Science Post: Riometers, Photometers, Magnetometers, and SuperDARN

The broadband riometer array at Arrival Heights

So, last time I said that I'd start talking about some of the science I look after here at McMurdo. A-111 is a combined project involving, a riometer array, photometers, and a magnetometer. The riometer and photometer systems help study the process of energy transfer from the solar winds to the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere at high magnetic latitudes. The riometer array picks up galactic radio noise, which is assumed to be constant at any point in the celestial sphere. These radio signals are absorbed by ionized air, so fluctuations in signal intensity signal changes in the ionization level. These changes can be cause by solar UV and EUV radiation, galactic cosmic rays, solar flare protons, or aurora-associated energetic electrons. The data is process to isolate effects due to energetic particles. The photometers measure photo-emissions at two auroral wavelengths for correlation with the riometer data. Lastly, the magnetometer is used to study hydromagnetic wave phenomena in the magnetosphere. So, all of this is a long way of saying that this project studies aurora.

Checking the signal cables out to the riometer array

My responsibilities for this project include daily and monthly checks on equipment. Every day I check on the computer read-outs, to make sure that data is still being collected and transmitted off continent. Earlier this season, one of the computers failed which made for an exciting couple of weeks. However, Gil and Bob, two of the grantees on the project came down last week, bringing with them a replacement computer, and a brand new one. The new one is going to run in parallel with the other computers in the system, and if all goes well, it will completely replace the others next year when the group comes back. At the beginning of each month I also do a walking inspection of the signal cables and the riometer array up at Arrival Heights. And since I am "off station" I get to bring a buddy, or buddies, with me for safety and extra hands and eyes. We check the cables for wear, patching them with electrical tape if need be,  and check the riometer array for alignment, missing antenna arms, and damaged anchor/stabilization lines. It is a nice hike in good weather, and makes me pretty popular with people who want to get off station for a couple of hours.

The imaging riometer antenna.

One of the other projects I support is the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, or SuperDARN for short. The McMurdo SuperDARN is part of a network of 32  radar systems looking into the polar regions of the Earth. The radars measure the position and velocity of plasma irregularities in Earth's ionosphere. The movement of these irregularities responds to energy coupled into the auroral regions from the solar wind and magnetosphere. This means that SuperDARN provides information regarding the Earth's interaction with the space environment.

In the SuperDARN antenna field

Every week I do a drive by of the antenna field, checking to see that the antennae are still standing and that the anchor lines are still attached. If we ever get big storms, I'll walk the field to do a closer inspection, which I did at the end of last month, when we had our one Condition 2 day so far this summer. Everything was still in good shape.

Melt pools, now with actual liquid

 Outside of science a lot has been happening. We celebrated Thanksgiving almost a week early, at the the food was great. We also got a two day weekend for the occasion, which is always exciting. There were a number of activities to over the weekend, including a Turkey Trot 5K out to Scott Base and back. That included an uphill almost the entire first half and 15 knot winds blowing in the wrong direction on the way out, and in sort of the right direction for the way back in. The weather has gotten really nice. We hit 35F earlier this week, which isn't unusual for this time of year, but temperatures in the 20s are more normal. With the warmer temperatures, we've also officially entered mud season. The roads are kind of a mess in places, and we have little rivers running all over the place. On my last pressure ridge trip, we saw four seals, three of them up close.

A pregnant seal right off the flag line.

One day last week, after finishing up soccer, we came outside to be treated to a pretty impressive display of fata morgana, which is a type of superior mirage.

Fata morgana across the Sound.

From what I've heard, this phenomenon cause a lot of trouble to the early explorers of Antarctica. They would come outside one day to see these huge cliffs across the way, and decide they wanted nothing to do with that. Then they'd come back a while later and the cliffs would be gone. The name itself is derived from the Latin for fairy and from Morgan le Fey, the sorceress from Arthurian legend. It's pretty cool.
And I got a package from home, which is always very exciting.

