The Sep-Oct 2003 V1 Cruise of the Aurora Australis




This web page consists of a series of emails that I sent back home while participating in the Sep-Oct 2003 V1 Cruise of the Aurora Australis from Hobart, Tasmania, Australia to Casey Station, Antarctica through pack ice in the Southern Ocean. That's me, Terry Haran, with the blue hat and NSIDC research scientist Ted Scambos. We're dragging a sled full of scientific gear we were using to measure the albedo  and spectral characteristics of the snow covering the 1 to 2 meter sea ice over which we're slogging. The photo was taken by the lead scientist of the voyage, Rob Massom of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre in Hobart.

Table of Contents

Going South
Report from Ice Station 4
Third Ice Report
Fourth Ice Report
Fifth Ice Report

Going South

Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 3:34 AM
Subject: Going South

Hello everybody!

Sorry it's taken me so long to write.

After a series of plane rides (Denver to LA to Sydney to Melbourne to
Hobart) that took about 24 hours, Ted Scambos and I finally arrived in
Hobart, Tasmania. On our last leg we joined Thorsten Marcus, another
scientist like Ted. Thorsten has visited our office in Boulder several times
and the three of us rented an apartment in Hobart for 5 days while we
prepared for our trip. Hobart is a city of about 100,000 or so on the
southern end of Tasmania. It has a harbor that dates back about 200 years
and is very scenic. It reminded me a lot of Marin county around Sausalito
about 40 years ago. We spent one day driving about 3 hours into the interior
and taking a short hike on the Port Davis track, where we saw some wallabies up
close. The trail alternated between dark, wet, dense eucalyptus groves in
some of the low spots and scrubby open land having beautiful vistas of the
surrounding mountains, many of which had a light snow cover on the tops.


Terry, Thorsten, and Rob


After a few frantic days in Hobart buying last minute hardware and
electrical gear for our experiments, we boarded the Aurora Australis on the
evening of Sept. 11. Before we even left port, we had our first safety drill
which included boarding one of the fully enclosed self-righting lifeboats.
Around 10pm we left the pier waving goodbye to about 200 people who saw us
off and we started heading south. There are about 90 expeditioners and 30
crew members, which is only about 10 short of a full ship so it is somewhat
crowded. I'm in a cabin with two other guys: Ryan Walker, a graduate student
at NYU, and J.C. Kang, a scientist from a research institute in China. Each
cabin has a its own bath which is nice. I've got a little work area in a
conference room which is where I spend most of my time doing some last
minute programming on the laptop computer I brought.

The first few days were fairly uneventful. I was taking pills for sea
sickness as well as wearing some acupuncture wrist bands. I guess it all
worked because I never really got sick. My cabin mate J.C. had a few
vomiting episodes however which was mostly just embarrassing for him. We did
hit some pretty rough seas around Sept. 14 which also made sleeping
difficult.

The food is very good, with lots of variety and even fresh vegetables, at
least so far. There is large dining room that seats everyone as well as a
couple of video lounges that get very crowded each evening. There is a large
selection of videos and music on board. Mostly we've been watching pirated
DVD's of some recent movies such as "Finding Nemo" and  "Pirates of the
Carribean." There is also a bar serving sub-3.2 beer and wine which fills up
for an hour or two in the late evening. Darts are the big activity in the
bar.

Apparently I was the first one to have a birthday, which resulted in the
cooks surprising me with a cake and candles during dinner, so now everyone
knows my name. The night before we had a spectacular Aurora with greenish
curtains of light extending from the horizon to the zenith. Very
spectacular! The other big event was a storm that we've been running
downwind from for the past 36 hours or so. It included about 50 knot winds
and 20+ foot seas. In fact, one huge wave hit the port side yesterday
afternoon while I was in my cabin fetching my instamatic camera. The wave
broke the port holes on two cabins about two cabins down the hall, soaking
the inhabitants and all of there gear. No one was hurt, and it was all
cleaned up and repaired in a few hours, but most of the expeditioners who
had only a single cabin mate now have a third while the two wet cabins dry
out. The view of the sea from the bridge during the storm was pretty
awesome. I took a couple of pictures, but you really need to see the video
clips that Ted took to appreciate it.

