Project WISSARD-- Life under the ice

Prof anxious to return to Antarctica for scientific mission

Priscu Research Group
John Priscu, second from right, is one of three leaders of a $10 million, six-year research project on the Whillans Ice Stream in Antarctica. Priscu, a Montana State University professor of environmental sciences, has pioneered the study of cold climates over the past 10 years. The 2009 field team for one of his projects included Tristy Vick, Andrew Baber, Priscu and Amy Chiuchiolo (our new friends!)

After more than 10 years of pushing the science of icy worlds, John Priscu has finally defrosted his critics.

Having just returned from Antarctica, Priscu restlessly halted long enough to talk about his latest and largest project so far — the $10 million Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project, or WISSARD.

The three-pronged study will look at microorganisms that live in Lake Whillans, thousands of feet under the ice, as well as use a remote robot to explore the area between the ice sheets and the ocean.

It’s a big expedition. The six-year scientific mission, funded by the National Science Foundation, will involve 13 principal investigators, including Priscu, and nine institutions. Since Priscu helped develop the field of study, he is one of three leaders. He estimated that the logistics of moving people and equipment into the field will cost NSF another $40 million, a small chunk of the agency’s $9.5 billion 2009 budget.

“What’s neat about WISSARD is it’s actually an opportunity to crack through to those lakes and find out what’s in there,” said Dana Cruikshank of the National Science Foundation.

He noted that it’s like an international race, with the British and Russians pursuing the same goals, yet cooperative. He added that the research has big implications for climate science.

“We’ll get a better idea of how quickly the ice sheet is moving into the ocean,” Cruikshank said.

Piece of the pie

About $2.7 million of the $10 million will be directed to MSU’s piece of the puzzle, called GBASE, or GeomicroBiology of Antarctic Subglacial Environments.

Priscu said GBASE will be looking for novel organisms that have learned to survive for millions of years under the Antarctic ice sheet without sunlight.

“There has never been a sample from the bottom of an ice sheet collected for microorganisms,” Priscu said.

The other two acronym-loaded components of the project are LISSARD, Lake and Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling, and RAGES, Robotics Access to Grounding-Zones for Exploration.

LISSARD will take measurements from Lake Whillans, after drilling 2,300 feet through the ice to the water body. Scientists will measure water pressure and other variables to determine how often the lake fills and floods.

In RAGES, a robot will be lowered into the water to examine the area where the 100-mile long Whillans Ice Stream meets the Ross Ice Shelf to measure the stream’s velocity and how quickly it’s wearing away the ice.

“The U.S. project is by far the most integrated,” Priscu said.

Field work will begin next year, including the testing of the $4 million hot-water drill that has its own purifying system to insure that no contaminants enter the 1-foot drill holes.

Unlike Priscu, UC Santa Cruz professor Andy Fisher, an oceanographer, will be making his first trip to Antarctica as one of the researchers.

His project will be to examine how much geothermal heat from the earth is warming the base of the ice cap. The heat has never been measured before, leaving a gap in calculating about how fast the ice cap may melt.

Why go?

There are several reasons the research is important, Priscu said.

• The Antarctic ice sheet is half again as large as the United States. It contains 70 percent of the world’s fresh water. Should it melt, the Statue of Liberty would be waist-deep in water and many of the major metropolitan areas around the world would be underwater. The ice sheet produces so much water as it now melts that it rivals the Amazon River for contributing water and nutrients to the ocean.

• The ice sheets also harbor a record of the Earth’s climate. Air bubbles trapped in the ice go back 1 million years. The ice also reflects the sun’s heat away from Earth; if it were gone, the planet would be a warmer place.

• The cold environment also offers testing grounds for work on other planets, where ice may harbor extraterrestrial life. There’s also the possibility that newly discovered microorganisms might provide chemicals for medicines as well as insight into how they survive repeated freezing and thawing cycles.

“It’s like a last frontier of life,” Priscu said, “Instead of Antarctica being a big dead place, ice is an oasis for life.”

Walking the Glacier

We had a trip over the glaciers via helicopter......


Now, let us go over the Glacier on foot ...we are hiking over Canada Glacier to Lake Bonney:


We start our Journey at Canada Stream (F1) and head up the drainage......


To reach the Glacier......



And hike OVER the Glacier........


( I am ON the glacier with McMurdo Sound in the distant background)

And get to the other side ......
Lake Bonney sits to our right......

and a warm meal waiting ......... Hope you enjoyed the trip!

