Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Greetings from Antarctica!

Hubby is a professor of marine geophysics at the local Big University. A lot of his work involves going to earthquake-prone areas on a big research ship, then using various mapping techniques to create detailed images of the ocean floor and sub-surface. These images allow scientists like him to better understand how the earth's plates move, with the end goal being better models and predictions of events like earthquakes. He's done research all over the world - went to Sumatra after the Christmas quake in 2006, Haiti after the quake in 2010, and has been to Japan, Patagonia, Alaska, and everywhere in between. He gets a lot of frequent flyer miles!

Recently, his research has led him Antarctica. He and a bunch of other scientists are currently on an icebreaker ship, studying several of the big ice shelves that are melting at an alarming rate. [Note: He is NOT on either of the icebreakers that were stuck earlier this year. Just FYI.] They are looking at the sea floor and water column for any clues as to what is causing the ice to melt so quickly - it will take months to analyze the data they are collecting, so no answers yet! But what I do have are some really incredibly cool pictures to share.

Hubby in an ice field

Ice shelf (I think the Totten).

Sunset

Hubby looking slightly scruffy

Sunrise

The scruffiness continues. Note the "Lysts on the Lake" jousting shirt he's sporting. JOUSTING IN ANTARCTICA, FTW!!!!

Penguins

These are all Adele's penguins.



They look cold!

So incredibly beautiful.

12 comments:

  1. Penguins!! I love them! How cool to be able to travel like that.

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  2. Hubby's not wearing too many layers in those (totally cool) pix... is it even warmer in Antartica than up here, or is he being very manly?! lol...

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  3. Wow! Thanks for sharing. Science people rock.

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  4. Oh he is so lucky - I was not able to go to Antarctica as I have Type 1 diabetes and that was on the banned medical conditions list at the time I had the opportunity.
    I hope he is having a great time, good weather and is enjoying the 24hr daylight. For those of you that think it is weird to have only a t-shirt on when surrounded by ice it's not. It is currently summer in Antarctica (it's the one in the southern hemisphere, I'm currently sitting in 25 degree Celsius sunshine) and when there is no wind it can get quite warm.
    If he went from the NZ side,I hope they get a chance to run their instruments through Cook Strait, it is still having little wobbles after the shakes last year!

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  5. Now there's a place not many people get to go!

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