Chasing Atmospheric Rivers on King George Island, Antarctica

    It may sound weird but we are in Antarctica and there is no snow.. While common on the South Shetland Islands north of the Antarctic Peninsula (we are only 62ºS) to have temperatures above zero in summer, there is a tendency   over the last 50 years of warmer temperatures   and more melt. Yes, there was a short pause of warming at the Peninsula in the beginning of 21 st   century due to nature climate variability but   after this period the warming trend came back even stronger . And there are   more frequent, stronger and longer lasting extreme warm events . Our study of atmospheric rivers includes their impact on warm temperatures and surface snow melt in the Antarctic Peninsula. And they also tend to bring a lot of rainfall instead of snowfall as temperatures here are already close to 0ºC.   One year ago, on 7-8 February 2022 several northern Antarctic Peninsula stations, including King Sejong where we are now, showed new record high temper...

 8 February, Wednesday. King Sejong Today we rushed to finish our precipitation radar installation just before the storm started.. It was a long day.. Very quiet and beautiful in the morning.. Even sunny.. Lots of ice in the bay coming from the nearby glacier and moved by the easterly winds.. Then suddenly the wind started to get stronger in the afternoon.. It started raining.. And in the evening we got gale winds up to 25 m/s..  Photo:   Finished installation of the MRR-PRO radar just before the storm.. It will show us vertical profile of rain and snow. On the photo: Claudio&Irina.  The MRR-Pro radar measurements are collaboration with  Vincent Favier ( IGE - Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement, Grenoble, France )  and project  ANR-ARCA .  Photo: Icy bay in front of King Sejong station on 8 February. The ice was calved from the nearby glacier Fourcade. ©Irina Gorodetskaya We were lucky to make it to Escudero to retrieve our equipment ...

  After the long quarantine and waiting.. the arrival to King George Island and transfer to King Sejong station happened extremely fast until we got into the waves. Boarded the plane in Punta Arenas, crossed Drake passage in 2 hours, landed at Marsh airport on King George Island, out of the plane, to the bay, put on the mustang suits (a warm overall), jump into the Zodiacs boats and started crossing the bay. The waves were getting higher and higher and the pilot was moving very slowly. Approaching King Sejong, lots of small ice floes appeared and our small boat was manoeuvring between them. Splashes of water into the face and sometimes a real cold shower.. Cold hands holding the rope.. And next to our boat little penguins playing in the water..  Photo: Traversing the bay from King George Island airport to King Sejong station. ©Irina Gorodetskaya Photo: Korean Antarctic station King Sejong   ©Irina Gorodetskaya After meeting with the station manager and explanati...

Our project  APMAR2 -  Antarctic Peninsula precipitation and surface Mass and energy balance: what is the role of Atmospheric Rivers?   has started with the first leg – arriving to southern Chile, Punta Arenas, the gateway to Antarctica.  Photo: Night clouds over Strait of Magellan and Punta Arenas. 29 January 2023. ©Irina Gorodetskaya The project is funded by  PROPOLAR  - Portuguese Polar Program with support by  KOPRI  – Korea Polar Research Institute and  INACH  – Chilean Antarctic Institute. APMAR2 team is Irina Gorodetskaya  (researcher at  CIIMAR  and project PI), Claudio Durán-Alarcón  (researcher at  CESAM /University of Aveiro), and Sang-Jong Park (researcher at  KOPRI ). We are all heading to the Korean King Sejong station on King George Island, northern Antarctic Peninsula.  APMAR2 project is a continuation of the last year projects  APMAR and TULIP  (oh yes.. Antarctic Tulips ...