Not much else to report on yet. We're at about 61 south latitude, 130 east
longitude heading West Southwest at about 8 knots, keeping the wind to our
backs. We're still about 100 kilometers or so north of the sea ice and
should be in it in a couple of days, depending on the weather. No icebergs
or whales spotted yet, although a few ocean-going penguins were seen a few
days ago when we were "only" a couple of hundred kilometers from MacQuarie
Island.

Feel free to email me if you get a chance. Just don't try to attach anything
since we can only send and receive text.

I'll write again when we get into the sea ice.

--Terry

Report from Ice Station 4

Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 6:32 AM
Subject: Report from Ice Station 4

Hello again.

It's been over a week since my last report so here goes. We entered the sea
ice the day on Sep 23. At first the ice was just a gray scum on the surface
called "grease ice" which is just what it looks like. There were still
sizeable swells roiling through the grease ice, but the smaller ocean
ripples were completely dampened. We then sailed through a section of
somewhat more consolidated ice called "pancake ice" which again is very
descriptive: flat circles of ice ranging in size from a few inches to
several feet across and a few inches thick.
 
A 75 ft high iceberg.

Along the way we passed a couple
of icebergs. These differ from sea ice in that they are chunks of the
Antarctic icecap that have flowed as glaciers down to the ocean and then
floated away from the Antarctic coast. The first one we passed was
relatively small, only a few hundred feet across, and maybe 75 feet high.
The second was about a mile across and couple of hundred feet high. In both
cases, the captain steered us close enough (but not too close!) so the
"tourists" could get some close-up pictures. Finally we entered the more
substantial pack ice consisting of large floes ranging from 100 ft across to
miles across.

The floes have large cracks running through them called "leads" which are
created when the winds and currents push the ice apart. Newly formed leads
have water or thin, dark ice called "nilas." Older leads will contain
thicker but flat ice. Leads range from a few feet across to several miles
across. Most of the floes we have seen are covered with rafted blocks. These
are formed during storms when the winds and wave action push the edge of one
floe up onto the surface of another floe. This makes for a very jumbled
surface with blocks of ice up to 3 feet or higher all over the place.
Covering everything is a foot or so of hard, wind-blown snow.

The ship makes the best time sailing through leads where the ice is thinner.
As we follow the track of a particular lead, it often appears that we're
sailing up a river and simply cutting into the "bank" from time to time to
straighten out the curves. The ship can get through ice about 6 feet thick
or so, which is about the thickness of the floes we've seen, but it makes
for slow going. Often the ship will push into an ice-jammed section of a
narrow lead, stop, back up, and hit it again, sometimes repeating this
several times before breaking through to a wider section of the lead.

We've stopped four times so far so that the scientists on board are able to
walk out onto the ice to make various measurements. We call such a stop an
"ice station" (sort of like Ice Station Zebra, except that Ernest Borgnine
isn't on board, and no one's been murdered yet). We walk out through a door
that was cut into the side of the ship during it's last overhaul, and then
walk down a gangplank suspended from a crane. We drag our equipment around
on a 6 foot by 3 foot plastic sled. Our equipment weighs about 125 lbs. and
consists of a small gasoline-powered electric generator, two tripods, an
albedometer mounted on a boom arm for measuring how much light the surface
reflects, a spectrometer for measuring how much of each wavelength of
visible and infrared light is reflected, and a laptop computer that controls
the spectrometer.

All the ice we've been on has been very thick (a few feet at least) and very
stable. We did have a bit of excitement at Ice Station 2. Ted and I were
just finishing up our measurements when the captain blew a blast on the
ship's horn. This means "pack up your stuff and return to the ship
immediately." Of course, we were the farthest from the ship (about 300 feet
or so), so we through our stuff onto the sled and got back as soon as we
could. Still it took us at least 5 minutes or so and we were the last ones
back. It turns out that the ship had shifted a little, which caused some
water to appear near the end of the gangplank, which is why they blew the
horn, but there was never any real danger.

The only wildlife we've seen was a Weddel Seal about 500 feet behind the
ship at Ice Station 2, and an emperor penguin just a couple of hundred feet
from the ship late last afternoon at Ice Station 3. We've spent less than a
day at each of the ice stations so far, but we plan to stay a few days at
Ice Station 4 which is where we are now.

