Saturday
16th January
From
Michael Burton.....
About
the hardest thing about writing a diary entry is remembering
the day of the week - there is no reference point down here
with which to hang your outlook of life upon!
We've
had some mixed weather, going from miserable to gorgeous.
A couple of days ago it got as bad as it can get at Pole.
Bad weather always means its warm (Around -20C) but it results
from 'moist' air entering the Antarctic continent from the
coast, bringing winds from the wrong direction, fog, and a
stiff breeze. Its the latter which makes moving around somewhat
difficult - and indeed I took the shuttle bus out to the Dark
Sector a couple of times instead of walking.
The
SODAR (our acoustic radar) didn't like the comditions either
and couldn't tell us anything about the boundary layer turbulence,
presumably because there was so much of it that it scattered
the signal every which way but back to the detector. I've
also found that the local computers are *very* much slower
than my pet machine back at UNSW. Its taking about 10 times
as long to do the same data reductions with it as it takes
me at home, making me wonder whether, even with 24 hours a
day to work in, I'll manage to actually reduce the data I
have with me from last year!
We
had an interesting Science Talk the other night, on the Greenhouse
Effect. The Pole is ground zero for establishing the baseline
for global change, and is showing clear and accelerating upward
trends in CO2 content of the atmosphere. Its quite clear there
is going to be a temperature rise over the next few hundred
years for us, its just a matter of how much it will be and
whether we can slow it down.
I
had some trouble sleeping last night, so I got up at 4am,
which is when I can catch the fast satellite, for transferring
data back and forth from Pole to UNSW, and then went to be
and fortunately fell asleep immediately.
Today
the bad weather finally cleared, bringing in a beautiful blue
sky with little wind. Its only -25 still and it actually feels
quite hot walking out across the runway to the Dark Sector.
Ice
haloes are caused by ice, not water, and it is on the high
plateau where the best displays are seen. In fact its all
got to do with the refraction of light off hexagonal plates
and pillars of ice, and its quite amazing the variety of patterns
that two simple shapes can make.
Several
of the computers at the Pole are named after well known horses,
for no particular reason. The first winterover to use this
particular computer was an Aussie and he just liked the name!
Michael
Saturday
16th January - The End
From
John Storey.....
The
subject title alludes both to this being my final email report
for the season and is also an apt description of McMurdo.
Even after just a week at South Pole, McMurdo is a grim return
to reality. I hope to be here no more than 36 hours. Within
15 minutes of getting off the bus, one is confronted by:
1.
Dirt, which is not as nice, and not nearly as white, as snow.
2. Keys, which are an extraordinarily anti-social invention.
3. An absence of keys, to useful things like the computer
room.
4. A dining room with no food in it (seriously!) until midnight.
5. Computers that require a user name and password, which
one does not
have. (Although hacking around the security is very satisfying.)
Nevertheless,
today was a good day at the Pole. By noon the sky was completely
cloudless and there was zero wind. Although it was -28C, it
was very pleasant. By 1 am last night Al Fowler had installed
the new cryo-head in Abu, and was pumping it down. He seemed
happy.
The
sodar continues to sing its merry song, and Daniel is exploring
ways of improving the signal to noise. These include better
grounding systems and worrying about flags and things. Matt
has packed up all the parts associated with the old experiments
(NISM, MISM etc.) ready for sending them to Sydney.
I
gave a guided tour of the AASTO to Charlie Kaminski, who will
be the winter-over looking after both the AASTO and the Abu/SPIREX
experiment. I think this was the only useful thing I did today.
The
webcam was at +52C today, a stunning demonstration of the
Greenhouse Effect.* Andre has suggested a solution involving
drilling holes and sticking corks in them. Could I propose
a less invasive solution: Matt or Daniel, please go to the
kitchen and chat up the cooks. Relieve them of approx one
square foot of aluminum foil. Cut a hole in the middle for
the camera to peer through, then wrap it around the webcam
bubble. Cut another little hole so you can read what the temperature
is!
(*Of
course greenhouses don't work because of the greenhouse effect.
Rather, they supress convection. Likewise the webcam housing.)
By
the way, have you ever wondered what happens if you stick
a CD in a microwave oven? The result is very pretty and probably
has a lot to do with standing waves and mode structure. A
fine example of this modern artform is hanging up in the control
room for SPIREX. One can't help speculating about the result
of the *opposite* experiment - namely what will happen if
I shove a frozen chook into the CD drive? This experiment
was in fact nearly conducted on a McMurdo computer an hour
or so ago, until I found a way around the login security.
I
will close down my "magnolia@spole.gov" account
within a week or so, so please send all future mail to UNSW.
Thanks to everyone who's helped this season, thanks to the
patient readers who have waded through these diaries to the
bitter end, and good luck Michael, Matt and Daniel who have
to bring the experiments to a satisfactory conclusion.
John
 
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