ONN's Meteorologist Harrison Hove is on Antarctica.
Harrison applied for and received a grant from the National Science Foundation to travel to Antarctica to report on the several Ohioans doing research near the South Pole. Each day Hove will share his travels and projects that he and other Buckeyes are working on to ONN.
Here's the latest from Harrison:
They say it is the closet to Mars you will ever get on planet earth. I saw things today that less than 1,000 people in the world have ever seen before. It all started out with a helicopter ride. It was another mild and clear morning at the McMurdo Station. The group gathered at the helipad. After weighing in and getting our cargo together, we met our pilot who was tasked with safely whisking us through the dry valleys of Antarctica.
We flew from McMurdo Station toward the Transantarctic Mountains. We crossed over the ice sheet in the Ross Sea. As we skirted between some mountains, we found ourselves suddenly in this dry patch of land. There were only small streams here created by glacial melting. This is the largest cold weather desert in the world. The dry valleys only receive a couple inches of precipitation per year.
A team of researchers, mainly grad students, are tasked with sleeping in tents and camping by these streams. They live in the field for months gathering water samples. Ohio State’s Dr. Berry Lyons uses this data to analyze and use in his research on algae and microorganism evolution. The students were wonderful and so willing to answer questions. Dr. Diane McKnight of the University of Colorado at Boulder oversees the Long Term Ecological Research program in Antarctica. The findings from this stream study will be combined with studies in more than ten other disciplines to try to answer big picture science based questions like global warming.
The streams were crystal clear, some deeper turquoise, from the glaciers. We went to another small lake that had a mammoth glacier sitting on its edge. It was awesome to look straight up and get a glimpse close up at how these things just tower over you.
They go to great lengths to maintain a pristine environment. There is nothing permanent in these camps. This includes plumbing. There is a bucket for everything here. The environment is so untouched that you can see tire tracks when researchers originally rode ATVs into one part of the dry valleys more than four decades ago. All the researchers I met were so passionate about their mission in Antarctica. It is a huge sacrifice. Some people live in tents for months in the cold while working to find answers and advance our science knowledge.
The pilot flew us high above some of these glaciers. Soon the glaciers even faded and it was just rock. It honestly looked like Arizona. There was even a huge canyon we passed over and the different sediment layers were evident. It was just an outstanding look at one of the world’s treasures that literally no one gets to see.
We ate lunch at the refueling depot where I had beef stew and some dinner rolls. It was good and hit the spot. The clouds were rolling in and it was getting cold. Some icing had been reported on other helicopters so we had to cancel one stop. We headed to a location where one of Antarctica’s earliest explorers, Scott, originally landed from the Ross Sea. Scott was the second explorer to reach the South Pole. His hut was left here and used again during another subsequent exploration. The coolest part of this stop was seeing penguins and seals. That was a treat. Those little penguins are so funny to watch wobble around.
Once we returned to McMurdo I had to knock out some work. I met an Ohioan, Jeff Huffman, for dinner. He is the runway supervisor here at McMurdo after a long career in the U.S. Air Force.
We exchanged some stories and I set a time to interview him for more stories. Once we parted ways, I met up with Megan Alexander. She is an Ohio State graduate working as a government contractor down in Antarctica. She happened to sit next to me on the C-17 coming here from Christchurch.
Everyone is so wonderful here. That is the one thing that really, really sticks out. The people are awesome. No job is too big or too small for anyone. There are people working in the galley with advanced college degrees. This just shows the willingness and desire to come experience to coldest and most isolated continent in the world.