The major social activity on board the ship was a fashion show last Sunday
night. This was a fund raiser for Camp Quality which is a summer camp for
sick kids. Several design teams modelled very silly outfits in the head
gear, beach wear, and evening wear categories. Of course most of the
"models" were guys in drag. Afterwards we had a dance party in the lounge.
We also had a jam session about a week ago with a couple of guitars and
songbooks that people had brought with them.

Well it's about 11:30pm ship time, so I guess I'd better go to bed. Ted and
I are planning to set up our infrared radiometer on the ship rail before
breakfast and breakfast is at 7:30, so....

Peace and love,
Terry

P.S. Thanks to everybody who wrote to me. Sorry if I haven't sent an
individual reply yet, but I really do enjoy reading them, so please keep the
emails coming.

Third Ice Report

Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 6:36 AM
Subject: Third Ice Report

Hey y'all:

Looks like it's been over a week since my last report so here goes. We're
currently at about 64.623 degrees south latitude 116.634 degrees east
longitude for those of you who are tracking our movement. We're close to
what will be ice station 7 starting tomorrow.

I think we'd just gotten to ice station 4 in my last report on October 1. We
had planned on staying about 3 days at this station in order to perform a
more intensive set of experiments out on the sea ice. At all the other
stations, one set of experiments has involved setting up a 100 meter line,
and then performing various experiments along this line, such as dragging a
radar sled over the ice to measure the ice density; taking temperatures at
various depths in the snow cover; digging "snow pits" which characterize the
nature of the snow covering the ice at various depths; and drilling holes
all the way through the ice to measure the ice thickness. At ice station 4,
three such lines were set up in parallel 25 meters apart, and each line was
500 meters in length. So there was about 15 times more data collected at
this station than at any of the other stations. For example, almost 1000
holes were drilled along the lines.


Ted and Terry setting up equipment on the sea ice with an iceberg on the horizon.

Ted and I performed our usual experiments measuring surface reflectance
properties on a couple of days, and then helped the other teams with their
various experiments. In order to get all the work done, we often worked
until 10pm or later. And at this time of year, it gets dark around 7:30pm at
this latitude, although that is getting later at the rate of about 3 minutes
per day. The first night we helped drag the 150 lb. 3 ft by 10 ft radar sled
up and down the 500 meter lines. This wasn't too bad along the flat areas,
but the lines cut across several drifts of wind-packed snow features called
"sastrugi", so we were often pulling the sled up over little 2 or 3-foot
hills and around blocks of rafted ice which was pretty hard work.

The second night I helped dig 1 ft square holes in the snow down to the ice
surface so that 2-inch diameter holes could be drilled through the ice to
determine its thickness. The depth of the snow cover ranged from about an
inch to 3 or 4 feet (about chest high). In these deeper areas, we actually
had to dig a trench down to the ice surface since the holes in these areas
were only a meter apart. That night we had intended work a bit later than
10pm, but the wind came up and we had to go in early. It turned out that the
wind was the first part of a storm that lasted all then next day and into
the following evening which brought winds approaching 60 knots (about 70
miles per hour) and several inches of new snow.

When we finally could go out onto the ice again, we found that the three 500
meter lines were intact, but much of the surrounding area where other
experiments were being performed had been fractured by new leads and had
drifted as much as half a mile from where they had been. In fact the ice
around the ship was so chewed up by the storm that only twelve of us were
allowed out onto the ice, and we had to be lowered over the side of the ship
in a small open cage carried by a crane usually used for loading and
unloading cargo. We all wore hard hats and safety harnesses that were
clipped into the cage in case of accidental "tippage." That day we helped
Rob Massom make snow depth and temperature measurements every 25 meters
along all three lines. We also dug more snow holes for the ice depth
measurements, and I collected several measuring tapes that had been laid out
along the lines and then buried in spots by a foot or two of newly fallen
and drifted snow.

