Love of science in a cold climate
In fact, her area of interest is crucial to the climate change debate. It's her job to measure the snow layer on top of the Antarctic ice so that, in turn, the thickness of the polar ice can be accurately measured. Thinning ice will lead not only to rising sea levels but changes in global weather patterns.Snow job in Antarctica – digging out the data source | Watts Up With That?
...it meant a lot of time flying over the frozen Antarctic landscape in [fossil-fueled] helicopters, measuring the snow layer with experimental airborne radar and comparing those results with handheld measurements on the ground for accuracy.
Her work was extremely difficult, hampered by outdated computer gear and the challenges of working in a hostile environment. The airborne radar wasn't as accurate as what she was hoping for. ''The readings were accurate to about five centimetres but the thickness of snow is at times only 10 centimetres, so we were really trying to improve the accuracy and fly a larger area. The vibrations of the helicopters contributed to us not collecting much data. We could have done things so much differently,'' she said.
It seems digging out weather stations is a regular pastime in Antarctica, so data issues with snow burial of AWS sensors may be more than just about “Harry”.
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This regular burial and digging out of stations brings the whole network of AWS stations to be used as sensitive climate measurement stations into question.
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1 comment:
It rarely snows it Antarctica - it's actually a desert. The AWS are covered by snow blown over them. And it's not just the AWS getting buried - look at pics of any station, field hut, etc. The old American station at Wilkes is now almost entirely buried because there's been no one there to clear the blown snow away.
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