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Met training in Cambourne
Climbing masts in Taunton
Abseiling in Derbyshire
First aid in Derriford
Fire training
The Voyage South
Crossing to America
Montevideo
The Falklands
Sub- Antarctic Islands
The Brunt Iceshelf
Halley Research Station
Living on an ice shelf
Summer
Winter
Recording the weather
Holidays
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The Brunt Ice Shelf |
The ice over the Antarctic continent can be up to a mile thick. It flows off the continent and floats on the water - still attached to the ice on the land. As the ice floats out to sea it breaks up to form icebergs. Halley Research station is built on the Brunt Ice Shelf which is about 100m thick, 100km across and floating out to sea at 1km per year. It also rises up and down by a couple of meters with the tide!
Near Halley are some submerged rocks. When the ice shelf flows over the rocks, it rips and tears. The rips get filled in with snow to form handy ramps. On the 23rd December The Bransfield moored up to the sea ice by one of these ramps and all the people from the base came down to say hello.
Iceberg off the coast of the Peninsula
Eye in the sky
At Halley we were able to receive satellite pictures. The pictures were
taken by polar-orbital satellites which orbited the Earth from the North
to the South poles. The satellites were owned by NOAA.
Every few hours we would receive a picture from a satellie showing an area of Antarctica, usually the Antarctic Peninsula and the Weddell sea. The pictures were detailed and showed clouds, fog banks, sea ice and the position of large ice bergs.
The satellites took pictures of Antarctica using three "channels" the first channel was "visible light", like taking a regular photograph. The second channel used "infra red" and took a picture of the temperature. The sea (which was relatively warm) was black, the ice was white. The third channel was "water".
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