By Ludovic Brucker The only wildlife we saw during our three-week traverse was three snow petrels and one Antarctic petrel. I still haven’t decided if they were sort of a Christmas gift, or the announcement of a storm! The birds visited us when we were at camp 5,430 km (265 mi) inland. I was surprised […]
Picking Up the Snow Cores from the Field
By Ludovic Brucker Once the traverse was over and we had drilled nine snow cores (with a combined length of 156 meters, or 512 ft), the next step was flying to each of our drilling sites and bringing the cores to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) station to store them before they are shipped […]
Asteroid 433 Eros Approaches Earth
Credit: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office/Rhiannon Blaauw Asteroid 433 Eros made a close approach to Earth the morning of January 31st coming within 0.17 AU (15 million miles) of our planet. In this set of images taken that morning, the bright moving dot near the center of the field is the 21 mile long Eros. Somewhere on …
NASA All Sky Fireball Network Watches the Skies
A meteor streaks across the skies above Huntsville, Ala. (NASA) The night sky is constantly changing. The Earth rotates and revolves about the sun, creating a backdrop of stars that is always in motion. The moon grows large in the sky, and then smaller again, in a seemingly endless cycle. Now and then, brilliant streaks …
News Roundup: A Less Hardy Hardiness Map, Arctic Freshening, and More
A Less Hardy Hardiness Map The USDA has unveiled a new version of its plant hardiness map, which gardeners use to gauge which plants will survive in which climate zone. (Check your nearest seed packet.) In the newest iteration, many zones have shifted northward because winters aren’t as cold as they were 22 years ago […]
Doing Science in a Snowpit
By Ludovic Brucker The main objective of deep field traverses like ours is to make in-situ measurements and collect samples, which obviously cannot be done from air or space. So, during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 SEAT field seasons, we have been taking in-situ snow and radar measurements. We typically had two different types of days […]
Camp Life
By Michelle Koutnik Each of our six different camping sites consisted of one cook tent, four sleeping tents, and a bathroom area (more on that later). The cook tent was a “Scott” tent, which is an enduring style and named for the polar explorer Robert Scott. It was a tight space for five people but […]
Radar days on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
By Clement Miege Hi there! After more than three weeks spent in the field, our team is very happy to be finally back, with many memories of the traverse. This year has been a very intense experience and I would like to tell you a little more about this expedition. I will focus on the […]
GCPEx: GPM Cold-season Precipitation Experiment
The GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) will be conducted in cooperation with Environment Canada in Ontario, Canada from January 17th to February 29th, 2012. The overarching goal of GCPEx is to characterize the ability of multi-frequency active and passive microwave sensors to detect and estimate falling snow through the collection of microphysical […]
Synopsis of the Traverse
By Michelle Koutnik Now for a recap of our adventure! We arrived in Christchurch on November 19 and returned there on January 5. We spent 17 days in McMurdo before leaving to Byrd camp on December 7. It took only a few days to prepare for the traverse and we left Byrd camp on December […]