Along the way, a couple of inquisitive emperor penguins paid us a visit,
squawking and performing their distinctive neck extentions and other
gyrations. They alternated wadling with "surfing" over the snow surface on
their bellies. One walked right up to me while I was down on my knees
collecting a tape, which brought me down to its approximate height. They are
very beautiful animals up close with thin blue eye markings and a yellow
tinge to their neck feathers. I think Rob got a picture of the encounter on
his digital camera, although I haven't seen it yet.

Finally around 4pm we finished the last ice thickness measurement which was
a major accomplishment, accompanied by cheers and high fives. We then
dragged our gear back to the ship for our return ride in the cage. That
evening, we had free "beer" (in quotes due to the fact that it's only about
2% alcohol) in the Husky Bar provided by the trip leaders in gratitude for
all the hard work we'd all done over the previous 4 days.

The next day we sailed to ice station 5 and then on to ice station 6. We're
now seeing a penguin or two at each ice station.

One of the highlights of the trip was an event called "Balloonia" performed
by Nin Brudermann yesterday at ice station 6. Nin is a photographer and
conceptual artist who has obtained a grant enabling her to fly a video
camera and transmitter on a weather balloon at various locations all over
the earth. Nin is able to receive and record video images and sound from the
balloons which she is planning to incorporate into a multimedia art exhibit
and associated book. I and several other people helped with the event,
including tracking and aiming the receiver antenna at the pair of balloons
that Nin launched yesterday from the heli deck. The first was a white
weather balloon carrying the video camera, microphone, and transmitter. It
was followed a few seconds later by an orange weather balloon which the
camera was able to view at several times during the flight. We received
images and sound for about half an hour while the balloons climbed to about
40,000 feet before losing the signal, which is about what she has
experienced on other flights. Nin was very pleased with the results.
Yesterday was the clearest day since we've been in the sea ice, with just a
few wispy clouds during the flight. She is still editting the footage, but
the parts that I've seen included scenes of the ship, ice floes, leads, and
sun glint, as well as the sound of the wind blowing the balloon around. Nin
will also incorporate a lot of the video and still photography of the event
recorded by Ted and several other expedition members into the exhibit.

The other big highlight yesterday was a beautiful sunset that I and about 20
other expetioners viewed from the bridge. The bridge is a 15 by 60 foot
carpeted room with large downward tilting windows on three sides in which
the captain "drives" the ship. It's filled with several radar, weather
satellite, and communication workstations and is usually open to any crew
members and expeditioners. About the only time the bridge is closed to the
"public" is while the helicopters are flying due to the fact that the bridge
then effectively becomes an air traffic control center. Anyway, as the sun
was descending, we were crusing through an exceptionally broad lead, largely
covered by thin nylus and the occasional ice floe and patches of open water.
It looked very much like gliding over an esturary or tidal flat. Nylus is
thin ice that is very dark, smooth, and glassy, but often covered as it was
yesterday by white "ice flowers" which are spherical floral-looking ice
formations a few inches across formed by some kind of interaction that I
don't understand between the evaporation of seeping sea water into very cold
air. The ship would often push a short sheet of ice up over the sheet behind
it creating white patterns in the areas of overlap. Also the wake of the
ship would bend the ice into hill that would then shatter as the hill
steepened. The whold scene was mesmerizing.

The other big event of the last week or so happened at ice station 6 today.
Ted and I were all set to take our sled out and make our usual snow
reflectance measurements; but then the wind came up and it started snowing,
which effectively cancelled our experiment for the day. However other
experiments, such as radar measurements, are largely unaffected by the
presence of blowing snow (as long as the equipment can handle the cold). So
I again helped with the radar measurements, while other people were out
drilling holes, measuring temperatures, etc. I took one picture on my
disposible camera that I hope comes out that shows several people involved
in various activities surrounding a single, seemingly dazed and confused
penguin.

The wind kept rising while we were dragging the radar around, causing one of
the circuit boards to crap out a couple of times. We finished around 12:30pm
and when in to have lunch while others came out to finish drilling holes.
After lunch I got redressed (which takes about 10 minutes), and was walking
along the deck on my way to the gang plank when I noticed that no one was
out on the ice. I then noticed a 10 foot wide crack that had opened just to
the right of where a group of French researchers were working just a few
minutes before. This had resulted in an immediate evacuation by everyone out
there, so I found myself all dressed up with no where to go.

