Blogs

With a few days of good weather the team had a very productive time at one of our most northerly field sites, Straumsnutane.

We had our best day yet for collecting samples and seeing evidence of past, higher levels of the east Antarctic Ice Sheet. We returned to Grunehogna, a nunatak that we had visited a few days ago for reconnaissance work. We found good evidence that the ice sheet had formerly been much thicker and covering much of this nunatak

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were productive fieldwork days for the MAGIC-DML field team. Poor weather had been delaying fieldwork, but a couple of good days gave us a window of opportunity. We visited two nunatak sites.

Today the sea ice conditions were good enough to allow all of our heavy equipment to be offloaded from the S.A. Agulhas II to the ice shelf. The ice shelf surface is about 40m above the ship’s deck, so everything has to be lifted up by crane. Our logistics team is unpacking the equipment, testing it, and getting everything ready for us to be able to travel and camp safely on the ice.

The team is now on a ship! The S.A. Agulhas II is the ship bringing the team’s heavy equipment to Antarctica, including snowmobiles, sleds, and living modules. The ship was delayed leaving Cape Town, and is now at the edge of the ice shelf unloading its cargo for transport to SANAE IV, the South African research station.