Heidi Roop grew up exploring the formerly glaciated landscape of Wisconsin, and today continues her love for studying glaciers and climate change through her research focused on reconstructing the glacial and climatic history of two watersheds in the Ahklun Mountains of Alaska. This is Ms. Roop's fourth field season in Alaska where prolonged rain cannot dampen her spirits or her love of fieldwork! This will be Heidi's third experience with PolarTREC, and she is thrilled to share her passion and excitement with Ms. Peterson and her students.
It is hard to believe but I am already home! I arrived home sooner than I thought due to a rapid sequence of unanticipated flights! I am certainly exhausted after the long journey! The WAIS camp closed down more quickly than we thought and I left WAIS only to find myself on a plane back to Christchurch less than 12 hours after leaving the field! 36 hours after that, I collected my luggage in Flagstaff and arrived at home safe and sound!
I didn't realize how much I missed sunsets, the night sky, and easy access to fresh vegetables. I also love having a warm bed and, of course, a flush toilet!
I have lots more to post about WAIS Divide and since I am now back in the land of internet, stay tuned for videos and photos that I was unable to send while out in the deep field.
Camp closed down quickly, I caught an earlier flight off of the continent, and I have already made the long journey home to Flagstaff!
On January 25th we finished drilling! The final depth of the ice collected was 2561.57m! We collected over 1,000m of ice this season and are hopefully on track to finish drilling next year. Replicate coring will hopefully follow in the 2011-2012 season. It is hard to believe that the season is already coming to a close! It feels like we just got here and got the operation up and running. Now, we will spend the next several days cleaning up camp, cleaning out the arch, and preparing for another great season of drilling next year.
Most of our crew left camp today. They all headed back to McMurdo Station and are preparing to catch a flight off of the continent. The rest of us will follow in a few days. Until then, we will be busy getting all of the cargo ready for next year. All of the items that we don't want frozen will fly back to McMurdo Station and will be stored until next year. Everything else will live in the drilling arch or will be stored in cargo lines on winter berms. Winter berms are raised snow platforms that will prevent all of the goods from being buried by snow during the winter. This will hopefully allow us to get started right away next year!
Here is a short video that summarizes all of the steps in collecting an ice core using the Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) drill. Thomas Bauska of Oregon State University helped me put together this video. Enjoy!
[video]
Here is the DISC drill hard at work! This video shows the whole drilling and core logging process. Enjoy!
We have one of the best and coldest commutes to work out here at WAIS. WE often take snow machines to and from the drill arch to camp around meal times and when we are moving lots of people and cargo around. This video is a little summary of that work commute on a snow machine. It is a short commute, only about 1.5 minutes, and rarely is there traffic! We are usually really bundled up to stay warm and always wear our helmets for safety. Many of our snow machines have sleds on the back so we can take 5-7 people to the arch or town at a time. We even have a gas station for our snow machines!
Here is a short video of my commute to the drill arch from camp.
Mr. Wesche came to visit WAIS Divide! What a great surprise! It is rare to have a friend just hop over for a visit when you are in the deep field in Antarctica.
Body: We had a special guest for the day here at WAIS Divide! Mr. Wesche, a PolarTREC teacher who is at Byrd Camp, flew in with his crew to come visit. I'd like to think he came just to see me but I think the ice cores were more exciting! I got to take Mr. Wesche around camp and show him how our little camp on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet differed from Byrd Camp. Both Byrd and WAIS Divide have the same type of buildings and the same number of people.
Apparently, the only real difference between the camps is that we have the drill arch, or the large structure that is dedicated to the DISC ice core drill. In 1967-1968 there was an ice core drilled at Byrd. With improving technology, new scientific questions, and a better understanding of how to document, preserve, and sample ice, the hope is that the WAIS Divide ice core will help to better elucidate past climate variability.
It was nice to show someone in person what it is like to work with ice cores. Mr. Wesche got to see the ice cores with volcanic ash layers and even got to see the drill come out of the borehole with a new piece of ice. He picked a great day to come because we drilled to 2000 meters, a landmark in this project. We want drill a total of ~3,500 meters by the end of the 2011 so there is only one more chance to see a one thousand meter mark!
Be sure to check out his journal if you haven't yet! He has TONS of great stuff up about Antarctica.
Thanks for the visit Mr. Wesche. Safe travels back to the United States! The West Antarctic Ice Sheet already misses you!
Mr. Wesche came to visit WAIS Divide! What a great surprise! It is rare to have a friend just hop over for a visit when you are in the deep field in Antarctica.
