In Christchurch, New Zealand

Irises and rhododendrons bloom in brilliant yellows and pinks, and European goldfinches sing, rejoicing the warm sunny skies. It is a wonderful late-spring day in Christchurch, New Zealand, the largest city on the South Island of the country, a seemingly laid-back town compared to the hubbub of Seattle, and a place still recovering and rebuilding from the major earthquakes circa 2011. My colleagues and I left Seattle on Thursday. Three flights later, the longest a 12-hour stint over the Pacific Ocean and the over international dateline, we arrived yesterday morning.

It was strangely moving to me when we touched down in Auckland, New Zealand for a layover during the sunrise after the long trek over the Pacific. I had never been to New Zealand, much less the Southern Hemisphere. The landscapes of New Zealand have existed within my imagination, from maps and photographs, but to observe them first-hand made me feel a combination of awe, appreciation, curiosity, and almost freedom. The world that I know has expanded, and I wondered at this place and its story that I am only superficially familiar with, and what other places in this world I have yet to know. I also wondered how I will feel when I see Antarctica for the first time, now very soon.

On the plane ride, I also reminisced about the goodbyes to friends and family in Seattle, which were difficult, some surprisingly more than I had anticipated. It is a bit strange to be at the juxtaposition of the sadness of leaving something behind and moving toward something so new and exciting. Coincidentally, as seems to happen when needed in life, I encountered this quote by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche on change and staying present, which cultivated my curiosity and lessened my anxious mind for what this next step in my journey holds: “A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that – every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing everything as new.”

Since arriving in New Zealand, I found myself wandering around the city and exploring the food here with my colleagues, running through the local botanical gardens, worrying about losing my duffel bag with all my cold-weather clothes en route to Christchurch (it never made it on my New Zealand domestic flight; alas, it was found!), and gathering more extreme cold-weather gear at the U.S. Antarctic Program’s Clothing Distribution Center (CDC). These clothes include the classic “Big Red” jacket that you might be familiar seeing most Antarctic occupants wear, a hardy down outer-layer made for the coldest of conditions. Among other observations, it was interesting, but not surprising, to witness the huge gender discrepancy among Antarctic travelers. Perhaps ten women were present at this particular training and day of clothing distribution, with maybe forty or fifty men. Also interesting? Meeting others who are also journeying to Antarctica, some contractors, some scientists. We ask each other the usual questions: where are you headed and what are you doing? Where are you from? But these seem to mean something more down here, and there is a certain camaraderie that comes about naturally from going to a destination like no other.

I try to explain what our goals are down in Antarctica. The main question we want to answer: What was the size, configuration, and behavior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet during recent warm periods? Easy to answer? No. But that is why we are going to Hercules Dome, as part of a multi-year field campaign. This year, we will be using ice-penetrating radar to survey the stratigraphy (i.e., layering) of the ice sheet and bed topography with the main objective to determine a prime location for the next deep U.S. ice core.

So, what is this ice-penetrating radar? The concept is loosely similar to x-rays of the human body: you emit energy into the ice sheet, it reflects back due to changes in density of the snow or ice, or reflects more strangely off of other features like crevasses. You can record how long it takes to do this to paint a picture of what the internal stratigraphy of an ice sheet look like (like this radargram above).

And, notably, Hercules Dome is our destination because it is unique. It sits very close to “The Bottleneck” between the West Antarctic and East Antarctic Ice Sheets, and may have been adjacent to the coast during the last warm period of the earth. It is unknown whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed (i.e., completely retreated) during the last interglacial (warm) period 130,000-116,000 years before present. Since it holds 3.3 sea-level equivalent meters of ice, we want to know how it will respond to current and future warming. Interestingly, much of the bed of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet deepens inland, meaning that with additional loss of its ice shelves due to atmospheric and oceanic warming, the ice sheet flow itself would accelerate near the coast and thin. This thinning could then propagate inland in a dynamical loss of ice from the interior as well in a sort of feedback. At Hercules Dome, (1) an ice core may record changes in West Antarctica during the last warm period, and (2) the geophysics here are potentially a valuable indicator of ice-elevation changes (and thus dynamics of ice flow) of the ice sheets with the goal of understanding more about the dynamics of West Antarctica.

We are to deploy to McMurdo Station tomorrow morning. Yikes! It is actually here. The trek is about a five-hour flight on a C17 military-transport aircraft. Although there is a chance that we will “boomerang,” a situation when the airplane turns around mid-flight back to Christchurch due to weather or mechanical issues, my colleagues and I remain hopeful. And while we were recently informed that little if any scientific cargo has made it down to McMurdo Station yet because of flight issues, we remain optimistic of a successful transition into the deep field. Hoping for a safe and successful trip there!

Until next time,

Annika