Polar Passport

SAR Training

There aren't many accidents in Antarctica - people take safety very seriously. But it's important to know what to do if something does go wrong - especially for the small group who stay here all winter.

As well as their normal jobs on station, some of them are members of the Search And Rescue (SAR) team. Last week they had a training exercise organised by Heather, the Field Training Officer, and I helped by playing the casualty.

We found a small ice cliff, and pretended that I had fallen down it and was lying injured at the bottom. Heather then radioed the base, and called the SAR team away from their usual jobs to come and 'rescue' me.

SAR team member Brendan writing down my medical condition, while I was in the rescue bag.

My job wasn't difficult, just pretending to be injured, but I did get pretty cold, lying on the ground waiting for them to arrive. Luckily they are well trained, and knew to immediately wrap me in a warm rescue bag. When I was warm and safe, they put me in a stretcher and lifted me up the ice using ropes and pulleys. Quite exciting, but I couldn't see anything from inside the rescue bag!

This photo shows the SAR team work with the ropes they used to pull me up the ice cliff.

The Aurora Australis left Hobart last Friday to come and get us. We have a map on the wall in the dining room, plotting its position every day as it gets closer. You can check it too, online. Everyone has been busy organising cargo, so we will be ready when it arrives in the middle of next week.

Enjoying the last week at Davis,

Dan

Looking Up

As the summer is ending, the Sun is now below the horizon for about eight hours per day. I can hardly believe that just two weeks ago, when I was in the Grove Mountains, the sun just touched the horizon, and we had 24 hour daylight. But that was 500 km further south, and the seasons move quickly!

So we have a real dark night again now, and when the sky is clear the stars are wonderful. We've even seen some faint auroras. But recently I was thrilled to see the Davis LIDAR working.

LIDAR stands for "Light Detection and Ranging", which is the same as RADAR, except that it uses light instead of radio waves. That means it can look for different things: radar can detect bigger heavier objects, like planes, or rain; lidar can study the air itself, how cold it is and how much wind there is.

It is particularly interesting to measure the temperature of the atmosphere high above us, because that is where we expect to see some of the effects of global climate change. As greenhouse gases make the lower atmosphere warmer, they also make the higher atmosphere colder. So the lidar will help scientists test their predictions of climate change. You can read more about it on the AAD website.

The lidar is one of many interesting science studies being done at Davis, but the reason I wanted to write about it is that it looks so cool!

Photo by Mark Tell, courtesy AAD.

When it's running, a bright green laser points straight up into the sky. It looks like a real light sabre, or an enormous beanstalk. And it goes up and up and up... it makes measurements up to almost 100 km altitude, but when you look up, it just disappears into the distance, where the stars are.

Happy stargazing,

Dan

Hobart

The Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart is the government agency that runs Australia's Antarctic programme. They keep the stations running, take care of all the transport with ships, planes and helicopters, and support all the science projects.

I arrived here at the beginning of the week, and spent Monday at the Antarctic Division offices. We had meetings to plan some details of our work for the summer, got some maps of the places I'll be going, and most importantly, got all the warm clothes I'll need. Warm insulated boots, two sets of thermals, three pairs of gloves, four pairs of socks, windproof jacket and pants, snow goggles, several other things, and a big kit bag to carry it all in. It's good gear - I don't think I'll be cold.

We had expected to leave on Tuesday, but the icebreaker needed some repairs after its last trip, so we had a few days delay. Even though we all want to go to Antarctica, the extra days in Hobart are very nice - a chance to relax in warm weather, do some last-minute shopping, go for a walk in the bush around Mt Wellington, and enjoy a choice of food and drink that we won't have for the next few months.

Now the repairs have been done, the ship has refuelled, and we'll leave on Friday afternoon. You can follow our progress southwards on this map, and maybe I'll be able to use the ship's email to send a report about how it's going.

Heading south at last,

Dan