27 October 2017 Friends in Low (Temperature) Places

As I alluded to in the previous blog entry, my expedition to Antarctica as a PolarTREC teacher is not a solo effort. In fact, the entire premise of PolarTREC is to partner teachers with polar researchers for real world engagement of scientific investigations in the field. I was chosen by Carol Costanza and the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center research team at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as part of the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) project.

An AWS unit, as shown in the photo below, is a self-contained assembly of sensor systems designed to measure the following meteorological variables:

Temperature - Platinum resistance thermometers offer the ability to measure the range of temperatures experienced in the Antarctic (+15 °C to -85 °C) or (59 °F to -121 °F);

Atmospheric Pressure - measured over a range of 0 to 1100 hPa;

Wind speed & direction are observed using aerovanes which are instruments capable of measuring winds that range from calm/light winds to sustained hurricane strength;

Relative Humidity is difficult to measure as they lose accuracy at extremely cold temperatures but are used in an increasing number of systems, particularly in areas with significant humidity such as coastal regions;

Snow temperature is measured at multiple levels using Acoustic Depth Gauges; and,

Temperature difference between the top of the AWS to about a half meter from the surface is measured on select systems.

Weather data from the sensors within an Automatic Weather Station is received by an Argos–certified transceiver, as shown below, which is housed on an NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) synchronous, polar-orbiting satellite. Argos is a company that manufactures satellites designed for collection of scientific data on a global level. The data is then transmitted from the satellite to McMurdo Station (Antarctica), NOAA facilities in Virginia and Alaska, and to Antarctic Meteorological Research Center (Wisconsin) for analysis.

AWS units are positioned across Antarctica as shown in the map below with the units managed by the University of Wisconsin at Madison depicted by the red triangles. This year, the University of Wisconsin at Madison has 57 operating/installed AWS. Overall, there are a total of 161 active AWS units in Antarctica operated by approximately 17 nations.

Scientists at the AMRC make regularly scheduled annual visits to Antarctica to perform maintenance and repairs as needed to a preselected number of AWS units. I will be speaking to the science of weather and climate as it related to data collected from AWS units as well as my field experiences working with AWS units in future blog entries as well as during my PolarConnect presentation.

Back to the topic of this blog entry, just who are these scientists from the AMRC who are involved in the AWS project and who I will be working with through the duration of my expedition? I would now like to take this opportunity to introduce you to these scientists:

Carol Costanza

Position: Associate Instrument Technologist

How long have you been working in Antarctic MeteorologyMeteorology is the study of the atmosphere, weather and weather conditions.? 5 years.

Describe your research interests/responsibilities:

My responsibilities involve data management of Antarctic meteorological datasets. I also have worked on a research project to study the meteorological surface climatology of the Ross Ice Shelf. With the rest of my time, I help with data requests, outreach opportunities, logistics, reporting, and planning. Finally, I spend 5 to 7 weeks in Antarctica every year to service Automatic Weather Stations (AWS). While in Antarctica, I prepare instrumentation and travel to remote AWS locations.

What interests you about your work in Antarctica?

I'm interested in understanding a part of the world that is not well known. I also enjoy the community of researchers who study in Antarctica and the community of those living in McMurdo, Antarctica. Finally, I enjoy finding/organizing new datasets for other researchers to use to answer their meteorological questions.

What is one (or two) interesting story(ies) about your time on the ice in Antarctica?

One interesting story in Antarctica was in January 2015 when I was with Dave (Mikolajczyk) at Nico AWS near the South Pole. The weather was nice and clear when we arrived, but after about 4 hours at the site we experienced white out conditions, and it was starting to snow. Our pilot started to build a runway with snow piles, and we needed to get out quickly otherwise we might have needed to camp in the -20 °F temperatures. We left Nico AWS in time and arrived safely back to South Pole station. One other story was in December 2014 when we spent almost 7 hours on the Ross Ice Shelf at Laurie II AWS with just our survival bags. We didn't need to rush for the pilots, and we were able add 14 feet of tower successfully! The weather was sunny and not too cold, so the 7 hours didn't seem too bad at all.

Dr. Matthew Lazzara

Position: Associate Scientist at UW-Madison & Faculty at Madison College. Principal Investigator of the US Antarctic Automatic Weather Station Program. (In short, I’m a meteorologist)

How long have you been working in Antarctic MeteorologyMeteorology is the study of the atmosphere, weather and weather conditions.? 24 years

Describe your research interests/responsibilities:

My research interests are in capturing observations of Antarctica’s weather and climate – and in particular observing where people aren’t! Hence, I enjoy trying to figure why the atmosphere behaves the way it does in the Antarctica (and over the adjacent Southern Ocean too). My responsibilities as Principal Investigator (PI) is to develop the research questions to address with input from my team, create and write the proposals to pursue these research questions that fund my team’s work, oversee and direct the research, enable my team to do the research (and include their ideas in the work we do), assist in the publications of the results of the science, and do all of the required reporting and paperwork federal grants require. This work also includes educational outreach to the community, and presentation of results at science conferences.

