Notes from South 2017

Jonathan Shanklin's visit to Halley in 2017/18

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Note illustrations are thumbnails and the full size images may be downloaded by clicking on them.  The most recent report is at the top.  See also reports on my trips in 2006 , 2008 , 2010 and 2012.

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Cambridge, February 19.  Strange stuff called rain fell from the sky as I cycled in to the BAS office, bringing to a conclusion this account of life in Antarctica.

England, February 18.  We touched down at London Heathrow in the dark at 4:30am and relatively quickly got through arrivals and to our minbus for the trip to Cambridge, arriving at 7:00am.  This should have meant it was possible to ring for Sunday morning, however my car battery was flat, so I had to call the AA and didn't get home till too late.  It was still less than 40 hours from Antarctica to Cambridge!  I did get to evening ringing however and made 12 for ringing at Gt St Mary. 

Cape Town, February 17 to 18.  We got to the hotel in Cape Town about midnight, so after a quick check of emails it was time for bed.  After breakfast there was time for a long walk (about 11km) along the sea front as far as the "Sea Point Contact", a geological feature where granite meets sedimentary rock, before we had to go back to the airport for the flight home.  The 747 was very cramped, particularly after the 757 flight, but there was a slender crescent moon to see. 

Novo, February 14 to 16.  In the event we spent two nights at Novo and weren't joined by the second group.  The Basler flight from Halley to Novo was noisy and the aircraft unpreasurised, so deep breathing was needed a lot of the time.  The accommodation and facilities at Novo were rather basic and we were essentially confined to the bunk rooms apart from meals.  I was able to work on scientific data on my laptop, so made good use of the waiting.  It became clear that the weather was against the 2nd party, and the Basler was not able to fly across and get them in time for the 757 departure, which we found was constrained because their next stop was Miami.  This time I was in the middle part of the aircraft, which was first class - the VIP section was in the front.  As the sun set over the Southern Ocean there was a short "green flash" with the final fragment of sunlight turning green then steel blue. 

Halley, February 12 to 13.  My time here draws to a close.  I've had the chance to do a final bit of skiing and ride a skidoo.  The first party is due to fly to Novo early tomorrow morning and then we are joined by the second group and fly to Cape Town on the Boeing 757.  Its an evening flight to Heathrow on Saturday and I might be back in Cambridge for Sunday evening ringing! 

Halley, February 5 to 11.  Another week that has flown past.  I've been on earlies, launching the weather balloons and the carrying out the other routine tasks.  There was some bad news - the micro-turbine power generator will need more testing in Cambridge over the summer and so is being sent home.  This means that Daisy won't be running over the Antarctic winter, but the engineers are trying to ready another instrument that may provide measurements using a lower power system.  In addition we've had a visit from a Norwegian inspection team under the Antarctic Treaty protocols - they wanted to see me making an ozone observation and I duly obliged, explaining something about the science and general monitoring in Antarctica.  The shadows are getting ever longer in the evenings and on Saturday night the Sun sets for the first time this year.  With the lower Sun comes colder temperatures and it dropped to -21°C over one night. 

Halley, January 29 to February 4.  Daisy Dobson has been running all week and produces much steadier readings than our manual observations with Daphne.  It shows the value of the more continous observations, as variations in ozone during the day are clear.  Generally the weather was indifferent, but on Saturday the skies cleared to give a calm sunny day.  Barney was doing training in the morning, so I was on met and ozone observations from 9am to 6pm.  I did find time however to have a cycle round the station perimeter on one of the snow bikes.  It was about twice as fast as skiing, though fortunately the entire perimeter route had been groomed to give a hard surface as the going is tough elsewhere.  Saturday evening was Folk Night, where we had a mix of risque humour, folk songs and rock from talented members of the station team.  Temperatures are beginning to drop lower and fell to -15°C overnight - the sun still isn't setting, but the low sun gave rise to a bright parhelion or "sun dog".  On Sunday I volunteered to run a beginners ski-school for nordic skiing with one of the field guides, but he had to go off with a team of scientists who were visiting survey sites in the neighbourhood, so I did it by myself.  There were only three pupils, one an advanced beginner, one a novice and one had never skied before.  It was successful as nobody broke anything!  After a break for a cup-of tea, I was then towed around the perimeter for a bit of ski-jouring on mountaineering skis.