The View From Arrival Heights, Warm Weather, and other Miscellanea

A selfie up at Arrival Heights. On a clear day, you'd be able to see Mt. Erebus behind 2nd Crater.

 So, McMurdo  has changed a lot since I got here a month and a half ago. We are now at about 900 people, which is about as big as it’ll get. We still have more people coming in, but field camps are opening up, so a lot of the science groups will be heading out as soon as the helo’s are available.
I’m still waiting to find out if I’ll be getting a roommate. Since there are a bunch of people no longer coming down due to the shut-down and start-up, there is room in the upper-case dorm (like the one I’m in) and the administration has opened those dorms up to folks with fewer ice days (It is going from 131 days on ice, down to 127 days). The upper case dorms have bigger rooms, with a bathroom shared between 4 people, rather than a floor of people. I know a couple of people who were notified that they could move if they wanted to. They decided not to, since they are settled in to their room and they’ve actually got a great view, and the dorm they are in is empty enough that they actually have the bathroom to themselves, at least for now. So, it is possible that other people will feel the same way, and I’ll be able to procrastinate moving my stuff to one side of my room for a while longer.

I posted a couple of pictures on Facebook of my Halloween costume, but I thought I put a few up here for those that didn’t see them. I went as Tony Stark, which meant I could dress the way I normally do, and just added a home-made “arc reactor”, which consisted of recycled LEDs and computer part.

A work in progress. This is before I mounted the cover on it.

Finished product. I mounted the whole thing on the chest strap for my HR monitor, and stuck the battery in my pocket.

The weather has gotten a lot warmer in the last week. Warm in this case means that it has been in the teens and low twenties. And the wind has been low, too. All this means is that I’ve been able to stop wearing my big jacket, and have been running around in my Vakava jacket, or a sweatshirt, and maybe, maybe a hat. The warm weather has also started one of three McMurdo seasons: the slush/mud season. There have been ankle deep puddles popping up all over the place, especially around high traffic areas, which can make getting to meals a challenge. From what I hear, it will only get worse, up to some building requiring that you take your boots off before coming inside. Once the mud season ends, which is when the temperature starts to drop again and things freeze, we get dust season. Then sometime around last sunset we’ll get into cold/snow season, which will last throughout the austral winter and into winfly next spring.

Mt. Erebus from Arrival Heights. There is a little orthographic uplift happening, which is what causes the layers of clouds.

I think that I’ve said it before, but Arrival Heights, where a bunch of my projects live, has probably one of the best views of Erebus and McMurdo Sound on station. And I’ve got pictures to prove it. I keep meaning to bring my wide-angle lens up to take in the full view from the roof, but that hasn’t happened yet. I will post that when I finally get around to taking it.

Looking out towards McMurdo Sound

Along with the instruments in the Arrival Heights building, I’ve also got antennae out away from the building, and up in Second Crater (about a 1mi hike from Arrival Heights). About once a month I hike out to these, to check cables, realign antenna and just see what kind of shape things are in. Since it is technically away from station, I am supposed to bring a buddy along, for safety. So, at the beginning of the month Erin and Debb joined me to do just that.

Mt. Erebus from 2nd Crater

Erin and Debb checking out one of the anchors for the VLF antenna

Erin with the Royal Society Range in the background

Next time I’ll start talking about some of the different projects I’m working on. And I will leave you with this, the terror of McMurdo:

The Skua, a scourge upon those who carry their food outdoors.

Pressure Ridges

The pressure ridges with Castle Rock and Mt. Erebus in the background

I was able to get out to the pressure ridges during my first two weeks in McMurdo. I liked them so much that when the Rec department started looking for volunteers to lead pressure ridge tours, I signed up right away. Alister, the guide from my first tour, also ran the training for the volunteer guides. There were 11 of us in my class, and another 10 who got trained in later. We started with about an hour in the classroom, about the pressure ridges and some of the dangers we should be in the look out for when we take groups out.

