The first media visit of the season – Sky News at Rothera – took place in November and the news reports from this visit will be broadcast on Sky News (Freeview Channel 82) next Monday (7th Dec) and Tuesday (8th Dec) to coincide with the start of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference. The reports will be broadcast every hour from 4am onwards and will also be accessible on the Sky News website:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/UK-News

The first news report (broadcast throughout the day on Monday 7th Dec) contains interviews with Andy Smith, Rob Bingham and Konrad Steffen.

The second news report (broadcast throughout the day on Tuesday 8th Dec) contains interviews with Melissa Langridge and Dave Barnes.

A half an hour news report ‘The Frozen Front Line’ will also be available on Sky Anytime (only available to SKY subscribers) in HD from Monday 7th Dec onwards. This will be broadcast on the Sky News Freeview Channel from 24th December onwards at various times. The report includes interviews with Tamsin Gray, Andy Smith, Rob Bingham, Dave Barnes, Melissa Langridge, Terri Souster and Konrad Steffen.

I will not be featured as I was not on base at the time however, Mel and Terri are part of the marine team down here that I work with.

Last Sunday on a beautiful evening the James Clark Ross came around Adelaide island with two twin otters flying above.

The JCR is the BAS ship which came in with supplies and scientists after a two week science cruise from the Falklands to Rothera. We spent two and half days unloading the cargo from the ship which is basically a years worth of supplies for the base including steel for rebuildling the wharf and new machinery. We perched at the memorials to get a view of the ship docking.

Monday and Tuesday were long days at the wharf using forklifts and then long days and evenings hand carting everything into the correct storage areas. The alcohol for the base took two hours of a human chain to get into the bond upstairs one evening!

SFYC burgee at Fossil Bluff Fuel Depot Lat. 71° 20? S, Long. 68° 17? W

So it is Thursday and I had on of the coolest experiences of my life on monday and haven’t had the time to write about it. I flew a twin otter for 5 hours on monday out of the 9 hours of flight time. That’s right I actually flew the plane 🙂 and I am now in love with flying it is so similar to sailing. At some points we were 200 feet above the ice.. Tomorrow I am going out again if the weather is good enough.

So Henry here are pictures of Aunty Ash flying the plane!

I spent the morning from 7am shifting three container loads of food into the food store most of the boxes were 30kg each so I was glad to get out of it and go flying. We left at 10:30am from Rothera and it was the most beautiful flying day of the season according to my pilot Doug. Fitted to the planes underbody we had a massive SLR camera and were tasked to go take pictures of an Emperor penguin colony the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula and also some pictures of sea ice. The project is based around the finding of penguin colonies using satellite imagery which was announced in June this year.
The very large view finder of the camera under our plane!

We stopped first at Fossil Bluff which is a fuel depot which I will be sent to man sometime this season. Tony who is down there this week is Rothera’s electrician and he joked that the best job he had ever had was one of a fuel attendant! It really is a beautiful place to be.

After refuelling we took off for the other side of the peninsula to the colony which had been found using satellite images. I had been told by the guys who were going to Halley that I would miss out on seeing Emperor Penguins well I didn’t I just saw them from 2000 feet!

We were meant to fly north to get more pictures of sea ice however, the cloud cover came down and we headed back to Fossil Bluff for more fuel and for a cup of tea at the melon hut.

By the time we got back to base it was 8:30pm and time for a late dinner and then I headed up the hill to camp at the caboose to finish off an amazing day down south!

One last picture for Henry – the big plane – Dash 7 in the hanger.

BAS Press Release…

A new study of Antarctica’s past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present day. The findings, reported this week by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Open University and University of Bristol in the journal Nature could help us understand more about rapid Antarctic climate changes.

Previous analysis of ice cores has shown that the climate consists of ice ages and warmer interglacial periods roughly every 100,000 years. This new investigation shows temperature ‘spikes’ within some of the interglacial periods over the last 340,000 years. This suggests Antarctic temperature shows a high level of sensitivity to greenhouse gases at levels similar to those found today.

Lead author Louise Sime of British Antarctic Survey said,

“We didn’t expect to see such warm temperatures, and we don’t yet know in detail what caused them. But they indicate that Antarctica’s climate may have undergone rapid shifts during past periods of high CO2.”