Halley, January 22 to 28.  The stronger winds with snow continued for most of the week, producing significant drift tails behind any obstruction.  Walking around was quite a struggle, though launching the balloon was surprisingly easy.  Saturday was forecast to be very windy, so it was treated as a Sunday day off, but in the event the winds were mostly dying down.  I was on met duty anyway, so it wasn't a day off for me.  It was deemed to be Burns Night, so the evening meal was the traditional Scottish fare, though the haggis was used to stuff chicken (and very tasty) and no-one wore a kilt.  The address to the haggis was read by Erin, who is from New Zealand - the Halley tradition is that the person who is least Scottish has the doubtful honour of reading the verses.  Sunday was a calm day, with high clouds producing a halo around the Sun.  I had a leisurely morning, though not quite a day off.  After lunch I went for a cross-country ski round the perimeter, doing the 8km in 1h35min.  In the evening I completed a program to show the results from the automatic Dobson, and produced a nice graph showing the ozone values on January 25 climbing then falling - something that is quite hard to see in the manual data.  It is going to be fascinating to see the graphs as the instrument becomes operational.

Halley, January 15 to 21.  There has been quite a change in the weather, with a shift to cloudy days, and towards the end of the week significant snowfall and wind, bringing a lot of drifting round the station.  I've been covering the afternoon observations, though on Friday and Saturday was pressed into somewhat longer service to enable some winter training to take place.  Overall a successfull week, with the balloon system finally in good working order, and a new instrument that measures visibility brought into service.  Its start-up almost immediately co-incided with a deterioration in the visibility and both human eyeball and machine gave close to the same range.  This afternoon I'm due to give a talk on "Discovering the ozone hole", and I've managed to incorporate a scene from "The Smoking Gun", a docu-drama about the discovery that was made some years ago.

Halley, January 2 to 14.  The new year has been pretty busy, though mostly routine. In addition to the routine of airobs, ozone obs, met obs and balloon flights I've been commissioning a new radiosonde system for tracking the balloons and collecting the data from the sonde that does the measurements of pressure, temperature, humidity and position as the balloon ascends.  This turned out to be a bit more complicated than expected, however with a bit of logical deduction both the main and backup systems were made to work, and then required some fine tuning to provide the data needed in Cambridge.  Carrying out the balloon flight is now much simpler, and yesterday I managed to get the balloon launched 15 minutes earlier than we had previously over the summer, despite starting at the same time.  In addition the Met Office now get the data more rapidly and in greater detail, so can make more use of it in forecasting.  Quite unusually most of the last two weeks have had gentle winds, often from the west and frequent clear skies.  Conditions weren't quite so good on January 7, when I went for a cross-country ski round the station perimeter, a distance of about 8km, which I managed in under two hours despite the poor contrast due to cloudy conditions and occasional snow.  During the week we added another species to the local bird list for the summer when an Adelie penguin paid a visit.  Yesterday it was warm and sunny, to the extent that during my morning duty I walked across to the met caboose in shirt sleeves, and in the afternoon went for a ski dressed similarly.  I made use of a large snow drift behind the base which had created some gentle hills to practice turns downhill and herringboned back up.  I was also on "gash" which used to be quite an arduous job, but this year mostly involves helping with the washing up.  I also spent a bit of time helping peel the spuds for lunch.  It was a pretty long day as we had been woken at 3:30 by the fire alarm going off, then the normal "earlies" start at 5:30, so I turned in at 9:30 in the evening.  Today was another sunny day, with virtually no clouds, and a day off for most.  This was going well until the science alarm showed no data from the automatic weather station - after a bit of a run-around it ended up being a network problem that was solved.  After lunch I decided it was too nice to stay indoors, so got out a pair of station ski-boots and mountaineering skis.  There are no mountains here, but this type of ski can be quickly swapped between cross-country with a lifting heel and downhill with a firm lock.  I started with the "hill" I had tried yesterday, but this was too gentle for downhill, however there were a couple of nicely groomed slopes that were much steeper.  After a run down each I decided that it was time for some ski-jouring round the station perimeter and persuaded a colleague to be my driver.  I spent an hour being driven round, falling twice, but quickly remembering how to do christie turns.  As my legs were beginning to ache a little I decided that was enough, and went in for a cup of tea.