The parking meter for Americans at Scott Base

So, what are the pressure ridges? In a lot of ways they are very similar to the mountain ranges that are created when plate tectonics shift. They are formed when the ice shelf (glacial ice, in this case the McMurdo Ice Shelf) collides with the sea ice that forms along the shore. The glacial ice begins to crush the much thinner sea ice, which causes ripples and waves to form in the ice.

A crude drawing of the pressure ridges. 

Eventually these waves buckle and crack. If the waves crack on the top portion, or crest, then entire slabs of ice can rise from the surface.

Some interesting ripples on the underside of an ice slab

If the bottom portion, or trough, cracks, it forms a “melt pool”. Melt pool is a misnomer, since, at least at this point in the season, nothing is melting; it’s just sea water flowing through the crack in the ice to form a pool.

Melt pool surrounded by ridges

And another view

Many times, the Wendell seals, who live on fast ice (as opposed to the Crab Eaters and Leopard seals, who live out in the pack ice) will use the cracks as breath holes, rather than having to make their own with their teeth. Seems like a good plan to me. Once a male seal takes over one of these holes, they will defend it from other males, since who ever controls the hole, controls the females in the area. Right now the seals are in pupping season, so in another month or two we should have seal pups hanging out on the ice.

A Busy Couple of Weeks

Sunset on the Pressure Ridges

Well, we survived the government shutdown. While a lot of folks were told they would be going home, only a few made it off the ice before the government turned back on. And now the station is growing. We started the week with a little more than 300 people on station. At this point we're at 527, and by the end of the week we'll be up above 800. And Crary (the science building) isn't an echoing chasm anymore. We've had a couple of science groups make it back down and there will be a lot more coming down in the next couple of weeks, including a group connected with one of my projects, CTBT. I'm looking forward to them coming down, since they've got a remote site about 20 miles off station that I might get to tag along to.
Between the preparations for  shutting things down, and then turning things back on, the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy. For a while it looked like I'd be the only person staying on in Crary, which would have added a bunch of duties to my regular schedule. As it is, I've picked up a couple of things while we wait for the rest of the lab staff to get back on the ice. The last couple of Sundays I've lead a Crary tour for folks from town who are interested in what exactly they are here to support. Unfortunately, the main attraction at Crary, our touch tank and aquarium tanks, are waiting on research groups to arrive and stock them with fish, sponges, urchins, jellyfish, and maybe an octopus or two.
At the beginning of last week, I said goodbye to Liz, the research associate I am taking over for. After a year down here, she was more than ready to get off the ice. She is planning on spending most of next year traveling and then coming back either to McMurdo or Palmer for another season.

Liz and me up at Arrival Heights

Along with my regular duties, which take me a little ways off station and up to Arrival Heights in the afternoons, I've gotten a couple of other chances to get out of town.

A diver getting out of the water

Last week I got invited to help out the divers. It meant caddying some of their gear and feeding the air line down as the divers moved around under the ice. On this particular occasion the divers were checking on the ice pier, making sure that the ice was good and that the edge of the pier wasn't running up against the shore. John, the diver in the yellow dive suit, saw a seal while he was under. Sometimes, seals will pop up to check out the dive holes, and I was kind of hoping that would happen, but no such luck.
I also got a chance to go out on the pressure ridges over by Scott Base. They were so amazing, and I've been back a couple of times since.

Walking across the ice to the pressure ridges

A seal hanging around on the pressure ridges

Along with exploring off station, I've gotten to know town pretty well. Occasionally, McMurdo will host artist, who come down on an NSF grant. There are a number of painting hanging in the galley by some of the artists. We've also had a couple of sculptors come down, and they've left behind pieces scattered around that station.

Tim the Troll hanging out under the bridge between Building 155 and Crary

Making the cut

Looking out across Ross Bay towards Inaccessible Island

    So, my job appears to have survived the stop order. I got the word on Friday that I would be staying and all of my projects would continue running. Whether or not they are supposed to get the same level of support they’ve had in the past is still up for debate. There are also a number of my projects that have grantees come down for a couple of weeks each summer, to do upgrades and repairs, take down/remount instruments for the summer, etc. We’re still not sure when or if any of them will be allowed to come down. Which will either mean that I will have a lot more work (trying to do all the things the grantees would have done if they were down here) or a lot less work (since some of the things that would normally happen on this projects might not actually happen).

