Larsemann Hills 3: Windmill Installation- Guest Blog

Anant Pande was a member of the 28th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica. He represented the Institute of Science, Mumbai. He is a marine biologist. He worked on Antarctic Krills, the staple food of nearly all animals living in the Antarctic Ocean. He is currently pursuing wildlife biology and Wildlife Institute of India. He can be contacted on http://www.indianwandererslife.blogspot.com/

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Among the other achievements, the installation of the first windmill by India at Antarctica must also be mentioned. The windmill installation at BHARTI was a tough task in the severe cold conditions and high winds. After installation, it was supposed to give enough power to the batteries to run the instruments placed in the melon huts. First a suitable rock which can support the huge structure was identified by the geologist (Mr. Ashish Nath, GSI) located in the direction of winds. A platform of cement was built on the rock by the masons and then the sockets were drilled to hold the base of the mill. It was installed on 27th January, 2009 by collective effort of our logistics staff and all team members.

Windmill Installation

In our journey from Larsemann to India bay, sport competitions were organized with both a view to promote sporting spirit and to pass the time creatively. Games of Table Tennis (singles/doubles), Carrom (singles/doubles), Cards (singles/doubles) and Chess were held. Every member participated in these games (Jamie, the Heli pilot from New Zealand participated in TT) and it was very enjoyable to see the sporting atmosphere in the rolling-pitching ship. Mr. KV Ramana Murthy (SoI) clearly swept most of the gold medals at stake and was adjudged Best Player of the team.

Mr. Murty receiving the award from the leader

We started our journey towards India bay from Larsemann Hills on 11th February and reached the destination on 20th Feb.
This was all I can tell in brief about our journey to Larsemann Hills. The construction for the 3rd station is going to start in the 29th expedition and expected to be finished in 3 years. Once the station is commissioned, the opportunity to see Antarctica will double with India having two permanent stations. The country has way to go in polar science.

Larsemann Hills 2: Visit to Kunlun and Davis- Guest Blog

Anant Pande was a member of the 28th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica. He represented the Institute of Science, Mumbai. He is a marine biologist. He worked on Antarctic Krills, the staple food of nearly all animals living in the Antarctic Ocean. He is currently pursuing wildlife biology and Wildlife Institute of India. He can be contacted on http://www.indianwandererslife.blogspot.com/
www.twitter.com/anantpande
anant_pande@rediffmail.com

Visit to Davis

During our near two-month stay at Larsemann Hills, we also got a chance to visit the nearby stations of different countries. The Chinese team invited us to visit the opening ceremony of their new station KUNLUN. A team of five people led by Mr. Ajay Dhar (Voyage Leader) visited the station on the occasion. We also got the chance to visit the magnificently built Australian station DAVIS and know about the research going on in their laboratories. I went to DAVIS on 11th February with 4 other team mates. The station leader Bill received us warmly and showed us around the station. The station was huge and had facilities for pursuing good quality of research. We also got to see the largest of seals, Elephant seals near to the station. On the way back, we landed on Hop’s Island, a site of penguin rookery. There were more than 5000 Adelie penguins on the island. The sight of so many penguins at a time was overwhelming.

Elephant Seals at Davis

Adelie Penguins at Hop Island

Larsemann Hills- I: Guest Blog

Anant Pande was a member of the 28th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica. He represented the Institute of Science, Mumbai. He is a marine biologist. He worked on Antarctic Krills, the staple food of nearly all animals living in the Antarctic Ocean. He is currently pursuing wildlife biology and Wildlife Institute of India. He can be contacted on http://www.indianwandererslife.blogspot.com/
www.twitter.com/anantpande
anant_pande@rediffmail.com

I went to Antarctica as a summer member in the third and the only team to go by ship. The team first went to the Larsemann area in East Antarctica (site for 3rd Indian Station) and then moved over to MAITRI.
We boarded our ship Emerald Sea on 4th of January, 2009 at Cape Town. The voyage was flagged off by Mr. Ajay Dhar, the Voyage Leader on 6th January with much halla gulla including the chanting of Bharat Mata ki jai from the Table Bay harbor, Cape Town port.

