Month: December 2025

Back at Basen*

LISA is alive! Kind of. We had a really good field test of the system in this, our first week in Antarctica (though thank goodness for satellite wifi connection** to the rest of the world so LISA’s genius creator Helle Kjær could assist in troubleshooting). It was a bit of a struggle and I would say we came out partial winners, with a much deeper understanding of how the box is actually put together and more importantly some really interesting data (yay!) that Clement is busy processing already – I’m very excited to see how it turns out as it will help to direct our following field sorties.

This is the first field deployment of LISA in Antarctica, and even if she didn’t give up all the secrets of the snow, it’s still an achievement worth celebrating that we got half of it, and an interesting half too.

We chose a coring site around 60km from Wasa, so it was a long slow snow-scooter tour up Plogbreen (the plough glacier – named after our neighbouring nunatak Plogen, the plough) and on to the flat plateau of Ritscher Flya at about 1000m elevation.

Wind sculpts snow into ridges called sastrugi. We had quite a bit of fresh snow at this site while we were there. Sometimes it’s hard to work out where the snow surface actually is.

It was a pretty wind and snowy site, in a katabatic wind zone (thankfully not too strong on this trip), which was intentional, as one of the aims of our study is the effects of strong winds on snow accumulation. As preparing to leave took most of the day (especially doing the chemistry mixes for LISA), we headed up in the afternoon and then stayed out overnight in these fantastic little cabins on skis.

Our field camp: sledge full of equipment, the blue cabin on a sledge (an ark) is one of our living quarters and the pyramid shaped, orange Scott tent is our bathroom.

The Polar Research institute in Sweden calls them arks and they are really a very nice solution to the problem of cold and wind and trying to work in quite extreme conditions. Pulled by a snow-scooter and with a stove inside for melting snow and heating, they’re really very cosy to sleep in and it makes a big difference to be able to warm up when for example you’ve been sitting in a snow pit at -15C with a hefty wind chill on top and are covered in spin drift snow (as me how I know).

We were greeted by this beautiful halo around the sun upon waking, with sun dogs on either side, caused by the ice crystals in the sky. In fact we nick-named the site diamond dust because of the clear sky precipitation on the first morning.

We soon got into a good rhythm with Henrik driving the coring, Clement logging and Ninis and myself assisting with the cores.

Starting the first core, (l to r the rest of the field team, Henrik, Clement and Ninis)

And then it was time to get LISA going and a very long and slightly frustrating day followed. Thankfully, by bedtime and having reconstructed quite a lot of the inner tubing of the box, we got LISA ready for work the next day.

The LISA box with melting ice core on top and computer recording the data as it appears. The pop-up fishing tent was essential for working at this site in the cold winds. Without wind chill it was around -10C outside, preventing ice crystals from forming in the chemistry lines and reagents is also a concern, but the arks also simplify things.

I dug a snow pit – always one of my favourite activities, it’s good to get your hands in the snow and really feel what is going on, and we identified some really intriguing layers. Lots more work to be done there to work out what is going on.

As added entertainment, Ninis was interviewed live from the top of the ice sheet by Swedish TV live from the fieldcamp (check out God Morgon Sverige on TV4, 23rd December if you’re interested). However, after 2 nights out it was time to pack up and head back, 3 cores worth of data richer, for a shower, laundry and a Christmas Eve day off.

On Christmas eve daytime it was my turn with a brief 2 minutes to explain our project on Danish TV2 news (at 12.15 CET in case you have an account and would like to see me looking wind swept). Juleaften, Christmas Eve, is the big day of celebration in the Nordic countries, so we took an almost day off, doing some washing, cleaning the living modules and enjoying plenty of good food courtesy of the Swedish chef Raymond who prepared a Christmas dinner feast later, perfect after a long Christmas hike over the nunatak.

Field Photos

Given the current state of the US administration I think it’s worth thinking about what services we use, to become less dependent on US tech and social media companies. Therefore, I’m sharing photos over on pixelfed while we’re out here, in case you want to see more field photos, though sharing is a bit intermittent as it depends on the internet link and due to the expense of the data, we’re trying not to use too much.

I am also posting over on blue sky, though there is much that makes me uneasy about that platform, so I will keep posting on the fediscience server on mastodon too (and indeed the quality of interaction is often better there strangely, given I feel that the platform is smaller than blue sky).

*The Swedish research station Wasa is located on a nunatak in Antarctica called Basen (it’s pronounced Baasen, like the sound a sheep makes in english)

**Yes we are on starlink. It’s incredibly impressive performance wise, but I’d rather not be supporting the nazi man-child, the sooner Eutel Oneweb makes an alternative for users like us, the better, though preferably without this polluting a footprint in low earth orbit. In fact if any EUTEL folks are reading this, I’d be delighted to test out a lightweight system for polar field scientists for you 🙂

Screenshot from satellitemap.space showing the position of the tens of thousands of starlink satellites currently orbiting earth. Check out their visualiser to see other satellites!

Settling in..

It’s been a good start to the field season, incredible competent logistics, great field equipment, super helpful colleagues and incredible food by the station cook. For the first time ever I suspect I’ll be putting on weight in the field. But everything also takes a lot longer in Antarctica so little in the way of actual scientific results to report yet. Nevertheless we’ve some tantalising hints of some interesting processes and we’ve been settling in to the expedition frame of mind.

We had a very good flight from Oslo, a small delay in Prague notwithstanding, very friendly cabin crew and 3 seats each to lie across meant a relatively good sleep and a decent amount of work finalised on route.

