Wind Power in Antarctica

New Zealand's Scott Base Wind Turbines

I was talking to my Mom on the phone this morning and she inquired about the use of wind power in Antarctica, so I thought it would be a good topic for a blog post. There are currently three bases on the continent that have installed wind turbines. These include the New Zealand Scott Base, the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Station and the Australian Mawson Base. See the following links for information on each of these renewable energy programs.

http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/scott-base/ross-island-wind-energy

http://www.antarcticstation.org/station/zero_emission/

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/living-and-working/stations/mawson/mawson-electrical-energy

From what I have heard, the New Zealand 3 turbine installation provides enough energy to power all of Scott Base and about 18% of the US McMurdo Station (the US and New Zealand programs share a lot of resources due to the close proximity of the two).

Castle Rock

Today Julien (he works on the Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System Project - the model that I use for my disseration research) and I hiked up to Castle Rock. The hike is about a 6 mile round trip and leaves out of McMurdo. The goal of the hike was to reach the top of this rock.

Castle Rock - photo courtesy of Julien Nicolas

My first thought when I saw Castle Rock was that it belongs somewhere in Utah, not Ross Island, Antarctic. My second thought was "how are we ever going to get to the top of that?" Approaching the Rock did not give me much reassurance.


As we rounded the backside of the Rock we found a trail and the rope system that the McMurdo mountaineers have set up. We very carefully made our way to the top and were rewarded with some amazing views.

It was quite windy and cold at the top, so we did not stay long before heading back to McMurdo. Although, even though it was cold and windy, it felt great to get out of McMurdo and see something new.

Photo courtesy of Julien Nicolas

Finishing Up

Our season has been a success. This week we made it to the last two stations, Ferrell and Willie Field. At Ferrell, we installed a duplicate station at the site. The original station at this site has the old style AWS equipment on the tower. During our visit, we installed a second tower about 30 ft to the east of the original tower. We installed the new style AWS equipment on this tower and will use it to compare the measurements between the old style and the new style AWS. At Willie Field we installed a new AWS system (remember that we removed the one that was not working at this site at the beginning of the season).

In the meantime, we've cleaned up the lab, returned all of our gear and packed our cargo for the winter. We are scheduled to fly to New Zealand on Monday. I am excited for some warmer weather and to see my husband on Friday!

The two stations at Ferrell

Tall Tower!

We have had a great week of flying. We replaced the Gill AWS, swapped out an aerovane at the Marilyn AWS, installed the instruments on Tall Tower (Alexander AWS) and switched the Minna Bluff AWS over to a Freewave transmitter.

The Tall Tower installation was an exciting day. The Tall Tower project has turned into quite the "thing" in McMurdo. When people around town see someone from our team, they will often throw their arms up in the air and yell, "Tall Tower!". I think that there are many people on the base that are anxious for this project to be a success. Although, as has been proven in past seasons, the site is a difficult one to fly into. It is about 100 miles from McMurdo on the Ross Ice Shelf. This area is prone to dense fog for days on end. We had two days of weather cancellations before attempting to get to the site. The morning of our flight, the Fixed Wing coordinators (the department that coordinates the flight schedule for the Twin Otters) called and said that the weather at Tall Tower did not look good, but that we would do a flyby. If the weather had cleared up, we'd land. Otherwise, we would travel on to the Marilyn AWS and complete that work (we had about 30 minutes of work to do at this site). Then we would fly back to Tall Tower to see if the weather had cleared. We were slightly concerned about this schedule because we calculated that we would need about 8 hours of ground time at Tall Tower in order to complete everything. In the end, we figured that getting into the sit for a shorter period of time was better than not getting there are all.

