is kind of a beast! The good news is that since it’s such a heavy boat it would take an Orca to flip it, so hopefully I will have better luck here than I did in the Azores! Anyway back to the science, we have two main goals while sampling, first is the lowering of our bio-optics cage and second is collecting seawater samples. Yesterday we lowered our optics cage to 60m and collected water in Niskin bottles at 50, 25 and 10m and then two surface samples. Once we have what we need it’s time to head back to the lab and filter the samples. As you can see we have a lovely filtration system setup. We use 25mm filters and filter the seawater in incriminates of 100ml until we see pigment on the filters. Right now since the water is so clear there is not a lot of activity so we have to filter more water. This will change as the weather warms and the water livens up as we head deeper into the Antarctic summer. We follow this process twice, once for chlorophyll samples and a second time for HPLC samples. Once we have the filters we store them in either the deep freeze or in liquid nitrogen. And that’s a wrap!

Greetings from Palmer Station Antarctica. This year Alex (veteran from last year), Brian, and myself (Tina) are here for the LTER summer season. Some changes this year are the addition of a third person and a third glider to our group which will hopefully allow us to get even more accomplished. We will be working very closely with Maggie and Dan who are from Hugh Ducklow’s group  since we are all sampling the same water and at the same depths. We will also be working closely with Kristen and Jenn who are the Penguin girls from Bill Fraser’s group. Together the seven of us form the LTER science group! We have been spending the past week finding all our gear and setting up our respective labs. Today we are hoping will be our first sampling day however we are faced with a very high tide and 20 knot winds. Neither of which yields to successful boating. So instead we play it by ear and hope for a break in the weather.

It hasn’t all been hard labor though… we were all lucky enough to go to Torgersen Island which has a couple Adelie penguin colonies on it. It was a beautiful day and quite the experience.

This afternoon (1800 local time) we deployed RU07 into the Arctic Ocean. Working with the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) as a part of the NORUS program. Peter and John from NORUS helped with the deployment which went quite smooth. We tried to deploy a Norwegian-owned glider two days ago but ran into a warning I hadn’t seen before. Being the cautious person I am, we pulled our Norwegian glider, Freyja, back on board and brought her home. Following today’s successful deployment,  we’ll be putting Freyja in the water on Thursday. So, by the end of the week we should have two gliders in the water. I happened to have my cell phone with me so I snapped a couple of pictures.  It was odd having full cell coverage during the deployment – I just don’t associate survival suit deployments with 5-bar cell phone coverage. The first pic is RU07 just before beginning the mission. The second pic is me in a survival suit for the first time since January when I deployed RU05 in Antarctica. It feels good to be back in the cold putting another robot in the water…

RU07 in the Arctic Ocean with Svalbard in the background.

Satisfied after deploying RU07.

Elizabeth and I have moved our last bags onto the LM Gould (the boat we sailed on for the month of January). In about an hour we are going to have a “cross town dinner” before we board the Gould and begin sailing northward. Leaving Palmer Station after having been here for just under 5 months is not the easisest thing to do.

It has been great to see signs of winter slowly overtake the summer. Since the equinox a few weeks ago, we have had longer nights than days. And with the nights getting longer this means we are experiencing more cooling than heating. As a result, a bite has come back to the air, the temperatures rarely get above freezing, and as a consequence the ground  has frozen solid. When the ground finally froze around Palmer Station, it makes travel easier because the mud also froze solid. And, any small bit of snow is sticking to the ground again. This place really looks much better when its covered with snow.

It took us the better part of the past 10 days to pack up our lab, organize samples to be sent home, plan our upcoming travels, and get our personal gear sorted and packed. The Palmer Station winter-overs are now on station running the show and those us from the summer – or science – season have handed off our chores and duties to the new arrivals. Of course, there isn’t anyone for Elizabeth and I to hand off duties to, but for the contract employees on station all of the jobs have been transferred to allow the station to be maintained and to function through the winter. It will be odd to return in October and see the same faces that jut arrived. Indeed, a couple of the faces that just arrived, watched us walk into station for our first time back in October. Anyways, we’ve had an incredible season down here together and we are definitely sad to leave. As I begin analyzing and sorting through the data in the coming months, I’ll keep posting here so people can get a sense of the scale and time frame for projects of this size. In summary though, things move slow – just like the Gould.

photo: Alden Strong

Today we tried to deploy RU05 for an end of season survey of the slope of the nearby penguin foraging zone. The water was calm and we enlisted two other scientists on station , Christian and Rebecca, along with our boating coordinator Ryan to help deploy the glider. The deployment went well but after about an hour the glider operation center at Rutgers University in New Jersey was seeing some funny data. It turns out that both of the pressure sensors are acting funny. SInce we couldn’t trust either sensor, we had to pull RU05 out of the water about an hour after we put in. I’ll try to troubleshoot the issue and see what I can find. Hopefully we can put RU05 back in the water for one more late-season survey.