Welcome back from Antarctica.
Thank you.
How long were you there?
Two and a half months.
But in the summer? How cold does the Antarctic summer get?
Well, you could think of it a bit like Norwegian Easter weather. People wore t-shirts when the sun was shining in the middle of the day. And then maybe down to minus 10-15 degrees Celsius at night. So actually, quite warm, warmer than we all think.
And you had the Climate-Ninja with you - will there be a new Climate-Ninja book?
I need to get my head above water first. It's a bit much right now. But, I have taken some pictures just in case. I've been on the blog providing updates on what the Climate-Ninja has been doing. I wrote as long as I could, but when we went out on the ice, there was no time.
Elin has previously written three books about the Climate-Ninja and their scientific adventures in Greenland, Antarctica and the Norwegian Fjords, together with her colleague Petra Langebroek.
Life on the Ice
What's it like being out on the ice for five weeks? Do you get a bit of cabin fever?
No, I haven't suffered from that, really. It was very intensive; we worked all the time. At least a twelve-hour workday every day, whether it was New Year's Eve or Christmas Eve. So, we were quite tired.
To deploy a rig, you first have to drill a hole, which can be quite demanding. The water is heated to a temperature of 88 degrees Celsius. High-pressure pumps spray 110 liters of water per minute in order to drill a hole with a diameter of 30 centimeters, and can drill up to one-and-a-half meter per minute.
It's physical work deploying rigs. At one site we were at, the ice is 200 meters thick, at the other, it's 400 meters. So, you have to drill through that, says Elin.
And when we get to where we're going to drill, there's nothing there. We come with all our equipment in a large container. Then we have to build everything up. We use hot water to drill. So first we have to melt the water, and then pump it down.
How long does it take to deploy a rig?
We were on the ice for five weeks and drilled a total of three holes and deployed three rigs. The first hole took much longer to drill, because we had to do everything from scratch. When we started on hole number two, we could use what we had built up and transport it, so, it took a bit less time. And hole number three was right next to number 2 so it went very quickly.
The ice shelf in Antarctica may look flat on the surface, but there's quite a bit of topography with channels that stretch through the ice.
The second rig is in a channel, so we can study processes and how the circulation is there, and how it differs from one side of the channel to the other. Some of the questions we hope to answer are how these channels are formed and how they are maintained.
In the last hole, Elin and her team deployed instruments that measure right under the ice.
There we measure heat flux and turbulence, and how heat is transported up towards the ice. It's exciting, lots of exciting data.
Troll Observation Network
The team on the Fimbul Ice Shelf is part of a larger infrastructure project from the Norwegian Research Council, the Troll Observation Network (TONe), which includes atmospheric, cryospheric, marine, and terrestrial observations from the areas around the Norwegian research station Troll in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. The new rigs are to replace similar rigs that were deployed back in 2009.
There's already a long time series from these two locations that we can build upon. Last time, they only had instruments at two levels. Now we have many more and somewhat more advanced instruments, so we measure more parameters.
After 50 days in the field, the Fimbul-team deployed over 50 instruments. Antarctica is a significant regulator in the climate system, and what happens there affects the rest of the globe. Therefore, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of how the ice and the sea beneath it are changing.
What we study is the circulation under the ice shelf. How the ocean currents bring warm water under the ice and melt the ice from below. One of the rigs is at the threshold where the deepest connection between the sea under the ice shelf and the sea outside the ice shelf is, so we can control what kind of water comes in and see how it varies from year to year, and over the course of a year.
The goal with TONe is to build up an infrastructure so that research institutions in different fields can collaborate.
We are building up research infrastructure, i.e., installations that produce data that everyone can use, says Darelius.
TONe is led by the Norsk Polarinstitutt • Norwegian Polar Institute, in collaboration with the University of Bergen (UiB), University of Oslo, NILU, NORSAR, NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, British Antarctic Survey, University of Leeds, and Washington State University.
Research on the Ice - Satellites, Rigs, and Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles
In addition to measuring equipment and instruments on the Fimbul Ice Shelf, similar rigs have also been deployed on the continental slope near the ice front. Researchers can link data from the different rigs together to get a more comprehensive picture of what's happening out in the ocean and what's coming in under the ice.
An ROV is a kind of submarine with a cord, so you can sit up on the ice and control it. It went down into the channel and swam back and forth and has mapped in detail what the underside of the ice looks like, Elin tells us.
It was absolutely fantastic to be able to stand up on the ice and see what it looks like underneath and see how it changes as you swim across the channel.
In a year, research technicians from TONe will return to the rigs to collect data and check that everything is functioning. The goal is for the instruments to be able to operate independently for a long time.
The idea is that it can be autonomous for many years going forward, and that most of the data is sent home via satellite. So that you don't have to go back, says Elin.
But what about Elin? Will she go back on the ice?
For the family's wellbeing, I say no, I have no concrete plans.
What was the best thing about coming home?
Something as simple as sleeping in a bed in a dark room. It was lovely!