We took off for Tall Tower with 2 riggers and a UNAVCO person (we were using one of their power supplies for the site) to help us with the installation. We are so grateful that these people were able to accompany us in the field. We never would have been able to complete the installation without them. Upon arriving at Tall Tower, the entire area was covered in fog. One of the riggers was able to see the top of the Tower through the fog (which means the fog was nearly 100 ft deep), but there was no opening for us to land. We headed on to the Marilyn site and completed our work there. When we arrived back at Tall Tower there was a small opening in the fog that allowed the pilots to land. We were given 6 hours of ground time, so we worked very hard to accomplish everything in time. The riggers worked on checking and realigning the guides for the tower before installing the upper four levels of instruments (the upper four levels included four aerovanes, four temperature sensors, a relative humidity sensor and a radiation sensor). The rest of us worked on installing the power supply (which had three large solar panels and six 100 amp-hr batteries), prepping the instruments for the riggers and installing the bottom two levels of instruments (two cup anemometers, two temperature sensors, a relative humidity sensor, an ADG (measures snow accumulation) and an antennae to transmit the data). We worked to the very end of our time limit, but were able to get everything installed and test that the station was transmitting. As you can see from the photos below, the weather significantly cleared up as we worked.

Tall Tower Before

Completed Tall Tower (Photo courtesy: Jonathan Thom)

Our trip to Minna Bluff this week was also quite interesting. The bluff is about 45 miles from McMurdo and protrudes out from the Transantarctic Mountains. It is one of the few sites that we install on dirt (or very hard permafrost). The wind speeds over the bluff can be very strong. Therefore, the site is a bit shorter than our normal sites and uses a high wind speed system (you'll see two wind instruments (one measures wind speed and one measures wind direction) on top of the tower, instead of the normal RM Young aerovane). Additionally, we built a rock wall around the base of the station in order to help with stability and protection. At this site, we replaced the entire station, but the main goal was to change the transmitter from Argos to Freewave. Argos uses satellites to transfer the data, while Freewave is a direct line of site transmission. Minna Bluff is within range of McMurdo for Freewave (we tested the transmission today and it seems to be working okay), which allows us to free up the Minna Bluff Argos ID to use at another site.

Minna Bluff AWS

The scenery on Minna Bluff was fantastic.

The backside of the bluff has dramatic cliffs. Our helo pilot flew over these as we left the site. The picture below doesn't do it justice, but it was the best one that I got.

Oden

The Oden had beautiful wood floors

The trip on the Oden was incredible. We boarded the ship on Wednesday night. It was quite cold, windy and snowy in McMurdo. The ship pulled up to the ice pier and used a man basket and a crane to transfer all of us from the pier to the deck. The original plan was that we would spend the night in McMurdo Sound, the Oden would help the fuel ship into the pier in the morning and then we would be on our way to Beaufort Island. Unfortunately, the ice pier had a section of ice that was protruding from the bottom and had the potential to damage the fuel ship. Therefore, the Oden spent most of the night trying to break this section of ice off the pier. This was only partially successful, so the harbor master in McMurdo decided to work on the pier using a drill and explosives. This meant that our trip would be cut a couple of days short, because the Oden would need to be back on Saturday to escort the fuel ship into the pier. Therefore, the decision was made to head straight to Franklin Island (where the majority of the science work needed to be done) and then stop at Beaufort Island if time permitted on the return trip.

We saw a lot of wildlife on our trip out of the ice. We saw seals, penguins (emperor and adelie), orkas and skuas.

We woke up the next morning off the coast of Franklin Island. Sven, our helicopter pilot, took 6 loads of people and cargo over to the Island.

Sven taking off from the AWS site

Our work included replacing the Whitlock AWS, which stopped working in 2005. The station was quite buried when we arrived. We dug down and removed all of the instrumentation. Then we installed a completely new station next to the existing tower.

Before picture of Whitlock AWS

After picture of Whitlock AWS

After our work was completed, we walked down to the Polenet (another science group working on the Island) site. This would save Sven a trip in the helicopter and it was interesting to see the the coastal portion of the Island.