Halley, January 1.  New Year's Eve was supposed to be a day off for me, however it quickly turned into a working day when the Rothera forecaster asked if he could have details of the balloon flight in order to predict when the fog (which had formed overnight) might clear.  His suggestion that it would do so when the temperature rose above -2 was pretty much spot on.  Thin cloud came in later in the day to give bright, although not sunny conditions and a temperature just below freezing.  The evening meal was an outside barbecue and this was followed by a team quiz on events in the preceeding 12 months.  Top score was 39/60, whilst my team scored 30.  One answer that required very specialist knowledge was 'Oumuamua, the name of an interstellar asteroid that was discovered in October.  I turned in after the quiz as I had volunteered for the early slot.  When I got up it was a calm, sunny morning, and I could walk across to the met caboose in a t-shirt.  This was just as well as the temperature inside the caboose was +32, even though outside it was -3.  With the three hour time difference, I had another phone call from my sister wishing me happy new year.  Being sunny, I did some more calibration measurements of ozone, as well as launching the balloon, but it was a "no fly day", so I only made one air obs to give the Rothera forecaster an idea of the conditions at Halley in case an emergency was declared elsewhere.  After brunch we had a snocat trip to the "Halloween Crack", which is about 10km from the station.  This was about an hour's journey by cat, as the top speed is about 10 kph.  Once there we could rope up and walk to the edge and peer down the now very wide chasm, which had sea water at the bottom in a tide crack, with a storm petrel fluttering along looking for food.  Then it was a slow return to Halley across the icy desert and a suprisingly varied topography with gentle hills rising some 10m high.

Halley, December 30.  The last couple of days have had plenty of sunshine, so along with the usual routine I've been doing lots of calibration measurements on "Daisy".  The results are not yet worked up, and will keep me busy over the next couple of days.  Tomorrow is a Saturday for most of the station, so a half day, but the met team are treating it like a normal Sunday, so a day off whilst the science team provide cover.  As it was a nice evening I went out for a short ski around the station.  It might have been longer, but I couldn't find any boots with laces!

Halley, December 28.  Today we started "Daisy" the new Dobson spectrophotometer (No 73) that we hope will run unattended over the winter.  It was very reminiscent of my first visit to Halley, when I brought in Dobson 123 and at first operated it outside on the snow surface.  "Daisy" was brought out of the aluminium trunk in which she had been transported from the UK and put on the packing case in which "Daphne" had spent the winter.  A power lead was plugged into the met caboose, and the motor in "Daisy" started to turn.  After a few tests it seemed that she had more or less retained the calibration that had been made the previous summer at Hoenpeissenberg in Germany and at Cambridge.

Halley, December 27.  I was up early on Christmas Day, as I was on "early" met duty.  The station was rather like the Marie Celeste at six in the morning, with no sign of life at all.  After the usual weather observations and balloon launch there was an early lunch at 11am, the Christmas dinner at 4pm.  This started with salmon on asparagus, then the usual turkey dinner, with pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, carrots, sprouts, and grated parsnip.  This was followed by Christmas pudding with brandy sauce, then a choice of Yule log (complete with Robin, snails, worms and a dragon) or Christmas cake (iced to include a Halley chasm and snocat), mince pies, and cheese and bisuits on cheeseboards specially made by the chippies.  This was all washed down with a few glasses of wine, but I went to bed earlier than most as it was another early start this morning.  The quiet period between observations allowed time for a phone call from my sister via the satellite link that gives us our internet connection.  Some of the regular tasks that need doing include making the milk - we have tins of Nido, which when mixed in jugs of water approximates to fresh milk.  Another is digging snow to put in the melt tank to provide us with fresh water.  On the modules this is fairly straightforward as a bulldozer can push the snow straight in, but on the Drewry they dozer just makes a large mound of snow which is then shovelled into the tank.  There have been some good sunny spells today, but mixed in with cloud.  I had a flu jab from the Doctor before dinner, then afterwards the sky cleared and I went for a cross-country ski around the station.  It is all pretty flat, but it was possible to glide down a few bumps.  Going with the wind it was sufficiently warm (about -5) to strip down to a t-shirt.  Overnight the temperature dropped down to -11.  The flu jab and excercise have left my muscles rather aching today!

Halley, December 23.  The sunny weather came to an end.  Those up early saw rime on buildings that was deposited by overnight fog.  As the wind increased this blew away.  Later in the day it started to drizzle, even though the temperature was below freezing and this lead to deposition of glaze ice on some surfaces, and those working outside getting distinctly wet.  The wind continued to increase a little, and it was distinctly parky when the station Christmas photo was taken at 6pm.  After dinner the wind brought some snow, making the dash along the bridge between the modules an interesting experience. 

