Update 6: And so the rush begins

[Paul Summers]

Hello All!

A fun mid-week update for me here as Danny and I have finished up our local radar work, and packed it all up. This means we have a bit of breathing room today which is nice. In other exciting news, the flight to put in the WAIS Divide camp did fly Monday, which is a huge relief. There are a number of more flights scheduled this week, possibly 2 tomorrow, 1 Saturday, and then 3 more next week. When it rains it pours with flights here, or so we all hope! Peak summer should correspond to better weather here, but it's all relative and 7+ day long storms are not unheard of even in January, but we're keeping our fingers crossed for blue skies.

I figured I take some time this week to explain what our actual radar experiment looks like, show some fun photos of us packing our stuff up, and I need to showcase Pete a little more this update as I forgot to include any update on him last time, much to his (and yours I'm sure) disappointment. 

On Monday Danny, I, and Pete all suited up to collect some more testing radar data out on the ice shelf. Pete doesn't usually come out, but as I mentioned his snubbing from the last email had him feeling down, so this was meant as a bit of a moral trip for him. To get ourselves and our equipment out, we use snowmobiles and the big red siglin sleds pictured here.

They have hooks and string for lashing everything down, which is definitely needed as the ride over snow blown drifts can be rather bumpy. We get quite practiced at tying trucker's hitches in gloves doing work here, as we lash everything down, everytime we go out. Everything gets pretty covered with snow as it follows behind the snowmobile track, an unfortunate design flaw, but thankfully the snow is mostly dry and all our stuff is weatherproofed (mostly). You can see the major components of our system like the big white antenna again and the massive 60+ pound car battery that powers our amplifier in the sleds. Also pictured is our personal gear in duffle bags, and the more sensitive colorful radar receiver and transmitter pelican cases are packed inside the massive black pelican case. It's a bit of an inception-style packing scheme to put pelican cases inside even bigger pelican cases, but it is an effective way to keep sensitive electronics alive down here. The largest red bag with the yellow tag is the survival bags I discussed in a previous update, and could keep 2 people alive for around 2 days if an unexpected storm rolled in. 

After getting everything all tied down, we perform a radio checkout with the central dispatcher in town. Every trip out of town is tracked and timed, and a search and rescue team is mobilized the minute you are overdue. It's really important to check in when you're back, and quite embarrassing when the search and rescue team finds you at dinner, but it has happened before (thankfully not to me!). Our commute here to our field site is about an hour, and the ride is often chilly so we usually start the day off with a coffee break to warm up and get some food in us. 

Pete was very excited about this, and so far thought field work was a breeze since it was mostly snacking. The galley had made gluten free almond cookies, so I picked up a bowl of them which was very yummy. I did return the bowl, thanks for asking. Dishware has a bad habit of walking off here in McMurdo, and with replacements so hard to come by, the Galley is constantly posting signs asking for us to bring mugs/bowls/cups back to the galley. As you can see, the weather was less good that day, but not bad by any stretch. This low overcast cloud deck is fairly common, especially for Thwaites Glacier where we are going. The light becomes VERY flat, and the sky and snow become at times impossible to differentiate. I have called this "being in a ping pong ball" and is different from the white outs you may have experienced in a winter storm in that sometimes here it can actually be very clear and you can see for miles, but when there is nothing to see this can be a very odd effect. 