What interests you about your work in Antarctica?

What I find interesting is the intersection of the people we collaborate with – worldwide - along with the discoveries we find and the wonderful data we collect and work with – all centered on a very special and unique place – Antarctica!

What is one (or two) interesting story(ies) about your time on the ice in Antarctica?

One story I enjoy telling is about my visit to Windless Bight AWS – a spot where the wind is often calm. It is a place that you are away from the main US ad New Zealand stations, and when you and others there stop moving, it is super quiet. So quiet that the only sound you might notice is your heart beat!

Another story I enjoy is how I got to visit South Pole Station. I was supposed to only visit during the day (in on the first flight of the day, and return to McMurdo Station on the last flight of the day). However, the weather got bad back at McMurdo, so I had to stay the night! I enjoyed a chance to experience South Pole for a whole 24-hour period! While there, I got to experience “clear sky” or diamond dust precipitation. It is a precipitation that doesn’t require a cloud – and looks like the sky is clear with glitter in it!

Dave Mikolajczyk

Position: Instrument Technologist

How long have you been working in Antarctic MeteorologyMeteorology is the study of the atmosphere, weather and weather conditions.? 7 years.

Describe your research interests/responsibilities:

One of my main responsibilities is quality-controlling the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) data from our UW-Madison AWS network on a monthly basis. I also work with the programming and processing of Antarctic satellite composite imagery. I am currently working on a research project investigating rapid warming observed by our AWS in austral winter (June, July, and August), including any mesoscale or synoptic influences of such events. I help with the building and testing of instrumentation, done here at UW-Madison, for AWS to be installed in Antarctica. I've been to Antarctica 5 times to help install and repair our AWS network. I also help with educational tours and public outreach events, talking about our group, our research, and deploying to Antarctica.

What interests you about your work in Antarctica?

It's fascinating to see data that represents (and validates) the extreme environment of Antarctica. Since I quality control all of our AWS data, I get to see how cold temperatures can get in winter in East Antarctica (often colder than -100 F) and how windy some of our AWS get (90 - 110 mph), and I get to see this on almost a daily basis! Since we live here in the Northern Hemisphere and far away from Antarctica, it's not often that we hear about Antarctic weather and climate. It is fun to learn about such a lesser-known but extreme environment. It's icing on the cake that we get to deploy to Antarctica every year to actually experience the extreme environment.

What is one (or two) interesting story(ies) about your time on the ice in Antarctica?

I'm writing this after Carol sent her responses, so I will just second her story about being at Nico AWS near the South Pole. That was very intense! Another exciting weather experience I had was in November 2015 when my field team member, Mark, and I took a helicopter flight to service Linda AWS, near McMurdo. It was already fairly windy when we landed (~20 mph), and there was some blowing snow. The temperature was ~10 F. We were planning to spend a couple hours at the sight to do our work, so the helicopter left to go do some other work around McMurdo before returning to pick us up. Before he left, I wanted to make sure our hand-held radios were able to connect back to McMurdo in case we needed to get picked up sooner. It was difficult to get a good connection (because we needed to use some repeater sites to reach McMurdo) but finally I did. And I was glad I verified that, because once the helicopter left, winds started increasing. After about a half hour, winds had increased to a sustained 30 mph, creating a ground blizzard. We couldn't see any land features on the horizon and couldn't see too far in front of us. Conditions were much too cold and windy to continue working, so I radioed in to McMurdo requesting to be picked up. We had to wait for over an hour until we were picked up, and in the meantime we built a wind wall with our equipment to sit behind, protecting us from the harshest winds. It was very cold, and given the low visibility on the ground I was worried we would have to camp there. Luckily, since it was only a "ground blizzard" the helicopter pilot could spot us from above and make a safe landing to take us back to McMurdo.

I am glad that you got to hear from my friends! Although I have published this photo before in a previous blog entry, below is a photo of us at our first meeting in Boulder, Colorado for the 12th Annual Workshop on Antarctic MeteorologyMeteorology is the study of the atmosphere, weather and weather conditions. & ClimateThe average weather over a particular region of the Earth. Climate originates in recurring weather phenomenon that result from specific types of atmospheric circulation. in June.

Coming Up Next: Polar research is serious business with a lot of things to do. But there is always time for games. In the next blog, I will speak about the games that polar researchers play.