Low angle but intense sun and sublimation have made these hedgehog like spines in the blue ice. They're like angled penitentes (usually found at high altitude, low latitude locations). Extraordinary #StrangeIce phenomena, #iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

"Good morning LISA - and how are *you* feeling today?"

Probably the last (long) day in our temporary lab at Wasa today. 10m of cores to process, collected from the ice sheet yesterday, but also a nice view to keep me company.
Reward will be genuine Finnish sauna at the neighbouring Finnish research station this evening, where we also have much #science to discuss!

#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

Found the reflector!

Clément spotted a bright layer on a radargram taken over this glacier earlier in the season, so today we went back and drilled through 15m of snow and firn and nice to see what it was: a ~3cm thick layer of clear refrozen meltwater.

This one is coming with us for chemical analysis (along with the other 15m of core). Tomorrow will be a busy day in the lab.
We found many of these kinds of refrozen meltwater layers through the core, with lots of interesting features in the snow and firn pack associated with them. As so often in science, in seeking to answer one question, we end up asking many more as a result.
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #Fieldphoto

Heading back to Wasa after a few nights out in the field...
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto #PolarForskningsSekretariatet

View from my sleeping bag this morning through the ark window at our neighbours, a post for #FensterFreitag #FensterFriday

Later I had to o dig out the samples I'd put in my snow pit to keep cold.
The cold wasn't a problem but the fresh snow was...
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

Snow layers: I'm quite fascinated by these ice lenses, not melt exactly but glaze, very thin (~1mm) and a product of high winds and intense solar radiation
From last night's snow pit...

#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

The Polar might is drawing in, the neighbouring nunatak
Ploegen, with the sun almost setting behind it.
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #PolarScience #ClimateScience #FieldPhoto #FieldworkPhoto

Farewell site RF1, for now. A total of 54 metres of ice, cored and processed. Then time to head home before the weather comes in, with a quick coffee stop to admire the wildlife: incredibly small lichens that somehow hang on at the nunatak Fossilrygen.
#iQ2300 #FieldworkPhoto #FieldPhoto #Fieldwork #Antarctica #ice #icetodon #frostodon #mosstodon #DronningMaudLand

Today has mostly been about melting and processing ice cores, so there's been a lot of voting an building snow walls to shelter from the sun. But I also found time to dig a snow pit, and to admire the rime patterns on the sastrugi.
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Antarktis #FieldPhoto #Fieldwork

We were rewarded late yesterday evening with beautiful sun and spectacular snow crystals.
Today I have mostly been in the lab tent...

#iQ2300 #FieldPhoto #Fieldwork #Antarctica #DronningMaudLand #frostodon #icetodon

Yesterday's drive to this field site was quite challenging, cold, windy, icy, monster sastrugi and white out. An Antarctic experience...

#iQ2300 #FieldPhoto #Fieldwork

Fluffy snow?

I dug a snow pit and after a day and half the strong sun has picked out the snow layers below the surface. The site has more than a metre of snowfall each year, falling in several distinct snowfall events with lots of wind and scouring of layers in between into sastrugi. Digging through the layers to measure density and temperature allows us to reconstruct the processes, but once I'd finished with it I left it open to see what happened. The different packing density of the snow crystals and the low solar angle meant different rates of ablation (mostly from sublimation, where ice becomes vapour directly, rather than melt) for different layers, leaving this very fluffy looking surface.

#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto #PRECISEnnf #Snow #icetodon #frostodon

Home towards Basen from the shelf.

Lots of data to look at now and this was just the third field site of 5/6 (depending on the weather).

Drilled + processed 3 cores, LISA working full time too. Radar, snow pits, infrasnow. If I don't collapse into bed may write a proper blog about it later.

#BusyTimes #iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

Long day in the field but some great data - I have literally spent 8 hours watching snow melt...

And then analysing the contents with our good old friend LISA.
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #FieldPhoto #Fieldwork #PRECISEnnf

Penaali, one of the epiglacial ponds of the Basen nunatak. I took this photo on a Christmas Eve hike along the Cliff too during a nice sunny walk. The weather is very different today.
Penaali is one of 3 blue ice "lakes" here that form underneath a hard ice crust by solar radiation that penetrates through the ice.
Fascinating physical system that I don't fully understand yet, but something to think about while we're stuck inside waiting for the winds to subside.

#iQ2300 #Antarctica #FieldPhoto

Radar love..
We've been setting up and using our new Malå ice penetrating radar the last few days. Already some cool looking results. As always with radar, the interpretation takes *much* longer than getting the data though..
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

After the 2 days of storm, the surface has been scoured into crazy sastrugi patterns at our field site this afternoon.

#Sastrugi #Antarctica #iQ2300 #FieldPhoto #FieldWork

It's a beautiful day after the storm, spent a morning in the lab preparing samples for oxygen isotopes, but we're going out later for more coring and sampling. Here are WP9 including @mercerraa@pixelfed.global heading out for a few days overnight on the shelf.

The small cabins give a useful sense of scale in the huge landscape.
#iQ2300 #Antarctica #FieldWork #FieldPhoto #WasaStation

"snow is like a cloud on the ground". Sometimes it's hard to see where the atmosphere stops and the snow surface starts. Katabatic winds and fresh snow is cool to see but digging snow pits was a cold but super interesting experience this morning. Some very good results already.

#iQ2300 #RitscherFlya #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto

Off into the field this afternoon, here is a picture of an ark. That will be home for the next few days.

In the meantime here's a quick update on what we've been up to.

http://sternaparadisaea.net/2025/12/20/settling-in/

#iQ2300 #Antarctica #Fieldwork #FieldPhoto