Picture from the Polenet site

Picture from the Polenet site

The Island was covered in Olivine

View from the helo on the trip back to the Oden

We did stop at Beaufort Island on our way back to McMurdo. One of the scientists on board was studying an Adelie penguin colony located on the Island. The Oden drifted around the Island for a few hours while he completed his work. We saw a lot of penguins swimming and jumping in the water during this time.

The skies had cleared up and the sun came out for our return trip. We were blessed with more wildlife and beautiful views.

Upcoming Trips

Lee and I were suppose to fly out to Mullock Glacier to remove a station today. The station was installed on the Glacier in October 2006. The strong katabatic winds that rush down the glacial valley have destroyed this station and it is no longer transmitting. Unfortunately, the weather today caused our helo flight to be canceled, but we are on the helo schedule for tomorrow and will try again.

Jonathan and I are schedule to leave on the icebreaker, the Oden, tomorrow night. We should be on the icebreaker for about 5 days, traveling to Beaufort Island and Franklin Island. In total there should be four science groups going out on the trip and it should be interesting to see what the other groups are working on. Our goal is to replace a station that we have on Franklin Island.

The Oden at dock in McMurdo

MEGADUNES

The last trip that we took out of CTAM was to Megadunes. This is a very interesting region of Antarctica. See a satellite image of the area at the following link.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=5641

The area is located within the East Antarctic Plateau, a large, flat ice sheet. The megadunes have been carved out of the ice by the strong katabatic winds. Due to the fact that the wavelength (the distance between the top of two dunes) is very large, the megadunes cannot be seen from the ground. Airplanes can sometimes see a slight wave in the ice, but the megadunes can only be seen clearly from satellite imagery. See the following link for more information on how the megadunes were formed.

http://nsidc.org/antarctica/megadunes/dunes.html

Therefore, as we stood at the Megadunes AWS sites, we could only see flat snow and ice in every direction. There are three AWS sites, spaced about a half a mile apart, in this region. These sites were installed a few years ago by a group that was studying how the megadunes were formed. The project is completed, so Jonathan and I removed the three stations. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos from these site (Jonathan took the pictures that day). Although, I did get a picture of a crevasse region on the flight out to the sites.

Straight lines in the ice are crevasses

Lettau

We went out to visit the Lettau AWS site during our second day at CTAM. At this site we added 3 new tower sections and installed an entire set of new instruments. The power at this site has been clicking on and off for a few years (Shelley and I visited this site in 2009 and the group from last year also visited this site) so we thought that a new set of instruments might be able to fix the problem.

Lettau AWS

The flights out to Lettau and to the sites on the previous day were incredibly beautiful. The CTAM field camp is located on the Beardmore Glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains. The map below (borrowed from another Antarctic blogger) details the region. You'll see McMurdo labeled as MCM in the bottom right hand corner. CTAM is located closer to the center, within the Transantarctic Mountain Range. Lastly, you'll see the Ross Ice Shelf in the center.


The stations that we flew to on the first two days out of CTAM are located on the Ross Ice Shelf . Therefore, the flights included views of the Transantarctic Mountains and its many glaciers. Here are a few highlights from the flights.






In other news, the riggers were able to install tall tower. Therefore, the tower sections and upper four levels of booms have been installed. Jonathan, Lee and I have packed up all of the instrumentation (there will be 6 levels of instrumentation on the tower) and put it into the cargo system. Therefore, once Jonathan and I return from the Icebreaker and Lee returns from South Pole we should be able to get out on a Twin Otter to get the instrumentation installed. We received word today that we will have 2 riggers to help us with the instrumentation installation. This will be a HUGE help. Here are a couple of pictures that were sent to us by the riggers.

Sabrina and Two Installations

Our first day at CTAM turned out to be quite productive. We were on the schedule to fly to Sabrina in the afternoon, but the weather for the primary flight was bad and we ended up having use of the Twin Otter for the entire day. Our plan was to visit Sabrina and then attempt to install at least one, if not both, of the two new sites.