During the last warm period, about 125,000 years ago, sea level was around 5 metres higher than today. Ice core scientist Eric Wolff of British Antarctic Survey is a world-leading expert on past climate. He said,

“If we can pin down how much warmer temperatures were in Antarctica and Greenland at this time, then we can test predictions of how melting of the large ice sheets may contribute to sea level rise.”

ENDS
Notes for editors:
Evidence for warmer interglacials in East Antarctic ice cores by Louise C. Sime, Eric W. Wolff, Kevin I. C. Oliver and Julia C. Tindall is published online this week in the journal Nature.

Ice cores are unique climate records, allowing scientists to investigate climate changes over hundreds of thousands of years. The Earth’s oldest ice is found in East Antarctica. The three oldest existing ice cores were drilled at Dome C, Dome F and Vostock. The longest ice core — at 3,650 metres — comes from Vostock, but the oldest ice core, drilled by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) team, contains a climate record stretching back 800,000 years. Analysis of the ice cores has revolutionized our understanding of how Antarctic climate has varied in the past. Information from ice cores is vital for testing and improving the computer models used to predict future climate.

Interglacials recur roughly every 100,000 years between ice ages. The present warm period began around 10,000 years ago and has been relatively stable.

Direct sea level measurements based upon coastal sedimentary deposits and tropical coral sequences have established that global sea level was higher than present during the last interglacial (~125,000 years ago) by approximately 4 to 6 m. This indicates that the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets were smaller than during the present day.

The authors analysed 340,000 years of oxygen and hydrogen isotope data from three ice core sites across East Antarctica, alongside isotope-enabled general circulation model results.

View from the caboose at 1am!

Tomorrow the JCR comes in this is the ship that brings relief (stores) to the base. The base last had stores brought in 12 months ago so we are living off the winter stuff. As relief starts on a sunday we had saturday morning off work. I was hoping to have saturday afternoon off as well so I could have a full day climbing peaks. However, we had training on the dive chamber to enjoy instead. I guess I do have to work at some point!

Last night after a long day of boatshed clearing and coxing a dive in south cove we had a good dinner and packed up overnight kit, ski kit and climbing gear into the box sled and Claire, Adam, Clive and I headed for the caboose up at Vals. We were up there by 8:30pm and skied till 11pm at Vals before heading into the warm caboose for some banjo playing and talking till 1am!

We rose at 7am this morning and took the skidoo to the base of the Stork range and roped up for glacier travel. It was a hard slog uphill and by 11:00am we were standing on the summit of my first peak conquered in Antarctica! Wow the view was amazing… We could see Alexander island in the distance 100miles away the air is so clear down here. We were using our new mountaineering skills and were roped together so four people in a row with quite a distance between.

You can’t be complacent about travelling across glacier regions it really isn’t a stroll in the park. We got to the top and could see Rothera in the distance and as far as the eye could see the moutain ranges of the Antarctic peninsula. You can sit in the silence of the wilderness and hear artillery fire which is the ice shifting and icebergs calving. The Sheldon Glacier was really heavily crevassed beneath us miles away and the ice cliffs which are so large from the boats were reflecting on the water.

We followed our tracks back down making sure to stay in the track we had sucessfully come up. However, Adam did find a crevasse and went through the snow bridge Claire, myself and Clive our trusty mountaineer braced ourselves and pulled him out. He was trying to find a wall to get his campons into but swinging his feet around found nothing so the crevasse was quite large. After we got him out he carefully picked us a new route. I think he was a little shaken it just drives home the fact that you have to stay properly roped to someone like BAS teaches us.

None of us can believe we get paid to live and work in such an amazing place. We are all very lucky people down here at Rothera. Hope you have a great Saturday night. I am going to relax maybe run around the runway or go to the climbing wall (inside). Tomorrow the ships ETA is midday so it will be full on crazy for 3 days of relief.

My brother told me that my three year old nephew was not interested in pictures of glaciers and icebergs and wanted pictures of machinery and animals so this post is for him. In a few days I will post some more for him of all the airplanes as he specifically requested a picture of the big planes! For now though these are pictures of the toys that Aunty Ash plays with everyday!

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US I really did miss my turkey dinner today – hope you all have a relaxing time with your family.

Today Kevin needed to go back to Leonie for some more plant sampling. It was the clearest day we have had on the water since I got here beautifully flat calm so that the mountains reflected perfectly on the water.

