Clean Cut American Kid

Couldn’t Have Said It Any Better Myself

alex — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:47:33 +0000

Andrew Radsch, a good friend on sabbatical from lawyering for a year, and I met up in El Calafate to do some climbing and enjoy life in El Chaltén. He has been blogging about his travels during his sabbatical. He recently put up a post with a description of our recent climbs on Aguja Guillaumet in the Patagonian Andes. He does an excellent job conveying the uncertainty, commitment, and joy of our climbs. Enjoy!

El Chaltén, Part II (abbreviated)

alex — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:49:49 +0000

This will be a quickie with something more comprehensive when I return to the land of more stable interwebs. In short, I am back in El Chaltén again after finishing another season at Palmer Station, Antarctica. I jammed here ASAP to meet up with my friend and climbing partner from NYC, Andrew. Because of the slow internet I am not able to upload any photos yet, but we arrived with a 5 day weather window and took full advantage by getting in some serious climbing. Along with our guide Manuel from El Chaltén Mountain Guides we ascended Amy Couloir to summit Aguja Guillaumet. We rested for a day in the mountains before doing an amazing ridge traverse that ended at the beginning of the Fonrouge route up Guillaumet. We then celebrated with a bunch of other American climbers in town for the season with an asado (the Argentine BBQ equivalent). More details later…

A second radio interview, much better than the first

alex — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:17:14 +0000

After feeling a bit self-conscious about my first radio appearance, I was given another opportunity to talk about life in the Antarctic and our research. This time the venue was an NPR affiliate’s show, Up to Date on KCUR, in Kansas City. I had a great time with the show and talking with the show’s host, Steve Kraske, and catching up with a Kansas City Star reporter, Scott Canon, who visited Palmer on an NSF Artist’s and Writer’s Grant in December. Take a listen to the whole show here. I think Steve did an excellent job asking fun questions and keeping the show lively and moving along.

Ice Wranglers!

alex — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:19:43 +0000

Happy Holidays from the Rutgers Phytoplankton and AUV Lab at Palmer Station. (L to R, Tina Haskins, Brian Gaas, me. Photo: John Brack)

We don’t take extended holidays while working at Palmer Station in Antarctica. At most we may take a day off here or there, but by and large we work everyday collecting samples, running experiments in the lab, maintaining our equipment and so forth. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are no different. While the Raytheon support staff may take a couple of days off, we deployed a glider last night in pretty tough conditions and then went out this morning to collect samples. While I was taking some of the samples outside to a special incubator designed to help measure the uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phytoplankton, I kept seeing a couple of bergy bits that looked really close to shore. Plus, today the sun was out, the air temp was in the high 30s and there was little to no wind. So, what better way to celebrate a beautiful holiday other than take a picture of our group soaking up a bit of sun.

Below is the photo essay of the making of the picture. We were fortunate enough to have a world-class photographer, John Brack, nearby and willing to document the entire process – all of the images are his. Perhaps we should treat this blog post a How to manual for setting up a picture on a bergy bit.

I Have My Say on the BBC

alex — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:51:32 +0000

This past Wednesday, one of the other scientists here at Palmer, Kristen Gorman, received an email request to participate in the BBC’s World Have Your Say. However, because she was already scheduled to participate as an Antarctic expert on NPR’s News Blog The Two Way (similar to this) she passed on my contact info to the producers. The producers contacted me a couple of hours later and within the hour, I was on the radio telling the host and a worldwide audience about the changes we have seen here at Palmer Station as a result of the warming climate.

We’ve had the glacier adjacent to our buildings recede over the past twenty years by about five hundred feet or so…

I have never talked on the radio before, let alone from the Antarctic to a studio in London. The weirdest thing about the call was the horrible echo in the phone. It is because of the echo that I sound so drunk during the the brief Q&A with the host. I also expected the host to interrupt me and ask some sort of follow up questions. But, she apparently wanted to me to have my say and allowed me to ramble – which is why I periodically pause to see if she has anything to say in response to my blabbering. Take a listen (I am introduced at about 19:00 in the broadcast I chopped out the rest of the podcast, it should only be my segement… thanks to Susan for finding the broken link) – just remember it’s my first time and I have a long ways to go before I feel comfortable on the radio.

Tourists give Science a gift…

alex — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:48:03 +0000

[This is cross-posted to the LTER Blog]

Yesterday, the Palmer LTER group received, on behalf of Palmer Station, a hyperspectral radiometer supported through Abercrombie & Kent’s “Fighting Climate Change in Antarctica” mission trip. The hyperspectral radiometer will be used to measure light coming from the sun that can be used for photosynthesis (aka Photosynthetically Available Radiation – PAR). The data collected by this instrument will help augment our research into the effects of the rapidly changing climate in the region on the fragile Antarctic ecosystem. Specifically, the data from the hyperspectral radiometer will help us quantify how much energy is entering the ecosystem as the light from the sun drives the conversion of atmospheric CO2 into biomass at the base of the food web.

Unfortunately, the LTER principal investigator, Hugh Ducklow, was unable to make it down to Palmer to accept the gift. As a result, I was given the opportunity to represent Palmer science and accept the radiometer. The whole event was pretty spectacular, especially because the passengers of the A&K mission trip represented 10 countries (Australia, Canada, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, & the United States). Jim McClintock (whose work on chemical ecology in the Antarctic is quite renowned) aptly noted during the presentation ceremony aboard the MS Minerva

As such, their gift to you represents a global collective seeking to facilitate a better understanding of a significant global problem – climate change.

This sort of collaboration between responsible tour operators, their passengers, and scientists helping shed insight into issues in the region of tourism, are the sort of thing we need to see more often. This type of interaction brings tourists into the fold of the research and allows them to become a stakeholder in the ongoing work that the scientists are conducting. In the end, increasing the number of people who have a vested interest in seeing the research succeed can only be beneficial to the program as well as help reduce the disconnect often felt between scientists and the general public.