The Expedition Ship, Emerald Sea

The journey was fantastic and those like me who had been on a ship for the first time had the time of their life. We travelled for 11 days crossing all natural hurdles ( roaring forties, furious fifties and cold weather) and one fine morning of 17th January, woke up to see ourselves surrounded by pack ice in all directions. The ocean was painted white for miles around us and sun glared so hard that we could not look anywhere without shades. The scene was awesome and we were just 80 miles from the land of Antarctica.We went all around the ship and clicked happily making different poses.

Larsemann Hills as seen from the Ship

Next day the sorties were started off to BHARTI Island, the site for the 3rd Indian Station at Antarctica. We were divided into groups of four and sent to the island. Our group consisted of geologists (Mr Ashish Nath,GSI), meteorologists (Mr. Radheshyam, IMD, Saroj Sahu and Alok Gautam, IITM), Space physicists (Dr. Sandeep Oza & Deepak Maroo, SAC, Dr. Dabas, NPL and Jai Prakash Chaubey, SPL), Ice-core guys (Maha, Akshay, NCAOR), Environmentalists (Bhupesh Sharma and Manoj Kumar, SIIR & Roseline and Neelu, NCAOR), Palaeo-climatologists (Vartika, BSIP), Zoologists (Dr. Rajan, ZSI and me, ISc), Wildlife Biologists (Dr Sathyakumar and Dr Sivakumar, WII), Surveyors (KV Ramana Murty, Maheshwar Singh, Manjeet Singh and Vimal Kishore, SoI) and Logistics ( Devendra kumar, Devendra Sharma, Trinagu and Koli, BRO). There were others who were working both on ship as well as land like Hari and Sanjeeva Sharma (NHO) and one purely ship-based (Nuncio, NCAOR).

Melon Huts at Bharti

Apple Huts at Bharti

Antarctic glacier 'thinning fast'

By David Shukman,
Science and environment correspondent,
BBC News
Courtsey: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8200680.stm

David Shukman joined a team surveying Pine Island glacier in 2004One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago, according to research seen by the BBC.
A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.
Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.
The work by British scientists appears in Geophysical Research Letters.
The team was led by Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London (UCL).
Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.

The rate of loss is fastest in the centre of the glacier and the concern is that if the process continues, the glacier may break up and start to affect the ice sheet further inland.
One of the authors, Professor Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, said that the melting from the centre of the glacier would add about 3cm to global sea level.
"But the ice trapped behind it is about 20-30cm of sea level rise and as soon as we destabilise or remove the middle of the glacier we don't know really know what's going to happen to the ice behind it," he told BBC News.
"This is unprecedented in this area of Antarctica. We've known that it's been out of balance for some time, but nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier."

The highlighted area shows a dense concentration of crevasses along one edge of the glacier. Large numbers of deep crevasses are a sign that parts of the glacier are moving rapidly.
Pine Island glacier has been the subject of an intense research effort in recent years amid fears that its collapse could lead to a rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
Five years ago, I joined a flight by the Chilean Navy and Nasa to survey Pine Island glacier with radar and laser equipment.
The 11-hour round-trip from Punta Arenas included a series of low-level passes over the massive ice stream which is 20 miles wide and in places more than one mile thick.
Back then, the researchers on board were concerned at the speed of change they were detecting. This latest study of the satellite data will add to the alarm among polar specialists.

BBC News visited the Pine Island glacier five years ago
This comes as scientists in the Arctic are finding evidence of dramatic change. Researchers on board a Greenpeace vessel have been studying the northwestern part of Greenland.
One of those taking part, Professor Jason Box of Ohio State University, has been surprised by how little sea ice they encountered in the Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada.
He has also set up time lapse cameras to monitor the massive Petermann glacier. Huge new cracks have been observed and it's expected that a major part of it could break off imminently.
Professor Box told BBC News: "The science community has been surprised by how sensitive these large glaciers are to climate warming. First it was the glaciers in south Greenland and now as we move further north in Greenland we find retreat at major glaciers. It's like removing a cork from a bottle."