While Kevin and Clive were on Leonie we went out looking for the pinnacles for the dive team. Unfortunately as there was a leopard seal cruising the shallows we had to call off the dive. We drifted through the iceburgs with the engines off hearing them cracking and groaning.

While waiting for the guys to finish we anchored up to the snow and checked out the depot removing some of the old two stroke fuel that was too old to be used and also inventoried it so that we can put some more stuff out there that will be useful.

Lots of penguins around base today and yesterday they are very cute some of them were on the runway. So you here over the VHF which we have to all carry with us the air unit guys trying to remove animals so they don’t get squished.

11:15pm – Just got in from Marine Search and Rescue I had to have the boat at the wharf as we had a twin otter coming into land in a 30 knot crosswind with explosives onboard. We have to run on radio silence when there are explosives on a plane as there is a very slight possibility that they will detonate when a radio is used.


Doug was the pilot he is an ex tornado pilot and very experienced at running the twin otters this is his third season down here. He aborted his first landing and came is on the second. BAS really does hire people who are good at their job it was a stunning amount of skill to witness.

I went out diving in the afternoon with Terri to change out some loggers (science project) at Cheshire. It was only a 20 minute dive the sealife was amazing lots of sea cucumbers, fans, sea stars, brachioalpods. Every pieces of space is covered in flora and fauna. My hands were a lot warmer this dive however, I did manage to lose one of the fins which upset the diving officer a tad and made me feel like a little bit of a fool.

Clive, Claire and I took the skidoos up to Vals to go skiing and did a few hours of runs up and down the little slope. After all the snow yesterday there was a foot or so of powder. Claire had done a week of skiing in France and was pretty good the biggest problem was the light was really flat. The light on the mountain range on the peninsula was beautiful across the water and the light reflected pink on the icebergs. Yet another late night there really not enough hours in the day here.

After a long day of boating it was time to go crevassing at the top of the ramp. There is a hole the size of a person that you abseil into at the bottom – 40 feet or so down there is a ice tunnel system. We were wearing hardhats, mountaineering boots, carrying our ice axes and wearing crampons. The light shone through the snow creating blue light and the icicles (ice sculptures) were stunning. There were a few places to crawl through and the crampon techniques we learnt were very useful.

Today was my first day of real work and it included a check out dive off the wharf. It was a very long but fun day at work.

Starting at 8am I moved the crane down to the wharf and set it up then moved the workboat alongside it ready to take a scientist out to one of the islands. Then I moved the dive boat into position outside the dive stores with the tractor. We loaded the workboat with the scientist his field assistant (Clive) and all the necessary safety gear including P-rolls, manfood, iridium phone, extra clothing etc. just in case the pack ice closed in with the change of weather during the day and we couldn’t get back to them. We also loaded on Pete and his video camera and still camera.

After dropping the two off at Leonie Island we headed over to the Sheldon Glacier to do some filming stopping along the way to check out the wildlife – arctic terns, crabeater seals, shags, snow petrals, Adelie penguins were all on show! The change in wind direction has driven all the iceburgs and brash ice into Ryder Bay so it is quite slow going moving through the water which is at some points like slurpee.

We got back late for lunch so after stuffing my face quickly I headed down to the dive store to get ready for my check dive. It was a short dive of only 17 minutes as we had to get the scientists out for a dive in the islands in the afternoon. There was quite a bit of sealife lots more than I was expecting and according to my buddy it was in fact denude in comparison to the other dive sites! My fingers within a few minutes of getting in the water were extremely painful from the cold shock it was like daggers in my hands not comfortable at all. The other divers assure me that I will get use to it! It was snowing very slightly when we got out of the water.

After a quick change from my drysuit to my boat immersion suit we were back on the water with the dive team to take over to Troval which is a small island. The team of David and Terri were trying to create a database of Antarctic species and bring back specimens they didn’t know in test tubes. By the time we had packed up it was 7:15 and we were 45 minutes late for dinner.

Dave Barnes the scientist we took diving did the monday night science talk on life beneath the sea in Antarctica it was all very interesting stuff. Which I will write about at some point!

It was also the day that I decided not to take up BAS’s offer of staying for 18 months. I was asked two weeks ago if I would extend my contract till April 2011 however, despite having a great time down here I have committments to my customers and family back and home so decline the offer. That is not to say that I will not be offered the job next year for 18 months…