Clouds over Namibia’s Etosha National Park. We basically crossed a third of the world to get here. A carbon debt I’ll be paying for years…

Similarly, in Cape Town, mostly spent in a hotel room finishing off reports, except for dinner and an occasional walk. And then a very smooth and easy 5 hour flight first to Troll, to be met by welcoming Norwegian colleagues and a vintage Basler (a DC3 airframe dating back to 1944, but with new engines – I’ve seen it in Greenland before – it still works!), that took us more or less directly to Wasa, where our Swedish colleagues met us on the glacier runway. And what a welcome! Everyone has been extremely helpful and very friendly.

The “vintage” Basler, an unpressurized aircraft. Very fun to fly in and beautiful views..

Operating in Antarctica is a bit like working in Greenland and also not at all like Greenland. In both places you have to be pretty flexible, self reliant and able to work in difficult conditions and across broad teams. It’s just much more extreme in terms of isolation, logistics, costs and everything else here in Antarctica.

The nunataks of Dronning Maud Land: it’s a big and very beautiful place

We are extremely fortunate to be so well- supported by such a great crew and it is important to me that we repay that investment with some excellent science results.

So far though, we’ve been laying the groundwork, getting our safety training done, testing some new coring equipment, unpacking and testing the LISA box and learning how to use the arks (a kind of plastic shell on skis that we will use for camping in while out of the station) and preparing for what I believe is sometimes called “deep field” (perhaps a touch melodramatic for what is basically camping).

Safety training: testing a snow anchor for crevasse rescue purposes

We’ve also tested some new drilling equipment, finding some very interesting firn features in the process, including several thick ice lenses in a region we didn’t expect.

Stacked firn cores on the glacier.

There have been a few anxious moments around our old friend LISA. She is a complex machine with many pieces that can go wrong but finally at 9.30 this evening Clément managed to get her working. In a tiny “lab” but one with a great view. A huge relief all round (and hopefully field operation will be more straightforward now we’ve had some practice).

  Tomorrow will be mostly packing up and preparation for a few days away, so Christmas Eve will likely find us camping out on a glacier somewhere working away. Weather permitting of course. So far we’ve been pretty lucky with that and we need to make the most of it while it lasts.

So that was a quick field update, it’s been pretty busy and a bit weird to think I’ve only been here 3 days so far. I’ve already slipped into field mode and slightly lost track of time.

The next update will probably be after Christmas, but I’m posting pictures as we go along to my pixelfed account. There are also some nice entries on the official iQ2300 expedition blog.

Heading South

But not for the warmth..

Tomorrow I’m taking the first stage of the journey to Antarctica, ironically enough though, I’m heading south by first heading north, to Oslo, where the Norwegian Polar Institute have organised an almost direct flight from Oslo to Troll station with a short stopover in Cape Town.

Bags almost packed and ready to go…

I’m super excited and also suffering a little trepidation. It will be my first field visit to Antarctica, even though I’ve worked in Greenland for many years, the differences will, I imagine be pretty huge…

Drygalski Mountains, Dronning Maud Land 29th December 2024, from Sentinel 2 processed by Copernicus.

We also have a very ambitious work plan with pretty novel and experimental equipment. It’s going to be interesting to see how much of what we have planned actually works. Small points of failure can destroy a field season. Though in our case, I’m pretty confident we’ll bring something back, even if it is not as much as I hope. And I’m always a little over-ambitious, but surprisingly often it pays off.

The opportunity to participate in iQ2300 first came up almost 3 years ago, so it’s been on the cards for a while and fieldwork has been on my mind all year. It will be nice to finally get going, even if I don’t necessarily feel ready in spite of the long run-up.

I never really feel ready for fieldwork, but at some point you just have to get on with it, like the penguins nervously clustering on the edge of the iceberg, wondering if there is a leopard seal in the water. Eventually someone jumps (or is pushed), and then they all go in and usually, the water is lovely. Although in our case, I doubt I will even get to see any penguins, the Wasa station, my home for the next 6 weeks or so is rather a long way for the sea. In the meantime the first groups are already out, opening the station ready for our arrival next week, deploying weather stations, running ice penetrating radar and checking out the equipment we’ll need to use. The signal groups we have are no longer just coordination but field updates direct from Antarctica – a miracle of telecommunications that we don’t even think about anymore!

The Autumn has also been far too hectic with my eternal inability to say no to interesting opportunities challenging everyone around me and especially myself. Will I ever learn? I remain extremely grateful for the team at DMI and at home for keeping things ticking over.

However, it has also felt like a sequence of tasks to tick off while the grand départ gets closer, annual meeting, tick, Hackathon, tick, panel meeting, tick and then eventually, annual report, tick, expense claims, tick, Christmas presents, yep, and finally tomorrow may actually come. Hence though, the notable lack of updates on here, I have had to find some slack somewhere on these informal little pieces that I’m unsure anyone reads have definitely been a casualty.

I’m not sure much is going to change the next couple of months either. But I will try to post at least occasionally, work schedule, weather and internet access permitting.

But first it’s time for a little Christmas hygge with my incredible family and my lovely husband who have never asked me not to go..

Danish æbleskiver and gløgg by candle light, perfect for a dark December evening, bring on the 24 hour daylight…

As ever I’m grateful to the Swedish Polar Secretariat for giving me and the team the opportunity to participate in this field season, as well as the Novo Nordisk Fund whose PRECISE challenge grant has also helped us to pay some of the other costs.