Kudos to Abercrombie & Kent, and the Officers, Crew, and especially to the Passengers of the MS Minerva for their kind support of our research.

Thanks!

Receiving the Radiometer with the international passengers behind us.

Climate Change Chat on NPR

alex — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:46:40 +0000

[This is cross-posted to the LTER blog]

Chatting on NPR's News Blog, Two-Way

After collecting water samples this morning, fellow scientist Chris Neill and I joined National Public Radio’s Jason Orfanon and Frank James in an online chat on NPR’s news blog, The Two-Way. From last night, here is the post introducing Chris and I for the chat.

Overall the chat was incredibly fun and it was a great opportunity to get a sense for the excitement out there regarding Antarctic and climate science. Although nothing is set in stone yet, there is a decent chance the birders Kristen and Jen may get to have a chat on the same blog which would be awesome as their work would likely generate a ton of interest.

After participating in the chat, I noticed that Josh Marshall wrote an interesting post to his blog Talking Points Memo regarding skepticism and science. Given the number of questions we had about skepticism but were unable to answer too extensively due to time constraints, I found Josh’s points to be quite relevant when trying to deal with climate change policy.

A Geek’s Dream – Meeting Neil Armstrong

alex — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:52:01 +0000

Neil Armstrong visited Palmer Station, Antarctica this past weekend. He came down with Lindblad Expeditions on the National Geographic Explorer. He and his wife, along with all of the other passengers, took a tour of station. I bumped into Neil and Carol being led through the labs by our station manager Bob Farrell. So, Bob took the chance encounter as an opportunity to have Neil get a brief introduction to the science happening on station. Telling Neil and his wife about the work we are doing and how we are collaborating with penguin researchers to define the penguin foraging areas using autonomous underwater vehicles was a unique experience. I definitely felt odd explaining underwater flight characteristics (pitch, roll, yaw) to one of the world’s foremost experts in flight. Oddly enough, the thing he found most intriguing about the gliders were 1) the fact that their wings are flat, and 2) that they were so primitive. He was immediately convinced that they will undergo some serious changes in the coming years as they become more popular and wider range of engineers have a chance to think about their design and fiddle with improvements. At the end of his visit to our lab, he and Carol were kind enough to pose for pictures, first with our lab and then with the station.

left to right: Brian Gaas, Neil Armstrong, Tina Haskins, me, Carol Armstrong

Palmer Station with Neil and Carol Armstrong

Search and Rescue Training at Old Palmer

alex — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:21:26 +0000

Getting geared up in the zodiac parking lot at Palmer Station. Photo: George Ryan

Safety is king at Palmer Station. Virtually everything we do is managed with safety in mind. If anything serious happens to someone down here, at the edge of the earth, there isn’t much help beyond the resources of the doctor at Station. Fortunately, there are several folks on Station who enjoy thinking about this stuff in their free time. In addition to myself, Paul Queior and Brian Gaas have also spent a good chunk of time studying first aid and search and rescue techniques. Of the three of us, I am the least experienced with medicine and first response. However, I have taken Avalanche safety and crevasse travel/rescue courses in the past. Plus last season at Palmer I trained with the Glacier Search and Rescue (GSAR) team. For me, this season at Palmer meant I would get to continue my GSAR training, plus Brian has been heavily involved with SAR work in the NJ/NY area. Given that Brian and I had quite a bit of experience, we talked with Paul and decided to head out to Old Palmer in a small group so that Brian could share some of his temperate SAR skills with us. Namely hauling heavy things up steep terrain. Of course, Brian needed us to share our knowledge about building anchors in the ice and how to operate in such an extreme environment. As a team of three, plus a few folks wanting to get some exercise, a small group of us took a zodiac over to a a nearby island where the original Palmer Station was built in the 1960s. Appropriately enough, this island has been named, Old Palmer (or Old P to us locals) and contains a couple of retreating glaciers that have steep faces and small crevasses that are perfect for the GSAR skills we needed to work on. A large part of GSAR is being comfortable traveling in and using the tools necessary for rescue in glaciated terrain. In addition to practicing basic haul and anchor systems, we also worked with Brian (and refreshed our own knowledge) of moving confidently and safely in steep and icy terrain using ice tools and crampons. Overall, an excellent day to be out and a reminder of how much I love the brisk environment of Antarctica.

Paul, Brian and I walking along the glacier. Photo: George Ryan

Brian and I walking next to a filled in crevasse. Photo: PQ

Hanging off the rope looking at the path Paul had cleared a few minutes earlier. Photo: PQ

Getting up over the edge and onto the top of the glacier. Photo: PQ

The whole picture of the steep face we were using for our GSAR practice. Photo: George Ryan

Heading home from Old Palmer. Photo: George Ryan

Back at Palmer – A New Season Begins

alex — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:51:30 +0000

I don’t recall it being this cold here last year.

I have been continually thinking these words since our arrival at Palmer Station, Antarctica in October to begin another field season. Yesterday I finally had a chance to look through our log book from last season and indeed our coldest day of sampling last year was -2 C. Over the past week and a half, we haven’t really had temps much warmer than that. In fact it has been pretty stable around -4 C since we arrived. With the cold we have also seen much more stable conditions compared to last season. We’ve had some amazingly calm evenings and days out on the boat. Overall, an excellent introduction for Brian Gaas and Tina Haskins, the other B-019 field crew, to the Antarctic.

Brian Gaas and Tina Haskins, getting a feel for our boat, Bruiser.

Brian and I on a clear, crisp evening on our boat, Bruiser, with Mt. William behind us.

One of the other zodiacs from station, with Mt. William in the background.