Halley, December 22.  We have had a succession of fairly calm sunny days, so a lot of Dobson ozone observations to do.  Yesterday the temperature just got above freezing, though by midnight (with the sun still shining) it was down to -9.  The Christmas decorations went up today and  I made a start on the "indent" the inventory of all the meteorological equipment held on the station.  It is a slow process with one shelf of material often taking half an hour or more to count and catalogue.

Halley, December 18.  My day off in place of Sunday, so a chance to do some washing, though I also did some work in revising the Dobson calibration.

Halley, December 17.  Sunday is a day off for most people, but the meteorological and ozone observations continue so it was another early start, however with no balloon flight and no aircraft observations required it was quite relaxed.  The weather improved too, to give periods of sunshine.  In the evening I played a few matches in the doubles pool championship, and we won the first round by default when the opposition potted black by mistake.  We came close in the first match of the second round, but were thumped in the second.  I then played a few games of cards with some of the others, including a game of cheat which I won (with only a little cheating).

Halley, December 16.  A bright and breezy day, though with unusually low altostratus cloud for a while, which was caused by a low level jet.  At one point the cloud came down to the surface producing a short spell of bad weather.  As the Twin Otter is flying here this required a "Special" observation indicating a sudden change in the weather.  My second round pool match was against my fellow meteorologist - I failed to take the few chances on offer and lost.  As it is Saturday, dinner is later than usual and everyone dresses up for the occasion.  I am wearing the tie of the Cambridge University Astronomical Society, which I took with me on my first visit in 1982.

Halley, December 15.  What a change - a calm, sunny day with only a little high cloud, so ideal for doing Dobson calibrations.  It also started with hourly aircraft observations, but around midday the decision was made to postpone the flight until tomorrow.  The balloon launch was easy in the light winds, though the door to the shed did stick in the open position.  As the day progressed the temperature in the met caboose steadily rose, and by dinner time had reached +28 degrees C.  After dinner I played my game in the first round of the base pool competition and won by default when my oponent potted the black.

Halley, December 14.  Blowing and falling snow was reducing visibility to less than 500m during the morning, but this was just good enough to get across to the met caboose.  My fellow meteorologist Barney attempted the morning balloon launch, but it proved too windy.  Conditions gradually improved and towards evening (not that the sun ever sets at the moment) patches of blue sky appeared.  Tomorrow one of the Twin Otters (planes) should fly across from Rothera, so I will be making hourly weather observations until they arrive.

Halley, December 13.  An even earlier start as I am doing "earlies" for the rest of the week, which start with an observation at 06:00 local time.  It was a sunny day, though with a brisk wind that was blowing snow grains around the surface and creating small barchan type dunes.  Being sunny there were frequent ozone observations, which help to calibrate the Dobson instrument.  The balloon launch didn't go entirely to plan - because the balloon shed door was on a manual chain hoist I thought it was sufficiently calm in the lea to risk filling the balloon with helium on the open platform.  The balloon was nearly full, when a small gust gave it an extra nudge and off it went.  I then had to trudge back to the met caboose to get another one, hoist open the door, fill the balloon and then launch it, together with the "sonde" which measures temperatures and winds.  This time it was successful.  The rest of the day was spent in doing more weather and ozone observations, until cloud pushed in around 5pm.  The forecast for tomorrow is blowing snow - snow that has already fallen, but is picked up off the ground as small grains and raised above eye level by the strong wind.

Halley, December 12.  An early start in order to have quick breakfast before going over to the Met Caboose, which is a few hundred metres from the main station, at 7am.  Met observing began with air observations for the incoming plane from Novo, bringing the remainder of the BAS team to Halley.  These had to be done every hour until the plane landed, and then for a couple more hours until it was half-way to the German Neumayer station.  I was finally stood down from these observations at 13:00 our time.  In the mean-time we carried out a balloon launch at 10:30, where the package ascended to 27km, sending data back to us, which was then coded and sent to the Met Office for use in weather forecasting.  At intervals there were also ozone observations to be made using "Daphne" the Dobson ozone spectrophotometer (No 31), which is around 60 years old, and still one of the world standard instruments for measuring ozone.  The electronics have been updated over the years, but the mechanics are largely the same as when it was built.  It gave readings of around 270 Dobson Units - equivalent to a layer of pure ozone 2.7mm thick on the ground.  This is a little lower than usual because a small, partially filled remnant of the ozone hole has lingered after the ozone hole itself had filled in.  In the afternoon I found a "Met Register", which then allowed us to record some of the weather observations in standard format.