WINGS -- Extraordinary Women

WINGS celebrates and supports extraordinary women explorers and promotes scientific exploration, education and conservation to inspire future generations.

iExplore! Your dream, your journey...Discover more about ethnobotany through WOD Rosita Arvigo, and more about life and science on the ice with WOD Birgit Sattler.

Follow our Flags Live in the Field!

WOD'08 Birgit Sattler takes Flag #21 down under as she researches radioactive fall-out and biomass distribution in the ice in Antarctica.

Fellow WINGS in Antarctica (and Me an honorary member!)

Flag carrier Felicity Aston takes Flag #15 to the South Pole as she leads the Kaspersky Commonwealth Expedition, comprised of 8 women from around the globe.

WOD'07 Terrie Williams brings Flag #23 on the Weddell Seals Expedition of 2009 in Antarctica, studying how the seals dive in the sustained dark of the winter.

Check out our interactive Flag Report Program--first-person reports, trip write-ups, photos, and more from around the globe!

Enjoy the Fall '09 WINGS Newsletter! Learn about the 2010 awardees, various updates from the field (and office), and a conversation with Steffi Schwabe.

Meet the WINGS Fellows. Incredible women from around the world who are making strides in a vast array of fields.

Protecting Our Water Dr. Edie Widder introduces "Kilroy," the wireless marine ecosystem monitor.

For more information on these extraordinary women: http://www.wingsworldquest.org/

Global Warming

Recent Article on Global Warming.....Read On.....

Study Busts Antarctica's Chill On Global Warming

It turns out temperatures are rising on a large chunk of West Antarctica, with dark red showing the area that has warmed the most, according to new data. Scientists in Antarctica also report the Wilkins Ice Shelf may soon break apart.

NASA/ E. J. Steig

Antarctica was seemingly the only continent on Earth that had not been warming up, as far as scientists could tell. But now a new study finds that large parts of the southern continent have in fact been getting warmer.

Researchers are particularly interested in Antarctica's fate because the coastlines of the world would be obliterated if Antarctic ice melted away and raised global sea level.

The continent is so remote, scientists didn't put permanent weather stations there until 1957 — and even those were in just a few scattered places. Eric Steig at the University of Washington says that made it hard to take the continent's temperature.

"It's like having data in San Francisco and New York and trying to say something about Arizona," says Steig. "You really need some more information if you're going to say anything reasonable about Arizona."

Steig and his colleagues have done just that for Antarctica, taking the sparse temperature records of the past 50 years and combining them with satellite records that cover a much greater area, but don't go back so far in time. Combining those records, they now report that a big chunk of Antarctica — the western part of the continent — has in fact been warming up, like the rest of the world.

Temperatures have risen by about 1 degree near the equator to more than 5 degrees near the North Pole.

"It's much less than Arctic warming but it pretty much is on par with global average warming," Steig says.

Forecast: More Snow

Up to a point, Antarctic warming can actually reduce sea level. Warming there can take water out of the ocean and deposit it on the continent, in the form of increased snowfall. (We are currently some evidence of this as it is SNOWING........

"West Antarctica should be getting more precipitation along with this increased temperature. But I think the data to demonstrate that are not really available," Steig says.

In fact, the best data from Antarctica show that the continent is putting slightly more water into the ocean than it's taking out.

Re-Assuring Discovery

Previous studies have not found a warming trend in Antarctica. Steig's conclusion is therefore a shift, but it's not a total surprise.

"This one study should not cause anyone to suddenly get more worried. If they are taking it seriously already, then this should not make them change their view particularly," he says.

In fact, Arctic scientist Richard Alley at Penn State University says he finds the new information reassuring — in a way.

"The world looks a little more sensible to me than it did before," he says.

That's because many scientists expected that Antarctica should be warming up, along with the rest of the world. It was a bit of a mystery why it didn't seem to be doing so. And the consequence of warming Antarctic air is not cause for panic, Alley says.

"For now, most of the Antarctic is still so cold that it's very hard to melt it from above. The big question for Antarctic for the near future is what happens to the ocean," he says, "because the warm ocean waters can circulate under the floating extensions of Antarctica — the ice shelves."

And if warmer water melts those ice shelves, they'll release mountains of ice behind them into the ocean.

Scientists have already seen some dramatic changes to ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts toward South America and is warmer than the rest of the continent. The relatively small peninsula has been a major exception to the rule for Antarctica; it clearly has been heating up in recent decades. At least eight large ice shelves around the peninsula have melted away.

