We now finally have a fully functional met tower, albeit still laying on its side. We sorted out a number of small issues with different instruments, but now we are looking good. And now we wait for a couple days as the sensors collect an intercomparison data set with all instruments at about the same… Read More
Crack by our tower widened today, but things are still stable. It’s up to 1m in places. The rest of the area went through a major shift. Satellite maps show a large region of shear and that shear basically ripped our flow in half just outside the outer wall of the Fortress. Fortunately, the ship… Read More
Progress at Met City has been good in these last few days. The ATMOS team has been in a groove, getting many things finished for the people that will be leaving tomorrow with the AkademicFederov to go home. Our met tower is mostly functional, although still laid down on its side. The whole installation is… Read More
Wow, the sky continues to be a big highlight these days. And that big moon lighting up the sky. From the vantage point of Met City, my home on the ice 500m from the ship, the moon approaches the ship as we are heading in for dinner. This is a truly amazing scene. 5:30pm. Fully… Read More
The last days have been beautiful. Actually quite light out, although the sun had been below the horizon for about a week now. The sky is a sunset of color most of the day. And there have been relatively few clouds, giving a nice view of the sky….. and the full moon! Large and bold.… Read More
A few crazy days here with no time to write. Full speed from the moment I wake to the moment I pass out…. Dead tired. Polarstern has this central double stair way…. Up, up, up…. Down, down, down. It’s pretty steep and is quite a trudge for tired legs. Our last days have been spent… Read More
A much more productive day. The bottleneck had been getting cargo off the ship and onto the ice, so I took over the coordination of that today, and it really helped to have a scientific liaison to the crew to facilitate this process. The ship’s crew is great at their job, and can lift heavy… Read More
A bit of a frustrating day today, although perfect conditions outside. We have not had much organizational structure yet and this showed today. There was some planning, where we organized teams of volunteers to work on different tasks such as putting out power cable. But these teams did agreat job of completing their work and… Read More
Long day…. But big progress. Marcel and I flagged the planned power line path out to all of the major installations. Then, with such a beautiful day, we took the opportunity to use the helicopter to sling load some large power hubs out to the key “cities.” These are 700kg beasts! I can’t really believe… Read More
Today I took a team out to Met City area for a bit of group brainstorming on how to install the site. A bunch of ice thickness measurements later and I think we’ve found a slim path on how we can get all of our different installations fitted into a limited and challenging space. Using… Read More
