Christchurch, New Zealand
August 27, 2016
I’m heading back to Antarctica for my 13th trip to the southernmost continent. As on my previous trips I’ll be studying Antarctic weather. I’ll describe the research I’ll be doing in more detail in a future blog post but I will be using small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to make measurements of the atmosphere during the end of the Antarctic winter and early spring to better understand how the Antarctic atmosphere behaves and to evaluate weather and climate prediction models.
Small Unmanned Meteorological Observer (SUMO) UAV on the Ross Ice Shelf during my last Antarctic trip in January 2014. The SUMO UAV is a foam radio controlled plane fitted with an autopilot and meteorological sensors. The plane has a wingspan of 2.5 feet and weighs just over 1 pound. The tower in the background is an automatic weather station I use for my research.
Joining me on this trip is my friend and colleague Mark Seefeldt. Mark and I made our first two Antarctic trips together in 1994 and 1995 as graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, so we’ve been doing this for a long time.
Even though I’m excited to be going to Antarctica and I love getting to spend time in New Zealand on my way to and from Antarctica it is always hard to leave home.
Saying goodbye to Sabrina at the airport in Denver.
My flight to Christchurch, New Zealand left Denver on Thursday August 18th. To get to Christchurch I flew from Denver to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia (a 14.5 hour flight), and finally from Sydney to Christchurch. After crossing the international date line during the flight I landed in Christchurch at 2:30PM on Saturday August 20th – 30 hours after I left home.
The day after I arrived in Christchurch (Sunday August 21st) Mark and I had to report to the United States Antarctic Program to be issued our cold weather gear and to complete some training.
The orange duffel bags are filled with cold weather clothing. Each person going to Antarctica is issued two bags filled with cold weather gear. During the clothing issue you can try on all of your clothes, exchange things that don’t fit, and request additional items based on your personal preferences.
The United States Antarctic Program maintains a large warehouse of cold weather gear in Christchurch.
Here is the cold weather clothing issued to all United States Antarctic Program participants. In addition to the clothes shown in this picture I also have some of my own personal cold weather gear I’ll bring to Antarctica.
You are required to wear certain items of your cold weather clothing for the flight to Antarctica.
Originally our flight to McMurdo Station was scheduled for Monday August 22nd but bad weather in Antarctica had delayed earlier flights and so our flight was delayed as well. On Monday we returned to the Antarctic program complex for additional training related to safety, waste management and recycling, and getting around the station. We also found out that our flight south was being delayed at least another day. Over the next few days our flight kept being delayed by 24 hours.
I’ve spent lots of time in Christchurch over the years, and even lived here for 3 months with my wife (Liz) and daughter (Sabrina) in 2012, so it feels like a home away from home for me and I’m always happy spending time here. While I am anxious to get to Antarctica and start my work there I was happy to have a few extra days in New Zealand. I took advantage of the extra time in Christchurch to do a bit of work, enjoy lots of good food, get out to see the sights, and do a bit of bike riding.
New Zealander has an active café culture and one item they do really well are muffins. Here you can see my typical New Zealand breakfast – double chocolate muffins and a classic Kiwi L&P soda.
The Christchurch botanic gardens are one of my favorite spots in town and I always try to spend lots of time there before going to Antarctica since the lush, green vegetation of the gardens is the last plant life I’ll see until I get back from Antarctica.
The weather the first few days we were in Christchurch was pleasant early spring weather and lots of people were out at the beach enjoying the nice weather.
My bike rides over the past few days have taken me all around Christchurch but they all seemed to wind up passing the beach at some point. One of my favorite rides is along some mountain bike trails north of Christchurch that wind between windswept dune tops overlooking the ocean and dark, peaceful pine forest. This photo is from Sumner south of Christchurch.
My flight to Antarctica is scheduled to leave later today (Saturday August 27th) – a week after I first arrived in Christchurch. I’ll describe the flight south and arriving in McMurdo in my next blog post.
I love reading about your trips to Antarctica! I’d love to hear more about waste management in that kind of environment! Looking forward to your next blog post!
Thanks for the email. I’m always interested to know what you’re doing. Hope you have a good trip.
Hey John, good luck this season!
Thanks everyone for the comments. It’s always nice to hear from people when I’m down here.
Thanks Nick. We’re flying a lot smaller UAVs this time than we did with you in 2009 and 2012.