Back to work, we attach our antenna to the transmitter and receivers, always little metal cable attachments that are tricky to get off with gloves, and stick to snow when you accidentally drop them, and then cold when you use your bare hands. But we've worked out a system for getting them plugged in pretty fast, and we use liner gloves that are just thin enough to work with while still providing some warmth. The yellow box here is called a PRES (or an ApRES if it operates autonomously) which you can read about here if you're curious (https://www.bas.ac.uk/polar-operations/sites-and-facilities/facility/phase-sensitive-radar-apres/). The system mostly is operated by an on/off button, but there also is a computer interface we use for adjusting parameters when doing testing like we did this day. It operates on a small motorcycle lead-acid battery (one of the many we have here). This system sends out a chirp of radar frequency (about .5-1 second long), and then listens for the echo back. It performs some processing internally to compute exactly how far away the reflecting object is, to centimeter precision, as well as the brightness of the object. This combined with the orientation of the antenna (which picks a particular polarization of the radar chirp) tells us the main characteristics of the ice, the geometry of the bed, and some insight into what the bed is bed out of. The "bed" here is the bottom of the ice and whatever it is sitting on, which here is sea water and at Thwaites will be either bedrock or loose sediments called till. Pete was excited to help out here, but between his wings/flippers, which are not very dexterous, and his nearsightedness (penguins actually have great eyesight in and out of water which is very impressive! https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/how-do-penguins-see-clearly-underwater) he was more of an aid to morale than an aid in fieldwork. 

Once we get the system all set up, this radar survey technique, called a common midpoint survey (CMP) has us collect data for about 15-30 minutes a time at various locations, before moving a short distance and repeating Both Danny and I each have 1 set of either the transmit or receive antennas, and we have a very long fiber optic cable connecting them (1km here, up to 8km at Thwaites Glacier). This long cable is very fragile unfortunately, but very lightweight and transmits the signal with very little loss. This is the same kind of fiber that gets you super fast internet at home. The core is actually made of glass and the signal is a pulsing laser, which is very cool, but explains why it is so fragile. During the 15-30 minutes of collection, we mostly just hang out and try to stay warm sitting on the snowmobile (off the snow is warmer). We can't drive the snowmobiles, or talk on the radio too much, as that produces interference with the radar. I mostly listen to podcasts or do dances if I'm cold. On warm days, I've been known to fall asleep which is not ideal as it panicked Danny a bit as I wasn't responding to my radio. Oops. 

After we finished up our field work, a little light storm came through and deposited some fluffy white snow which made town very pretty! Also very slippery, so I've been walking more carefully. Snow here usually sublimates away ('evaporating' from solid to gas, skipping the water phase) as it is so dry and cold. This reduces the mud that gets generated, but doesn't entirely minimize it. I was responsible for cleaning up the ground floor of our dorm the day of the storm, so maybe I was just paying extra attention to the mud being tracked in. I still enjoyed the fresh snow though.

With our radar testing done, it was time to pack everything up and put it into the cargo system. I didn't catch the total weight of our overall science cargo, but the entire team has over 20,000 pounds of equipment including tents, food, science equipment, fuel and even some snowmobiles being flown out this year (like Mo Joe!). We had to move it all from our science lab to the cargo yard up the hill, which we got to do in the open air Mule truck. The open cab felt particularly open that day as the snow blew into the seating area! Pictured here is Solymar, a member of our seismic team from El Paso. The other = photo is our final batch of science cargo, which is mostly the radar equipment. You can see the plastic sided boxes, a favorite of scientists for sensitive equipment, and the thick tri-wall cardboard boxes, a favorite for everything else. Science Cargo has some fun interior decorations as well so I'm glad I got a photo of that!

In sporting news, Whopper Jr has made it to the semifinals! All the pups have new photos, and I think he is fatter than ever, but we'll have to see how the people vote. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for him as Fatty Whompus has a strong opening start when I checked this morning. 

A final logistical update, with the WAIS Divide Camp (WSD for short) being put in, the rapid plan for future flights has me going to WSD as soon as Monday here (your Sunday). I have now activated my Garmin InReach which you can see messages I post there at the link below. You can also send me messages there! This system can only send 160 characters at a time, so please keep the messages short :) I can also reply to you there, but my side receives messages about once an hour, so live back and forths are not possible to set expectations. You can see the locations of McMurdo, WSD Camp, and T1 (our camp from 2 years ago). I'll work on adding T2, our camp for this year.  

share.garmin.com/somonesummers

I will try to send at least one more email before I head out, but otherwise I will update how things are going to the InReach page (or MapShare as they call it) every few days.

If I don't email again, Happy Holidays to you all! 

I am excited to see you all in the new year and share all my updates from the time away!

Sending my best,

Paul