Halley, December 11.  A cloudy day with light winds and occasional light snow.  We undertook a range of training modules, including a briefing on the crevasses that have lead to the move and winter closing of Halley, communications, clothing, medical, field kit and skidoo use.  I also had a short walk around to see the Meteorology hut (Met Caboose), BART (the balloon launching platform) and the AWS (nearly half buried in snow).  With laptop passed for use I checked emails etc after dinner, then an early night for the start of Met observing duties at 7am tomorrow morning.  The iconic modules of Halley 6 are back in working order, though much remains to be done before the full science program will be run from them.  As each day goes by more and more of the normal meteorology program of observations is being restarted, but there is still a lot of digging to do before everthing is ready.

Halley, December 10.  It was a long day.  We were up at 4am for a departure from  the hotel at 5am.  Our flight was up on the Cape Town departures board as "Antarctica", check in and boarding was fairly straightforward, and the surprise was the plane.  It was a Boeing 757 in which the worst seating was business class!  The plane had been fitted out for transporting pop-stars around, and the next charter was rumoured to be Phil Collins.  There were stewardesses and the meal was served on china plates with metal cutlery.  It was a smooth flight to Novo, and no sooner had we touched down on the blue-ice runways than we were urged to sort out our baggage and board the Polar 6, a German ski-equipped plane.  Our group for this flight was a dozen passengers, with the remainder left at Nova under sunny skies and 13kt winds.  The Polar 6 was very noisy and unpressurised, so the flight altitude at around 12,000 feet made even cleaning frost off windows a significant effort.  There were some views of mountain peaks and crevasses in the four hour flight before we touched down at Halley for the snow-cat ride to the station, which was broadly similar, though in a different location to my last visit.  We had a short station induction and evening meal, then it was time for bed.

Cape Town, December 9.  The temperature was much lower at a pleasant 22 degrees, however the wind was strong.  A group of us hired a taxi to take us to the lower cable station on Table Mountain.  The cablecar was not running because of the wind, and we suspected it would be very windy up top.  The group got up to the contour path, and perhaps wisely decided to continue along the path and come down at Patterclip Gorge back to the road and the station.  The most exciting thing was a Spotted Harlequin Snake seen on the way down.  Walking back along the road there were some ferocious gusts, which made standing difficult, so stopping was a wise choice.  We picked up another taxi and headed for Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens.  There the wind speed was much lower and we spent a pleasant afternoon walking around.  In the main labels showing common native flora were rather lacking, though there were a few good interpretation boards and an interesting section with threatened native species.  At one point a gerbil like animal dashed in front of us.  The taxi ride back to the hotel was much faster than our coaches on previous days, probably because there was no business traffic.  I then had a quick walk to the Company's Garden, which became the original botanic garden before it moved to Kirstenbosch.  One or two trees had come down, and it was still very windy on this side of Table Mountain.  I did see a rat and a squirrel to add to the collection of vertebrates for the day.  The 7pm briefing confirmed that we would leave very early next morning for the trip to Novolazarevskaya, and I would probably then be in the first group to leave for Halley.  If so, the next installment is likely to be from Halley.

