Where is the water?

Here is a picture of me in the field. Gregg and I went to sample the upland ponds last week. Chris was supposed to come with us, but he was too sick. It turns out that he had the flu and spent two days in his room under quarantine while we were out enjoying two days in the field. I had not been in the field since November for my annual Thankgiving trip, so it was great to get out to do some field work.
On the first day we flew over a some ponds that we had not sampled before. I thought we were in the right spot, but everything goes by so fast in a helicopter compared to when you are walking. I asked the pilot to set down near the ponds. After spending half an hour there, thinking "this does not seem right" I decided we were really not in the spot we intended to visit that day. Gregg and I proceeded with the sampling and mapping of the ponds in the area and expanded our data set in the process. When we finished the sampling, we sat down to take a break and sample our flight lunches. I don't recommend the swiss steak sandwiches.
We decided to return the next day because we had requested another day of helicopter support to get to another set of ponds. We went back to the ponds at the terminus of the Marr Glacier that we had intended to sample the first day. These ponds are at 800m elevation (or 2600 ft). It has been a season of stormy weather and somewhat unusual amounts of snow fall. Our ponds were mostly covered with snow. One of our projects was to map the perimeter of the ponds to estimate the current size. It was complicated, we could not see the ponds because of all the snow. We were able to walk around the flat area, occasionally kicking through the snow with our bunny boots to confirm that we were still on ice and not soil. I think we did fairly well.

We did find some liquid water to sample in the ponds that were at a lower elevation. We also found some liquid water where streams were flowing into or out of the ponds. Some of these ponds seem to be fed only by local snow melt and others have glacier streams feeding them. This little pond fills a small depression and seems to only have snow as a source for water. The water was also tea colored because of all the algae growing there.

Ponds

I have been a blah blogger this year. The internet had a recent "upgrade" so it's no longer painfully slow. I have a couple of pictures from the upland ponds that (I think) deserve a chance to be seen. I took these photos on my last trip to Taylor Valley when I fearlessly crossed Lake Hoare following in Rae's footsteps. (It was scarier on the way back.) It was worth the scary part though, to hike up onto Andrews Ridge and see this lovely pond.

Hopefully my team will make a day trip to the ponds near the Marr Glacier soon. These ponds behave very much like the lakes in the valley bottom. They wax and wane, depending on the summer temperatures and the glacial melt that feeds them. They accumulate salts over time. As you can imagine, this pond fills a depressions in the landscape, so water flows in, but it does not flow out. Water leaves by evaporating and sublimating off the surface. Some of the ponds do have small streams flowing out to other ponds. We have been studying these ponds recently to better understand their hydrology and chemistry.

Sketchy weather

These pictures are from a few days ago. No matter, it looks about the same today, minus the snow on the ground. There was a bit of snow flying earlier today. It's one of those summers. I'm very curious to know what is controlling our weather this season, if it's some kind of shift in the SAM (southern annular mode) or just normal sketchy antarctic weather. It has not been a warm and sunny summer. It's not a "Big Melt Year". There has been no "flood". Today we learned that the road onto the sea-ice has re-opened to large wheeled trucks, not just track vehicles. It has been cold and cloudy so the road is firming up and the wheels don't sink in. Tomorrow the forecast is not looking good. Three of our co-PI's are due to head south, so hopefully the storm does not develop as promised.

I think I should go for more walks, but then when it's grey and snowing and blowing, a trip to the Coffee House is more appealing. The coffee house does not look like much from the outside, but inside the atmosphere is cozy. They serve coffee and wine, so the coffee house is also known as the "wine bar". It's a relaxing place to go in the evening for a glass of wine or two and a chat with friends and co-workers. As my friend Rhoda says "It's always condition 3 in the office." And that sentiment applies to the Coffee House too.

Coffee is an important part of life for many people here. Besides the fact that many of us are caffeine addicts in our regular lives anyway, we work hard here and coffee is a nice way to take a break and feel recharged. It's also a social thing. For me it's nice to make and drink coffee as part of my normal routine here. Because we all eat in a cafeteria, and therefore do not cook our own food, it's nice to prepare the coffee in the morning and then to drink it!

