Ice, Ash and Lava
Time grows short. In just a couple of weeks, we will begin our journey — scientists, engineers, seamen, cooks, and one lowly writer, converging from our diverse homes on the summer side of the world, to meet on the winter side and sail south. We received the satellite image above a few days ago, courtesy of Dr. David Long, who will make his contribution to our project from his lab at BYU in Utah. The following simple note accompanied it: “High winds have roughened the sea making iceberg identification difficult the last couple of days.”
Ken Smith, our Chief Scientist, added his own note. “The seasonal ice edge is advancing quickly, pushing our operational area further north.” It’s easy to see the truth of this. The ice was at the dotted red line on 4/25. A week later…well, you see the solid red line, and the edge of the white ice. Winter is coming apace.
We’ve also received word that the recent eruption of the Chaiten volcano in Chile may affect us. Weather permitting, we should be able to see the long plume of ash during our flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas, where the ship will be anchored. Today we received a message from Dr. Tim Shaw, another of our principle investigators, with a link to an animation of the Southern Jet Stream. (Try an animation length of 14 days, and an interval of 6 hrs.) It appears we may do more than observe the ash plume from above. We may find ourselves in it.
Chaiten is a type of volcano that is capable of violent eruptions of the sort that demolished Mount St. Helens twenty-eight years ago. So it’s hard to predict what might happen.
[NOTE: Hard to keep the characters straight? For a shockingly brief guide to various team members, click here, or look to your right under PAGES, and click the “Icebreaker Denizens” permalink.]
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