David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey is on the peninsula right now, keeping a worried eye on the Wilkins Ice Sheet. It was once larger than Connecticut but soon could be gone entirely.

"We landed on the ice shelf just two days ago — flimsy looking piece of ice — and that appears to be hanging on by the skin of its teeth," Vaughan says.

It could collapse any time in the next few weeks, he says.

"Not all of Wilkins will disappear overnight but a large part of it could," Vaughan says.

This ice sheet is already floating on the ocean, so when it melts it won't raise sea level. But it's a powerful reminder that change can come quickly — and dramatically — in this land of ice.

----by Richard Harris, January 21, 2009

Ice Core -- from Antarctica to Denver!

At the Western edge of Lake Bonney, sits Taylor Glacier....


....and an ICE CORE sample:

This sample will find its way from Antarctica to DENVER, COLORADO!

The Snow and Ice Core Data Center and the National Ice Core Lab where scientists from our very own INSTAAR will study its composition and date the ice. They will measure and record temperature variations and atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases back to 420,000 years!





We were treated to a TASTE of this Glacier our first week in camp ....fresh water -- no treatment needed here!

DELICIOUS!

LDB -- The Long Duration Balloon

The LDB program is now at the start of launch operations for the 2009-10 season!

Two large balloons with payloads (CREAM and SPB) and five small balloons with payloads (BARREL) are to be flown this season.

(1) CREAM (Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass) is designed to study the origins of cosmic rays, measuring their composition from protons to iron nuclei.
The goal is to observe cosmic-ray spectral features and/or abundance changes as a function of energy that might signify a limit to supernova acceleration.
To learn more, visit: http://cosmicray.umd.edu/cream

(2) SPB (Super Pressure Balloon) This seven-million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon is the largest single-cell, super-pressure, fully-sealed balloon ever flown. When development ends, NASA will have a 22 million-cubic-foot balloon that can carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of more than 110,000 feet, which is three to four times higher than passenger planes fly.

(3) BARREL (Balloon Array for RBSP Relativistic Electron Losses) BARREL is a multiple long duration balloon (LDB) project that will study radiation belt electron losses during the RBSP mission. Each balloon payload will include a three-inch by three-inch NaI scintillator that measures X-rays produced by electrons as they interact with neutrals in Earth's atmosphere.
You can follow their progress at: http://barrel2009.blogspot.com/

LDB is planning to make their first attempt to launch the CREAM payload:

Wednesday, December 2 at 02:00 AM.

For launch updates go to the Balloon Launches web page under Science on the McMurdo Home Page:

http://intranet.mcmurdo.usap.gov/science/ldb/

After a successful launch, you can follow flight tracking on the CSBF Antarctic Operations Home Page:

http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/antarctica/ice0910.htm

Happy Tracking!

BLOOD FALLS

At the Western edge of Lake Bonney is a feature called Blood Falls;
Here is what it looks like now.....


Here is what it will look like at high flow......

According to recent research, rust-stained Blood Falls contains evidence that microbes have survived in prehistoric seawater deep under ice for perhaps millions of years. The colony of microscopic life-forms may have been trapped when Antarctica's then advancing Taylor Glacier reached into the ocean 1.5 to 4 million years ago. Mikucki and colleagues captured and analyzed a bit of the extremely salty, iron-rich liquid—which seems to be concentrated seawater—fresh from Taylor Glacier. In the samples were tell-tale proteins apparently from microbes.

Since their capture millennia ago, the microbes seem to have been completely isolated. Under 1,300 feet (400 meters) of ice, they catch no sunlight, required for photosynthesis, and have no source of outside food. The only thing keeping the microbes alive, the study says, is their ability to generate energy from chemical reactions with sulfur and iron (remember these elements from our Periodic Table?)

Iron is one thing in abundance beneath Taylor Glacier. Ground out of rocks by the creeping glacier and further broken down by the microbes, the mineral gives Blood Falls its surprising red color. The water also carries the specific fingerprint of sulfate—a carryover from when the water was part of the ocean.

You can read more of the story: "Rust-Breathing Bacteria: Miracle Microbes?"

Trip to Lake Bonney - view from the sky

Today I take you on a trip to Lake Bonney in the helicopter......

Welcome Aboard!

Marko Dimov is our pilot....




We leave Lake Fyrxell
and F6 -- our Home Base...
(can you see our ATV)



The Sea is to the East (right), the Glacier in front is called Commonwealth; we are headed WEST.......

Ahead is Canada Glacier -- the first of (4) Glaciers we will fly over....


