Andy's Big Antarctic Trip (2010 to 2012): The Raising of Z6 AWS

It would not be an atypical Antarctic day unless one was holding a high quality shovel or spade in their hands and was readying themselves for some higher quality digging action. A large dollop of digging is what it's all about in the frozen continent.

In the grand meteorological scheme of things very little precipitation actually falls at Halley V. The snow that comes in is usually blown in by the wind. To put it simply, large amounts of snow gets moved about and very little actually comes from the sky, well, a lot less than you would maybe imagine.

The blowing snow interacts with and generally builds up around any obstacles that are in it's way. No exposed item is spared this treatment and every year the meteorological experiments have to be dug out and readied for another year of operation. This week it was the turn of the Z6 AWS.

As with any other cool public sector endeavour the vocabulary is Liberally Sprinkled with Indecipherable Abbreviations (or LSwIA if you will). So I better explain this afforementioned abbreviated beauty. The station code for Halley is the very simple letter 'Z'. We reside at Halley V so the code for Halley V is 'Z5'. The new Halley VI base is therefore referred to as 'Z6'.

Whilst the Z6 base modules are being constructed at Z5 the actual Z6 site is some distance away and major work has been under way for a few years to ready the site for the science that will be implemented there and this years imminent arrival of the new modules.

The Z6 site has been monitored for some time by the Z6 Automatic Weather Station. The Z6 AWS and and the Z5 AWS stand alone patiently logging weather data. The resulting data is subsequently analysed, scrutinised and utilised. Unfortunately they are not so automatic that they are able to dig themselves out of the snow so once a year during the summer season they are rescued from their snowy grave and readied for another year of wonderful meteorological autonomy.

There were many personal firsts that awaited me on this trip; my first time to the Z6 site and the first time that I would have the privilege of travelling in a Snow Cat. We teamed up with the Communications team who had the task of installing an HF antenna at Z6. The general plan was that the comms team would help us dig out the Z6 AWS system whilst we the Met team would subsequently sit about and drink cups of tea and coffee whilst the comms team carried out their HF antenna installation…..and that was what did indeed transpire. Result!

So joining us on this trip were Antarctic communications legends Iain Sissons and Emma Philpot. in addition we were also counting on the help of Antarctic medical legend Susan Woodward. With the team ready for some serious snow digging action Antarctic meteorological legends Richard Sands and I were ready and technically prepared to travel the massive 16km to the Halley VI site. A journey that would take an even more massive 45 bumpy minutes in a Snow Cat.

Snow Cat posing with Antarctic medical legend, Susan Woodward

We arrived at the Z6 AWS and were generally surprised that the system wasn't buried deeper in the snow.

Halley VI Automatic Weather Station after a years worth of snow accumulation

Richard set about downloading the AWS data and, with spades at the ready, the rest of us started digging some gurt big 'oles (as they say in Dorset)

The Halley Comms team. The very capable Iain Sissons and Emma Philpot

In fact two gurt big 'oles were necessary; the power system (consisting of a battery box that is charged from a solar panel) had to be raised as had the AWS system itself which consisted of the met instruments and the logging system. Fortunately for us the snow was of a powdery consistency with little ice present to slow us down. So the digging progressed smoothly and quickly. This was in stark contrast to the ice festival that was the raising of Ryan's GPS site.

Emma digging out the solar panel and battery box

Susan, Iain and Richard digging out the AWS system

The Z6 AWS was raised within about two hours and looked better for it

Z6 AWS raised and ready

The AWS consists of an anemometer which measures wind speed and direction.

AWS Anemometer

Temperature and humidity probes.

Temperature (left) and Humidity (right) probes

And a sonic snow depth sensor which measures snow accumulation over the year.

Snow depth sensor

A data logger which resides in the white cabinet logs the data from the instruments on a minute by minute basis. All this data results in a very high resolution profile of the weather patterns at the Halley VI site.

All in all another great day of digging with the British Antarctic Survey. Love it! Bring it on! Do you think I'm kidding? Well, witness these happy Antarctic faces: