Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone! It's 2014 and time for me to head back to Antarctica.

I am heading down with the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) project that is run out of the University of Wisconsin - Madison and the University of Colorado - Boulder. This is the same project that I worked on for both of my previous Antarctic trips. Our activities usually involve installing new stations and repairing existing stations. Although, this year, John (my boss) and I will be working on something a little different. We are planning to take atmospheric measurements using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) at the Tall Tower AWS. The Tall Tower AWS was installed during my last trip to Antarctica (http://melissaontheice.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/tall-tower.html) and is a 30 m tower with 6 levels of instruments. Tall Tower is located about 100 miles from McMurdo and is located along the South Pole traverse road (a snow "road" that is used to transport fuel from McMurdo to the South Pole). The plan is for John and I, along with a mountaineer and a scientist from New Zealand, to snow mobile out the South Pole traverse road to the Tall Tower AWS. We will camp there for two weeks, flying the UAVs to sample the evolution of the boundary layer. I am pretty excited for this trip. It will be my first time camping at a remote field camp in Antarctica and it should be an exiting adventure.