Websites

Here are some websites for some of the science projects that are going on here.

http://clarkson.edu/projects/antarctica/blog/

This one is a project to study the breakup of warm sea ice. It is from Clarkson University from NY. Paula went to Happy Camper School with the Principle Investigator. So if you go to the photos section and look for Happy Camper you will see a few shots of her.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15834019/

This is a blog of a reporter that was down here for a few weeks putting together a story on global warming. The story will be aired sometime in Jan. we are told. The site is somewhat slow so only try it if you have high speed. If you go to the slide show some of the photos have audio attached to them that you can play. The audio is of the person in the photo explaining what they do. That part is pretty interesting. If you see Kevin Field at the bowling alley, listen to him. He is our daytime lead mechanic.

http://www.andrill.org/

Andrill is a huge project out on the ice shelf. They are drilling down through the ice shelf and then doing core drilling at the bottom of the ocean. It is just finishing up right now and it is a very big project here this year. And they will be back again next year to drill in another spot.

http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice0607.htm

This is the LDB project. LDB = Long Distance Balloons. They are launching large experiments on these LDB’s. The projects are 1000’s of pounds, so you can imagine the size of the balloons. You can see the current location of the balloons on the website. They plan to have them circle around about 6 times before they drop the payload.

http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/polarsea/home.htm

This is the website for the Polar Sea. It is the Coast Guard Ice Breaker that will be cutting the channel to McMurdo. If you look at the current events link it shows some of the trip from Seattle to Antarctica.

http://www.polartrec.com/odenexpedition/overview

This is the website for the Oden. It is a Swedish Ice Breaker that will assist the Polar Sea in the Channel. They arrived at the ice edge today. And if you hike out to the point you can see them 25 miles away.

Well that should keep everyone busy for a while. These sites are very interesting and I have spent hours looking at them. Some of the photos are very good.

Take Care and Happy New Year.
R.J.