WAIS Divide, Antarctica: Our lives out here at WAIS as core handlers and ice core drillers revolves around ice but, we must have water (in its liquid form) to survive! Even though we are surrounded by snow we have to put lots fuel and energy into turning that snow into potable water.
Our camp uses about 200 gallons of water a day for dishes, cooking, drinking water, laundry, showers, etc. On average our camp has a population of about 45 people. That is about 5 gallons of water per person per day. Compare that to the average American, who consumes about 90 gallons of water a day, and we are doing quite well on the water conservation front. However, most of the consumption of water back home is used for waste removal and showers. Since we are only allowed one five-minute shower a week and have no flush toilets, we are able to cut down on our water usage.
So, how do we make 175 gallons of water a day? Our solution is to use snow melters. We have to shovel buckets of snow into the melter, wait for the snow to melt, and then transfer the water to a large tank where it then gets pumped to the sink, shower, or unit where the water is required.
In a discussion with our electrical foreman, Todd Rampendahl, I found out that the snow melters use large 4,000-watt electric element. These electric immersion heaters use lots of energy all of which comes from our two camp generators. These 225kw CAT generators are run on AN-8 fuel and are more than sufficient to serve all of our energy needs here at camp and at the drill arch. On a daily basis, we consume about 200 gallons of fuel! Keep in mind all of our fuel comes to us by airplane. All in all, supporting this research and all of the people at camp is an energy intensive endeavor that requires the help and expertise of numerous individuals. We are all grateful each day to all of the pilots, fuels operators, mechanics, cargo personnel, and camp staff that make our comfortable life at WAIS Divide possible!
You can't have life without water but we no liquid water is in sight in the frozen land! Here are the details about how we make water from snow here at WAIS Divide.
WAIS Divide, Antarctica: Our primary goal here at WAIS Divide is to drill and collect ice cores and get it shipped back to the United States. My job, along with several other core handlers, is to document and inspect the ice for anything interesting and document it so we know at what depth and quality (the presence of cracks, fractures or breaks in the ice) the ice is in when it is collected. Rarely do we see anything other than clear ice with some scratches and cracks but around 1600 m deep we retrieved a core with a visible dark band in it! We think that this layer is a tephra layer, or a volcanic ash deposit! It is very rare to see such layers with the naked eye in ice cores so we all feel very lucky. Enjoy this video I made for Ice Stories with our ice chemistry expert Dr. Ryan Banta as he explains more about this layer and ice core chemistry.
We just collected an ice core with a visible layer in it! We think it is a volcanic ash deposit! This was an exciting day!
We have now been coring for about two and half weeks and we are finally getting the hang of drilling, documenting, and packing the ice cores. We work 24 hours a day in three shifts. During each shift three drillers and three core handlers all work at the same time. The arch itself is split into the two sections. The warmer (-10°C) of the two sides is where the drillers work. The entire drilling set-up is contained on this side of the arch. The cold side of the arch (-26.9 °C) is where I work and it is typically about 10-15°C colder on the core handling side than the drilling side. The cores are pushed through the wall from the driller's side to the core handling side so the ice is never exposed to the warmer temperatures. However, as the days go on here in Antarctica, cold is becoming a very relative term!
Here is a short blurb about how the DISC (Deep Ice Sheet Coring) drill works put together by the lead driller Kristina Dahnert and Maria Banks, a core handler.
The drill sits on a hydraulically driven tower. The tower rotates the drill into a fully vertical position and a cable winch is used to lower the drill into the borehole (more than 160mm in diameter). Once the drill reaches the ice, cutters in the cutter head of the drill begin to cut a cylindrical core out of the ice (about 122mm in diameter). "Shoes" are in the cutter head too and control the rate of penetration of the drill into the ice. Also in the cutter head are what are called "core dogs." These are used to break and retrieve the ice core once the cutters are finished. The drill is then pulled back up through the borehole and the tower and drill are tilted to a horizontal position. The core barrel, which holds the ice core, is separated from the rest of the drill, and is carried by a gantry crane to a window that separates the drill structure from the core processing area (to maintain the cold temperatures needed in the core processing area). The core barrel is attached to a hole in the window and the ice core is pushed out of the barrel using a rounded stick with a cushioned puck at the end (almost like a chimney sweeper). The core passes through the hole in the window, and into the core processing area where the science technicians are waiting to receive, measure, and do a preliminary analysis of the core.
Thanks to Maria and Kristina for this nice summary!
We have now been coring for about two and half weeks and we are finally getting the hang of drilling, documenting, and packing the ice cores.