Cape Town, December 8.  A very early start, with the coach leaving at 6am for our safari.  It took over 2 hours to get to Aquila Private Game Reserve, where breakfast awaited us.  We then boarded off-road buses and through an electronic gate into the reserve.  First up where Elephant, Rhino and Hippopotamus, all in and around an artificial lake.  We made further stops to see Wildebeast, Eland, Zebra and more Rhino - the Reserve is a have for White Rhino.  A Lion on a distant rock was difficult to spot, but on rounding a corner we had a male and three females almost within touching distance.  We then had a refreshing goblet of grape juice before wending back to the Reserve lodge for lunch.  There we received the bad news that the Antarctic tour group had not booked us into the hotel for further nights and so they had cleared the rooms of all our posessions to await our return.  The return journey proved twice as long, and for some reason the air conditioning did not work, raising the temperature inside the coach to the level of a Turkish bath.  Eventually someone managed to open the roof vents on the coach which provided some relief.  Checking through our bagage showed that a few people had lost items - I was one of the unlucky ones and the charger lead for my mobile had disappeared.  We were then checked into another hotel near the centre of town, which seems reasonable enough, although everyone is sharing rooms.  For the astronomers there were two 114mm reflectors at Aquila, apparently used for star parties, however the finder scopes were inserted the wrong way round and the mounts were a bit wobbly.  I did manage to project a solar image, noting no sunspots.  For the botanists there were many ruderal species round the margin of the lodge, including Amsinckia micrantha, Bromus cathartica (cf), Hypochaeris radicata, Lactuca seriola var laciniata (the only form I've seen here), Sisymbrium orientale and a small, white flowered Mallow.

Cape Town, December 7.  A very hot day in Cape Town and the penguin choice proved a good one as it was cooler down the Peninsula, with a strong breeze.  A group of ten of us booked in on a visit to see penguins and the Cape of Good Hope.  The tour guide provided a running, if not always totally accurate, commentary until our first stop at the Boulders reserve.  Here we saw African Penguins (formerly Jackass Penguins) and some of the local flora.  I noted a liverwort (cf Frullania) growing on one shaded tree.  From there we continued down the coast to the Cape, which is part of Table Mountain National Park.  Most of us elected to walk up to the lighthouse and explore.  There was plenty of fynbos flora, with Proteas, Geraniums, Pea family, Aster, Medics, Lobelia amongst the recognisable families, as well as a few lizards and an antelope.  From the lighthouse we trecked across to Cape Point, the most south-westerly point of Africa.  The return journey started with seeing a pair of baboons doing over a car of tourists, then wound back towards Cape Town, passing through the Silvermine Nature Reserve, which I had visited on my first visit to Cape Town around 1990.  Traffic in the city was very slow, but we got back in time for dinner at 6pm, then a briefing at 7pm.  We are not flying tomorrow, but instead are going on a safari.  We should fly early on Sunday morning.  I then took a brisk walk to the lighthouse that we visited yesterday to see the sunset.  It did, but apart from the solar disc becoming very flattened there were no optical phenomena.

Cape Town, December 6.  The pre-flight briefing was called forward, so no time for Table Mountain.  We may be flying early on Friday morning, but it might be Monday.  Time for a short walk around the bridges of the Waterfront, a short harbour cruise and then in the evening a walk out to the lighthouse.  One seaside plant was clearly a kin of Limonium, but otherwise it was mostly common English plants that I recognised.  Tomorrow we may go and see some penguins.

Cape Town, December 5.  It is hot, without a cloud in the sky.  We touched down this morning, then were driven (about 30 of us) to our hotel, not far from the Waterfront.  After freshening up, most of us went down to a Waterfront bar for a meal, then strolled along the waterfront admiring some of the Volvo Ocean Race yachts that were moored up readying for the next stage of the race.  There was a suggestion of a walk round the coast to the lighthouse, but the party flagged in the heat and I was in a minority of one for continuing.  In the distance that we did cover there were a number of familiar plants from the UK, and I noted amongst others Euphorbia peplus,  Lolium perenne and Lepidium didymum.  In its native setting on the rocky coast was Carpobrotus edulis (Hottentot Fig).  Amazingly there is Eduroam in the hotel as we are next to an academic building, so the internet speed is quite good.  In the evening I joined the bell-ringers for their weekly practice at St George's Cathedral, allowing them to ring plain bob minor.

Cambridge, December 3.  UK temperatures at the beginning of December were very similar to those of the scheduled Antarctic starting point, but first there is a stop-over in Cape Town where temperatures are forecast to be above 30�C.  The next installment will either be from Cape Town or Halley later in December.

Cambridge, December 1.  For this, my 20th trip south, my destination is to be Halley, on the Brunt Ice Shelf.  There I will be a meteorological observer, making surface weather observations for forecasting and climate studies, and launching weather balloons. I will be making ozone observations with a Dobson ozone spectrophotometer and calibrating an automated Dobson that we hope will run over the Antarctic winter.  

Cambridge, October and November.  I was asked in early October if I would be willing to go south again after a colleague resigned.  The answer, with only a little hesitation, was "Yes", though there were quite a few hurdles to cross before final clearance was given.