Sonic Antarctica

Last night there was a sonic tour around McMurdo Station. Andrea Polli, a sound artist who is visiting McMurdo Station on an NSF artists grant, led a group of people around the station to make recordings of different sounds. The tour ended at the NASA antenna where they track the polar orbiting scientific satellites. This is where Nik and I met up with the group. The dome can be seen easily from the station, but I had never been inside it until last night. The antenna was tracking a satellite while we were there, so first it moved into position and then slowly rotated to track the satellite as it moved across the sky.

The antenna made some interesting sounds, but the dome itself sounded like a drum. Each panel in the dome is made of a flexible material and as the wind blew, it sounded like a percussion instrument. I would like to go back when it is very windy to get the full experience of the drumming sounds.
The dome and antenna are on a hill above McMurdo Station so there is a less obstructed view of the sky. Sometimes the satellites are low on the horizon, so a little elevation helps with tracking. Being up high also gave us a nice perspective looking back on station. It looked expansive, but the buildings were small and looked like miniature versions of the station I know. I spend most of my time going between three buildings, the Crary Lab, my dorm, and Building 155, which is where the dining hall is located. It's always surprising to me to see how much stuff we have here. The footprint of town is fairly small, but then there are many shipping containers used for storage of supplies. There are also many containers for waste that are waiting to make there way back to the US for disposal.

It's tropical blue

Officially, we had a two day break over Christmas. It was up to me to decide how much work to do versus just enjoy the holiday. There were many social events to break up the days including the town holiday party on Sunday, the Christmas Eve fancy dinner on Monday, the Christmas morning brunch on Tuesday, the Christmas evening knitting and other social events taking place in the course of two days. Somehow I ended up with a pile of presents to open too. (Thank you everyone.) It takes time to sort the bubble wrap, the tissue paper, the ribbons, the boxes, the plastic packaging, etc. and dispose of them in the proper waste disposal categories. The two days were over before I knew it.
In between opening all those presents and eating Christmas Eve dinner, I manged to take a walk to Hut Point. The sea ice is melting a little more. The melt pools are turning a tropical blue color. I think the color is from algae growing there lending a greenish tinge to the usual "glacial blue". Of course there were seals hauled out into the ice. Another one made an appearance popping up through a hole in the ice. If you use your imagination, you can see the seal swimming in the melt pool. Maybe I will get a better telephoto lens some day, but for now you can just accept that the dark blob in the pool is a Weddel seal. It was a beautiful sunny day, but the winds were howling at Hut Point (as usual), so I did not stay for long. It was so nice during the day, but then later the fog came in and since then it has been windy and overcast. It makes it easier to stay inside and work in the lab. The holiday is over, so it's back to work.
Samples have been coming back from the field and we are making lots of progress on all the lab work and analyses. Here is a picture of my lab bench. This is were I work to set up my samples for the ion chromatography instrument. In this picture, I am setting up a run of lake samples to analyze for cations. I always line up my samples by increasing depth because they get saltier with depth and I prefer to run them in order.

Transitions

We are a week away from the summer solstice. The sun is high in the sky and we have had a series of warm sunny weather days. The temperature is just above freezing, just about 1 to 3 degrees C (or 33 to 38 degrees F). This is the start of the melt season. Streams are flowing around the station as the snow pack continues to melt. Streams are flowing in the dry valleys too. It’s time to transition from puffy down jackets to our windbreakers. At this time of year the sea-ice starts to melt a bit. The ice is still mostly solid, but the transition areas from land to ice are messy. It's prudent to move the fish huts back onto land while they still can, otherwise they risk getting stuck and eventually floating out to sea on an a sea-ice raft later this season. Today we learned that the sea-ice will be off limits in a couple more days, as soon as they can finish moving the remaining huts and equipment back onto land. The huts look like a row of vacation cottages lined up on the road to Hut Point.
There were a few seals hauled out onto the sea-ice near Hut Point. It is not very obvious from my picture, but the small brown blobs are Weddell seals. A few days ago, this blue ice pool was still solid, but now it is turning slushy. This makes it easier for the seals to find places to come up for air and to haul out onto the ice for sunbathing. While I was there, a seal was swimming just under the ice skin on this melt pool. He poked his head up for air a few times, just breaking through the thin ice layer. Away from land, the ice is still solid, but that will probably change over the next few weeks.

