It has also been a busy summer for the land-based side of the project. The land-based measurements will be done from a tractor train, travelling over Pine Island Glacier and its drainage basin, so the vehicles group has been busy preparing the equipment for this traverse. Two Kässbohrer PistenBully 300 Polar tractors, designated “Polar 1″ and “Polar 2″, have been bought to tow the equipment, scientists, technicians, and of course fuel, around the glacier. These will be sent to Antarctica on board RRS Ernest Shackleton, departing the UK in early November, and will be tested during the annual resupply of Halley Station before being taken around the continent to the Amundsen Sea. Here they will be landed on Cape Flying Fish on the Abbott Ice Shelf and driven up to the first depot, where they will be left over the winter.

The accommodation for the intrepid vehicle engineers is a comfy 20-foot container that will be towed behind one of the tractors. This “accommodation caboose” has been fitted out with all mod cons, including a luxurious shower pod as well as seating, cooking, and sleeping areas. During the traverse, most people will be sleeping in tents, but the caboose should be a useful dining and social space – and refuge – during the journey.

The iSTAR accommodation caboose at BAS, Cambridge.

Fuel transportation is a major issue in Antarctica; using airplanes to deliver fuel is possible, but in remote areas they need a lot of fuel themselves to get into the field and back again, reducing the useful amount that they can transport. So bringing the fuel in by sea and transporting it overland is ideal, and we have adapted a tested design from the US Antarctic Program, in which rubber fuel bladders are strapped to thick sheets of plastic, “poly sleds”, which are towed behind the tractors. Each bladder holds around 5700 litres, and four will be towed behind each tractor. An advantage of this system is also that the sleds can be folded and stowed away after the bladders are emptied.

Fuel bladder in Cambridge. Palaeoclimatologist added for scale.

At this stage, almost everything is ready to be sent south. In the next weeks, the vehicles and equipment will be sent to the ship, and will start their journey to Antarctica, where they are scheduled to arrive on Christmas Eve. On the ocean side, the science cruise is scheduled to leave Lyttelton, near Christchurch, New Zealand in mid-January, and will be in the Amundsen Sea during the month of February. We will post updates to this blog during the field season, so watch this space!

Fuel sledges in Antarctica. Photo by Simon Garrod.

The troughs crossing the shelf break are thought to be the main conduits of warmer Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) onto the shelf and down to the surrounding ice shelves. Therefore we aim to place moorings in the main trough leading to Pine Island Bay, farther east, next season. In addition, we’ll place moorings farther south, closer to the ice shelf itself. These moorings will measure currents and temperatures, giving us more information about the processes bringing CDW down to the ice shelves.

The map below shows the NBP10-05 cruise track, and the location of our two moorings. The main project on NBP10-05, led by Dr. Patricia Yager from the University of Georgia, was investigating the large spring phytoplankton bloom, which takes place annually in the Amundsen Sea Polynya. You can read more about that work here.