We fly OVER Canada Glacier to Lake Hoare on the other side....
And proceed to fly OVER Suess Glacier ......

And then over Lacroix Glacier, to reach Priscu Stream......

And over our last Glacier, Matterhorn Glacier and Lake Bonney.....


Lake Bonney is surrounded on its Western end by (3) Glaciers:
Rhone Glacier, Taylor Glacier, and Calkin Glacier
We set down at Lake Bonney to sample and measure:
Lawson, Santa Fe, Lyons and BLOOD FALLS!



Stay tuned for more on BLOOD FALLS......

Lake Bonney Part2: ENDURANCE

One of the other research projects being conducted on Lake Bonney (UNDER Lake Bonney, really) is called: ENDURANCE :

The Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer (ENDURANCE) robot probe is scheduled for some tough tests in the next few weeks. The goal is to help NASA explore the underwater environment of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.

We were fortunate to meet up with this team as ENDURANCE was traveling UNDER Taylor Glacier to provide the FIRST EVER! images under a GLACIER -- watch for the NEWS STORY to come out shortly......

Lake Bonney

Over the Glacier from Lake Hoare, sits Lake Bonney ....

and the remainder of our streams: Lawson, Priscu (named after researcher John Priscu), Lyons and Santa Fe. We will also visit Blood Falls (more on this later)....

We will have now visited our entire complement of Streams for the first time .....and will begin our rotation visiting each stream one time/week to collect water flow measurements and collect samples....

Below is our map of Taylor Valley -- consisting of Lake Fyrxell, Lake Bonney, and Lake Hoare -- can you find them? The red markers are the stream sites at each of the Lakes......

The Stream sites are named according to the Lake they drain. For example, F1 = Canada Stream. It is the first stream on Fyrxell and flows out of Canada Glacier. Our sites are named: F1, F2, F3, F4 ....F10; H1, H2; B1-B4 -- can you figure out which stream goes with which number??? (Test will come later...)

Here is the "team" ready to work:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Wright Valley

The helicopter drops us off in the Wright Valley ....

to open gaging on the Onyx RIVER!

The Onyx is the only official USGS RIVER in Antarctica (it has been said that the Kiwis RAFTED on this river!)

We arrived before the water is flowing in time to survey the location:

(Seth surveying)

And exchange the N2 tank and retrieve last year's data.

Here is what we can expect to come.......

"How does Wright Valley differ from Taylor Valley?"

The Wright Valley is different from Taylor Valley in the lack of snow, warm lake temperatures, unusual rock features, desiccated seal carcasses, and an almost complete lack of plant life.

Large differences in salinity and ionic composition of the lakes are related,in part, to how the lakes have responded to climatic changes through the Holocene. Chemical variations among streams are due, in part, to their geomorphological differences, the amount of water–rock interactions within their hyporheic zones, and the amount and composition of dust and soil blown onto the glacier surfaces.

Do you notice the differences in this picture?

While the streams in Taylor Valley drain to Lake Fyrxell; Onyx River drains to Lake Vanda in the Wright Valley.

Next stop, set of gages on Lake Bonney......

Science Friday - SCINI!

What is SCINI?

SCINI stands for Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation and Imaging. She is an underwater robot specifically built to complete science missions beneath the frozen surface of the ocean in Antarctica.

The remotely operated vehicle SCINI cruises over the seafloor
under the ice in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.

SCINI is a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) which means that a tether to the surface allows the pilot to see what she sees through her camera “eyes” and control where she “swims” with her five thrusters.

A test mission at MBARI in Monterey Bay, California. You can see the lighted camera dome on the left, and thrusters to move SCINI up/down, left/right, and forward/back arrayed down her body.

The pilot uses a joystick that looks suspiciously like a video game controller (because it is one) and views the world on a computer flat screen that shows not only the seafloor around SCINI but also the vehicle status array and engineering diagnostics.

The central screen is the views from the cameras, the screen on the left is the engineering screen, and the screen on the right is the navigation screen.

SCINI finds her way around in the ocean using an integrated South Star navigation system that has been developed in partnership with Desert Star Systems. This wireless array allows us to extend the accuracy of GPS beneath the water where satellite signals cannot penetrate. And, what is SCINI finding her way towards? That is what the scientists decide, and this year SCINI will be diving deeper and in more remote locations, in order to describe Antarctic seafloor communities that have never before been seen by human eyes.

SCINI found this unidentified octocoral species at 190 m depth under the McMurdo Ice Shelf.

For more information on the SCINI project visit: http://scini2009.mlml.calstate.edu