    It also looks like I may be the only Crary science person staying in town. Which means that I might get some other duties, to go along with my RA stuff. The one I know of right now would be giving tours of the building. I should find out more tomorrow when I talk with the lab supervisor. Doing tours would actually be pretty fun. Crary is a really nice building and there is a ton of cool stuff that would normally be happening in there, scientists running around, sea life getting put in the big tanks for study.

The sun over Ross Bay

    Anyways, I’ve pretty much gotten oriented to my regular duties. In the mornings, I’ve got my daily checks for ELF/VLF, MEVO, CTBT, USGS GPS, the weather station, and a couple of checks on all of my data getting sent out to the grantees. Most of these are in Crary, although CTBT is in Comms, which is just down the road. The checks mostly consist of making sure things are running, checking for any errors or alarms, taking a look at the data to see if it looks normal, making sure that the date and time are correct, and seeing if data is being sent. After my morning checks are done, and assuming that everything looks okay, I’m usually in the office for the rest of the morning, doing reports, giving tours of my projects (if someone is interested), emailing/talking with grantees. Right now, this part of the morning is mostly office staff talking about when/if they’re getting sent home and if they’re going to be furloughed when they get there. Since all the grantees are getting sent home, there isn’t much action happening in Crary.

    In the afternoons I head up to Arrival Hights, which is my main “out-of-town” work site. From what Liz, my predecessor, says, it is a nice walk from town in the summer, but right now it is a little on the chilly side to do that. Arrival Heights is an Antarctic Specially Protected Area, so the McMurdo and Kiwi RAs are the only ones allowed up there without permission. If anyone else wants to go up, they have to go through me! I get to manage the permits for the AH ASPA since my projects are the main reason that this area has been given that designation. Up at AH, I’ve got another set of daily checks (these ones have to be done after midnight UST, so that’s the reason they’re done in the afternoon here) that are pretty similar to my morning checks, except that I am also checking on some actual instrumentation, rather than just computers and graphs. I’ll also check an make sure that the building is in good shape, warm enough, no snow blowing in, etc.

    I’ve also got a number of once/week, bi-weekly, and monthly checks to do. Since some of them involve hiking into Second Crater, about a 45 min hike from the building, I get to take a buddy. Usually the RAs take someone from the galley or supply staff, since they don’t get off station much, and from what I hear, there are usually lots of volunteers.

    I have gotten some time to do a little bit of exploring around McMurdo. I found the “gerbil” gym (cardio machines and weights), the aerobics room, the big gym (with a small climbing wall), the library, the coffee house and the bars. The bars are closed right now, indirectly due to the stop order. The management decided to go to ship rules (the rules that get put in place when the ice-breaker and supply ships are in town), and stop the sale of alcohol, since there are a lot of stressed-out and unhappy people around. Speaking of, all the people who were told they’re getting sent home on Monday or Tuesday, are still here. There are probably a couple of reasons for that. One is that between the people here and the people in Christchurch, there are a lot of people getting sent home, and not enough flights back to the States to put them on. There has actually been rumors that they are going to start flying the people who have been in Christchurch for the last two weeks down to the Ice, because it is cheaper than leaving them in hotels. Another reason is that they have been fairly conservative when calling weather delays. Last week’s Monday flight down to the Ice was very exciting. The ceiling lowered fairly quickly, so the Airbus ended up circling until it was almost out of fuel. At the point, the passengers, including my boss and Liz, were told to prepare for a crash landing. They landed fine, but it seems to have but the people in charge of flights a little on edge, so there haven’t been any flights in or out since last Wednesday, when my flight and one other came in.

Pressure ridges along the shore

    That’s all I’ve got for now. Tomorrow I get the keys and the pager, and Liz gets to sit back and relax.