That's about it for now. Ted and I continue to process lots of satellite
data as well as the ground truth data we and others have been collecting on
the ship. It's lots of fun, but I'm already looking forward to three weeks
from now when we return home. I found out today that we're as sure as we can
be that I'll be going to Antarctica in December for another two months, my
time home in November will be made that much more precious. Hope to be
seeing at least some you then both in Boulder and at Doodaa's over
Thanksgiving.

Love and peace from an often very peaceful part of the world.

--Terry

Fourth Ice Report

Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2003 4:36 AM
Subject: Fourth Ice Report

Hello Everyone:

It's early Saturday evening October 18 here. The last week or so since my
last report has been relatively uneventful, at least up until the last
couple of days, so this may be short.

We had only two more ice stations before encountering an extended storm that
lasted a couple of days. In fact the last ice station had to be cut short
due to deteriorating weather. We were getting 40 knot winds with the
temperature down around -15 degrees C (or +5 degrees F.) which pushed the
wind chill down to dangerously low levels.

With the end of this latest ice station, the ship was moved to the outer
(that is, northern) edge of the ice pack, around 63 degrees south latitude.
We then proceeded west for a day with a very strong following wind until we
were at a longitude of 110 degrees or due north of Casey station. Casey is
one of four permanent Antarctic stations that are maintained on a year round
basis by the Australian Antarctic Division. About 40 of the cruise
participants were destined to be dropped off at Casey station, some to spend
an entire year, the
rest to come home near the end of the Austral summer in February.

We next proceeded south back into the ice pack making our way down generally
southerly trending leads towards Casey. After another day we were well into
the pack, but the weather was still a bit dodgy: 35 knot winds out of the
southeast and snowing. Nightfall found us parked about 35 nautical miles
from Casey. We generally don't move at night since good visibility is
required for moving through the pack so that leads can be more easily
spotted.

Morning found us blown back another 10 nautical miles to the northwest, but
then we got a break in the weather:  we hadn't seen the sun for about 5
days, but yesterday morning the clouds finally parted and we moved to within
30 nautical miles of Casey, close enough for the helicopters to start
ferrying the Casey people to their new home. The three "hellies" on board
were able to make the first round trip in about an hour and a half. Then
while one helly sat on the deck, the other two waited on the sea ice to save
fuel. Refueling and reloading took another 20 minutes, and then all three
would take off again. This repeated several times during the day. Each time
the round trip time decreased as we gradually made our way south. By
sundown, 27 people and much of their gear had been transported to Casey.

The sunset last night was the most scenic yet. As we approached Casey, we
passed through a bank of relatively shallow water where several large
icebergs have become grounded to the ocean bottom. Icebergs had been
relatively scarce in area to the east where we have been the last three
weeks or so, but now we were surrounded by them. Many were a mile or more
across and generally appeared to be mesas surrounded by 200 foot cliffs. The
sky overhead was a deep blue and a few clouds lined the horizon. As the sun
slipped behind the clouds, it formed an intense orange glow. After it
slipped below the horizon, it left a bright column of light above. Finally
just as it was starting to get dark (which takes a very long time at this
latitude), we broke out of the thick pack ice and into much thinner and less
consolidated brash ice which the helicopter pilots had told us extended all
the way to Casey station.

This morning found us in Newcomb Bay, parked about a mile or two from Casey
on the Antarctic coast. We could see actual rock outcrops poking up through
the snow and ice covering the hills surrounding the station, the first land
we had seen in over five weeks. To the left of Casey station was the foot of
Law Dome, a mound of ice about 100 miles across and a few thousand feet
high. The hellies continued to ferry people a cargo to the station. The
cargo was transported in a large net that hung from each helly at the end of
a 75 foot rope. Our joy at actually seeing Antarctica was tempered somewhat
by the fact that only a few of us roundtrippers actually got to make the
helly flight to the station and set foot on Antarctica (I wasn't one of
them). I think the main reason for this is that over the next few days, the
11 people who have spent the winter at Casey are busy training the new crew
that we just delivered and didn't want to be distracted, but we would have
had a great party. As a consolation, we had beers on the Monkey Deck this
afternoon under a beautiful cloudless sky parked on an ice covered bay
surrounded by small grounded icebergs on one side and the hills of
Antarctica on the other side. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Our current location for those of you who keep track of these things is 66
degrees, 15.880 minutes south latitude, 110 degrees, 31.300 minutes east
longitude. We'll spend the night here in Newcomb Bay, and then head north
back into the pack ice tomorrow morning so that we can have an additional
ice station or two. Ted and I have collected a lot of data from the ships
rail and from satellites, particularly good data over the last couple of
very clear days, but we don't yet have any clear-sky data from our
activities on the sea ice.