The other big transition is that research groups that were working on sea-ice to study the seals, the fish or the sea-ice itself, will now have to call and end to the field season. Groups that study hydrology and stream flow are getting busy. The nice sunny weather also makes it more fun to get out and do some sight seeing around the station.
The weather has been nice, so Nik agreed to go for a walk with me. He is wearing a fuzzy hat to keep his ears warm because the breeze is almost always blowing at Hut Point.

Yes, I'm still here

I seem to be in the doldrums a bit. Not much is happening. Work is going fine and I am keeping up with everything. It’s just that, as I explained last year, it’s more of the same old thing. Water samples in bottles are not very exciting in themselves, not until you get the data! I’m approaching the mid-season mark with about 2 months to go. The days are all fairly similar. The internet is also painfully slow, so when I attempt to post to my blog, I seem to get blogged down. OK, I’m writing this in word, in case blogger actually opens and I can make a posting. Ah there it is. I have been waiting for 10 minutes for the window to open so I can upload pictures. I think I should try again later. So, for anyone who was wondering if I was still here, yes! I promise to write more soon.

After Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving weekend and I am at our field camp at Lake Hoare. It's a tradition that we host Thanksgiving dinner here for our LTER team and any other science groups in Taylor Valley. This year the whole LTER team got together on Thursday for a turkey dinner and we invited two other research groups who are out in Taylor Valley in tent camps. Lake Hoare camp is a fixed field camp with some buildings including small labs, a generator shed, tool shed, out houses. We have the main hut where we cook, eat, relax and work on our computers. We also have internet access (which is how I manage to post to my blog even while doing field work.) We have a full size oven, so we can cook a whole turkey. It's a regular size propane oven, similar to what you might have at home, so the day before Thanksgiving is reserved for all the baking of pies and side dishes to go along with the turkey.
One of my jobs is to help with pies. We made seven pies this year. It's was more than enough for the 22 people we had here for dinner, but isn't the best part of Thanksgiving the leftovers? Our guests could take pie home with them and there is still some left for us. (Sorry I did not take a "before" picture.) I made a mistake and grabbed the bag of chopped walnuts instead of pecans for the pecan pie. I did not realize my error until right before I poured the filling into the crust. I decided it would still be good, especially if I added some orange extract and cinnamon to make it extra special. It was a hit. I made a regular pecan pie for the traditionalists too.
This is the 15th year of the LTER project in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. When our project first started we did not have the nice camp that we have now. The new camp was built starting at the end of our first field season in 1994. Before that we had a simple camp with a Jamesway, generator hut, outhouse, and a small lab. The old camp is still here, by the shore, and the building are still used. The Jamesway, which used to be the main hut, is mostly used for storing boxes and for sleeping quarters in case people are stuck here without tents. It's hard to imagine having 10 people in there sitting around the table, working and eating together. The old lab is now used on Sundays for taking showers. Eventually these buildings will probably be moved as the lake level rises. For now, they are not too close to the shore and are in no immediate danger. Although, we have seen that one warm summer could change that. For now, they serve as a reminder of more simple times, before we had phones and email in Antarctica.

Minus 5

It has been getting warmer as the sun moves higher in the sky every day. This morning it is -5 degrees C here at Lake Hoare, still below the freezing point of water. In spite of that, there are signs of melting. I took advantage of the midnight sun and walked around our camp to take a few pictures last night. The glacier calved over this winter. A sliver of ice from the cliff face peeled off and came crashing to the ground. This is good news for us because it provides a source of drinking water. We collect these ice chunks and melt them in a large stock pot for drinking, cooking, washing up. It's also nice because as we stand at the east window of our hut to wash dishes, we have a slightly newer view of the glacier cliff.
Standing near the cliff face last night I could hear water dripping from everywhere. The sun warms the face of the glacier, so even though the air temperature is below freezing, the solar radiation can cause the glacier to melt. Water is trickling down the face of the glacier and starting to accumulate in the stream channel. The stream is not really flowing yet, but there is liquid water. The stream team will be happy to have more work to do. Liz from the glacier team is hoping to sample the cryoconite holes on the glacier before they melt. Everyone is watching the weather.