Just to give you a little background, the area near Sabrina and the two new installations is extremely important to me. My PhD research is focused on the wind jet that forms at the base of the Transantarctic Mountains in this region. Specifically, within the jet there is an area of maximum wind speed near the location of the Sabrina AWS (the site that Shelley and I installed in February 2009). Individual forcing mechanisms for the dynamics of this jet have been studied in the past, but until the Sabrina AWS was installed we had no observations in this area. I have used the observations from Sabrina to study the dynamics of the jet and to understand the mechanisms that are needed to create wind speeds in excess of 20 m/s for a duration of approximately 48 hours.

Jonathan and I serviced Sabrina. We raised the tower (added a 7' tower section on top of the existing site) and installed a set of new instruments at the site. Here is a before and after picture (you can see some of the mountains in the background, although the Twin Otter was in the way of a direct view of the mountains from this site).

Before

After

The goal of the two new installations is to give us observations through a cross section of the jet. Therefore, we installed a new AWS at a location farther away from the mountains than Sabrina and at a location closer to the mountains than Sabrina. Here is a series of pictures that gives you an idea of the distance from the mountains for each of these sites (this jet is quite large).

View from farthest site (Marlene)

View from Sabrina

View from the closest site (Tom)

We were fortunate enough to get both of these installations completed in the same day. Here are pictures of the final products.

Marlene

Tom

CTAM

The trip to CTAM was a success. Our goal was to service the Sabrina and Lettau AWS sites, to install two new sites and to remove three sites out of Megadunes. We had 11 days to accomplish this. We had good weather and great pilots and managed to get all of the work done in 7 days (3 flight days).

As you can see, the scenery at CTAM was incredible. The sky was clear and blue almost everyday (I think that we only had one day of overcast skies). The temperatures were fairly warm. I'm not sure what it was outside, but my tent ranged anywhere from 31 deg F to 85 deg F. The tent could get quite warm in the evenings when the sun hit it just right. Although, when it was time to get out of my sleeping bag in the morning it was closer to 31 deg F. Talk about difficult to get out of bed.

On Sunday (everyone's day off - no flights), Jonathan and I took a hike. The camp has a great rec route that has been flagged by mountaineers for everyone's use. Most people use this route to take a snow mobile up to an exposed area where you can find 2 million year old fossils. Unfortunately, since we walked the route we did not have enough time to make it to the fossils, but we did see some incredible mountains views along the way (the hike goes up on a ridge from the camp).


The picture below should give you an idea of how far away from camp we were. The little dots in the middle are the tents and temporary structures of camp.


There were a lot of interesting projects out of CTAM. One group was removing dinosaur bones from an area on Mt. Kirkpatrick. A couple of years ago, two new species were found in this area. Here is a link on the discovery of the plant eating dinosaur (the second half of the article). The other dinosaur is a meat eater that look similar to a T-rex, but has what the scientists described as a "shovel" on its head.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1056189.htm

We were able to see some of the samples that were recovered. I am not sure what bone this is, but I'm sure that it fits somewhere into the big puzzle of the skeleton.

The Penguin and the Seal

We made it back from CTAM. The trip was great. We had good weather, got our work done and even got back a few days early. Although, I will post more about that later because I have more important things to blog about now. Like the fact that I finally saw my first Antarctic penguin! For those of you who know me well, you know that this is a VERY big deal for me.

Tonight I took a walk out to Hut Point after we were finished in the lab. In all honesty, I was going searching for penguins as I always do. I figured, as usual, that I would have a nice walk and if I were lucky that I might see a seal or two. I rounded the corner of the hill and I spotted a penguin. I couldn't believe my eyes. I praised the Lord and then whipped out my camera and binoculars (thanks Mom and Dad).



I eventually sat down to watch him for a bit. The sea ice kept moving around and then all of a sudden a seal popped out of the water. Luckily, these are Weddell seals and they do not eat penguins. I sat and watched the two until my fingers were numb. All in all, I felt pretty lucky.