Oh well so much for making it short. Only two more weeks and then it's back
home for short visit and Thanksgiving.

Love,
Terry

Fifth Ice Report

Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 5:19 AM
Subject: Fifth Ice Report

Greetings All:

It's Tuesday afternoon October 28 here. We only had one more ice station
after my last report, so this will probably be short.


Terry trying his hand at drilling an ice thickness measurement hole.

The day we got back into the ice pack after visiting Casey Station, we
started seeing more wildlife including a pod of killer whales as well as a
few minke whales, some seals, and lots more penguins. I missed the killer
whales because I was working in the galley when we cruised past them and the
captain elected not to stop. I've volunteered to take over washing pots
after lunch and dinner since Jenny, a Communications Operator, had left the
ship at Casey, which was why I was working in the galley. However, after we
had parked the ship that evening, I was up on the bridge just after sunset
and got a good look at a minke whale that surfaced in a lead just in front
of the bow. It was yet another gorgeous sunset with a pink glow all around
the horizon that was reflected in the leads surrounding the ship. The warm
weather of the previous few days had created noticeably more open water in
the area as we could see both from the ship and from the satellite images
that we were working with.

The next day, we had our last ice station, number 13. It was another
beautiful sunny day on a floe that was only a foot or two thick. Ted and I
made our last measurements with the most sun we'd had the entire cruise
which was very helpful. While we were out on the sea ice, we were visited by
the largest contigent of Emperor penguins we had seen, about a dozen or so.
In fact a group of 3 or 4 walked right up to us while we were setting up to
measure the surface characterstics of what had been an untrampled area of
snow. I actually had to herd them away so we could continue working! We
finished our measurements just after lunch and spent the rest of the
afternoon playing a game of ultimate frisbee out on the ice which is sort of
like soccer with a frisbee. I had never played it before, but someone told
me we were play Aussie rules which apparently means anything goes including
holding and tackling. It was great fun.


Terry running on the deck of the Aurora Australis during the trip back to Hobart.

After ice station 13 we were essentially on the way home. We spent another
day traveling north through the sea ice. As we approached the edge of the
pack, we started seeing ocean swells buckling the surface. The pack here was
highly fragmented due to the close proximity of rough water. In fact we were
leaving the pack just as a relatively minor storm was coming through. So we
went from essentially flat seas to 5 meter swells in the space of an hour or
two. We hadn't experienced anything like this for over four weeks, so it
came as quite a shock. Lots of people got sick but everyone was fine in a
day or two.

We've had a few more auroral displays, one when we were pretty far south
which placed the aurora actually north of us and not particularly far up off
the horizon; the others when we were farther north with the aurora directly
overhead. All the auroras we've seen have been greenish white wisps,
curtains, and streaks. Sometimes they are very bright with lots of structure
constantly changing from minute to minute, and sometimes extending from the
horizon to the zenith all around us.

We're currently busy copying data to DVDs and generally getting ready to
leave. I'm also collecting as many digital photos as I can. Lots of penguin
pictures and pictures of the ship from the sea ice. Some of the photos taken
from the helicopters are particularly good. I'll send some good ones out
after I get home.

Thanks again to everyone who emailed me during the voyage. I really loved
getting them even if I wasn't very good at replying individually. I'll try
to do that as well after I get home, but I know November will be hectic as
I'll be getting ready for my second Antarctic trip in December, this time to
New Zealand, McMurdo Station, and then the East Antarctic plateau in an area
known as the megadunes (more on that later). Sue and I are also planning a
trip to Doodaa's for Thanksgiving.

Love to you all,
Terry


Terry Haran <tharan@nsidc.org>

Tue Jan  22 11:40:00 MST 2007

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