I made it...

I arrived at McMurdo on October 9th...on the “worst day in US Antarctic history”, as the Senior US Representative in Antarctica put it. 

I started the morning at 3:45AM to get ready for a 4:30 pick-up and a 5AM check-in at the airport. As I walked out the door of my hotel room, I found a note that said the pick-up and check-in had been pushed back by 2 hours. So I hung out for another two hours in my room.

I got a lot of these while I was in Christchurch

I got checked in, which means my passport got checked, my bags got weighted, I got weighted, and I got my boarding pass. Then we did our pre-flight orientation (i.e. we watched a video about the program, the Antarctic treaty, and McMurdo). After that we had a 45 minute pause. I figured it was a weather delay, which had been a pretty regular occurrence (our group had already been delayed in CHC two days waiting for the weather to get better). As I found out later, it was actually because the ASC had received a partial stop order from the government, and they were trying to figure out if they should fly us down or not. They did eventually decide to fly, so we turned in our boarding passes, went through security, got on the bus and then onto the plane. 

The last time I was down, I took military planes to and from the ice. This time, since it is so early in the season, most of the US planes aren’t down in NZ yet, so we took an Australian Airbus for our 5 hour flight down to MCM. The flight went smoothly, we got our cold weather gear on and deplaned. Then we got on our ride to McMurdo, a huge snow-bus. Once at MCM, we were herded into the Chalet for the usual orientation briefing, which is were we found out that the stop order had been issued and a lot of people were going to be sent home. They still don’t know who exactly is going and who is staying. We should find out in the next couple of days.

After orientation, I met up with the current Research Associate, Liz, who I (hopefully) will be taking over for after training finishes up. We had actually already met briefly at the CDC in Christchurch. I also briefly met my boss, Cara, but she had to run to a teleconference about planning for the stop order. Liz gave me a short tour of Crary, the main science labs at MCM, and of the major landmarks in town. Then I headed to my room (Dorm 209, the pi room). I’ve got a room-mate for the next 18 days. Wendy works in the water plant, and this is the end of her 25th season on the ice. She’s planning on three more, and then retiring to Arizona. 

Dinner was a much more subdued affair than my previous experiences with McMurdo. Usually there is lots of noise and laughter as folks meet up with friends they haven’t seen since the last time they were down, get to know the new people they’ll be working with this season. Everyone is worried about their jobs, the program, and what comes next. 

Deplaning from the airbus

Leaving

Ready to go onboad flight P004R, a Herc LC-130

After two weeks of watching planes come and go, my turn finally came. The twenty of us were originally scheduled to go out on Saturday, but the flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems. Monday morning, we woke up to the flight being delayed almost immediately, so no one was holding there breath fro getting out. But, the plane came, a couple of hours late, so we said our goodbyes to the five winter-overs still at Pole, and headed to McMurdo.

We got to McMurdo in time for dinner, which include real, rathere than powdered, milk for the first time in nine months. It was so good. McMurdo is a lot bigger than Pole (there are almost 1,000 people here right now), so things were busy and the cafeteria was a little bit overwhelming.
  
After dinner a couple of us went exploring. It's been in the teens here for temps, so it is the warmest weather we've had for a long time. I hiked around in jeans and a long sleeve shirt, which was great after a season of running around in Carhartt's and boots.

The mountains across the bay from McMurdo

We hiked out to Hut Point, which was a walk I had taken when I got here 9 months ago. This time around the bay was iced over, so no whales. There were seals, though.

The seals are getting ready to have their pups, so they weren't
very active.

We also hiked up Observation Hill, which had an amazing view of Mac Town.

This morning we did a 9 mile hike out to see Castle Rock and Scott Base (the Kiwi base about a mile and half from McMurdo).

Castle Rock in front, with Mt. Erubus smoking in the background.

Bag drag this evening and then flying to CHC tomorrow afternoon, if all goes well.

Be home in a couple of weeks. See everyone then!