An ANDRILL poster in Zambia as part of IPY day 2008

ANDRILL has always been a project that is massively international. We came from the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and many other places, and we worked in Antarctica.

But we just reached a new realm in our education and outreach efforts. ANDRILL exhibits are being hosted in Zambia by Lucky Musonda (Secretary General of the UN Youth Association in Zambia) for the sixth IPY International Polar Day.

It is great to be a part of such an interesting global project. If you want to learn more about my work with ANDRILL, there is an entire category of this blog dedictated to my time with them and hundreds of photographs of Antarctica. If you want to learn more about the project in general they have a website with resources for scientists, educators, and the public.

I’m not sure what else will be added here, but maybe something, someday…

The KML (download here) is a very small network access file. Load it once, save it in the Google Earth sidebar, and all updates will be available each time you launch Google Earth. You need the latest Google Earth to view this layer.

This was presented at the SCAR IASC conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 8-11, 2008.

@conference{Mankoff:2008SCAR,
        Author = {K. D. Mankoff and the SMS Project Science Team},
        Title = {{An ANDRILL SMS ARISE Educational Software Package:
                From a microscope in Antarctica 20 million years ago
                to a global overview 100 years in the future}},
        Organization = {SCAR / IASC Open Science Conference},
        Address = {St. Petersburg, Russia},
        Month = {July 8-11},
        Year = {2008},
        Abstract = {We present an education software product
                (Google Earth Layer) that allows exploration of the
                ANDRILL SMS project. The geospatial, micro-to-macro,
                and multi-layering capabilities of Google Earth are
                used to allow viewers to tie together concepts from a
                microscopic view to a global overview. The journey
                begins with a microscopic view of diatoms in a
                borehole under the sea under the ice in Antarctica,
                and ends with a global overview of what the climate
                might look like in the year 2100 as calculated by the
                GISS Model II GCM from EdGCM. Paleo, present,
                and future GCM scenarios are available for users to
                explore more on their own using EdGCM.}}

I'm particularly excited about this leap year because I get 367 days this year. How is that possible? Well I only got 364 days last year because when I flew to New Zealand on my way to Antarctica I lost a day. On January 17 (both of them) of this year I was flying back from New Zealand to New York City and regained my lost day.

And now I get today, February 29th. So I'll have had 365 days in 2008 on December 29th, and 367 by the end of the 31st. Plus or minus a few hours depending on which timezone I am in.

P.S. Happy Birthday Tad!!!

Edit: I wrote this a month ago and post-dated it. I later realized that I left Antarctica in December (2007) not 2008. So it isn't true :(. But it would be really neat if it were. So I'm leaving this post for hypotheticals sake.

Unfortunately, there are also cell phones and advertisements. Traffic lights and cars. Commerce and industry.

My trip with ANDRILL is done. My work with ANDRILL is not quite done. But this blog is about ANDRILL, so I won't post much more. Future ANDRILL work that will show up here include a software release, a trip to Lincoln, NE in late January / early February, and an April trip to Tallahassee, Florida for a post-ice team meeting.

Thank you for following along on this journey. If you have questions feel free to email me. I'll host a slideshow and story time once I'm back in New York. I'll incorporate this trip into my talks on climate change. I'll post here if I ever decide to keep a journal about something else, and I'll post any remaining ANDRILL topics here.

While waiting, a C-130 returning from the pole flies overhead. (The toys on this continent are amazing: Helicopters and military planes and drills and robots swimming under the ice and telescope dishes cryogenically cooled to a quarter of a degree above absolute zero and much much more.)

Watching the last mountains of the continent recede behind the plane is a sad view. I will miss it here. I might return someday but I have no idea if or when.

A Glacier Tongue protruding into the breaking sea ice

My colleague, Robin, wrote a moving post about our departure here.

Yesterday morning I woke up and boarded a C-130. This plane has skis, not wheels, and we took off from the sea ice runway at around 8AM. We landed 3 hours later at 90 degrees South latitude, 9301ft altitude. Even though the South Pole is only at 9301 feet it 'physiologically' at around 11,000 feet because there is so little atmosphere there. I felt it instantly, with a pounding heart and a racing pulse and difficulty climbing a flight of stairs.

The nothingness of the South Pole is breathtakingly beautiful. It is white and flat (except for a few structures) as far as you can see in every direction. It is more than 9,000 feet of ice under your feet, with nothing else between you and the bedrock that lies near sea level, and sometimes even below sea level.

From South Pole

After a full afternoon of visiting the base, I ate dinner, gave my talk, waited in the South Pole International PAX Terminal for 30 minutes, and then caught a flight home to McMurdo. There were four passengers on the return flight and I got to spend most of it, including the landing, sitting in the cockpit.

It was a whirlwind 12 hour visit, 18 hour trip. It happened so fast and was so amazing and surreal and overwhelming that it is already starting to fade to a snapshot memory and feel like a dream. Fortunately I took a few hundred photos.

When I first met a penguin I thought it was an awkward animal. I’d love to see them in their liquid habitat as they are much better adapted to motion in that medium. It tuns out even on land they move quite well on their bellies, and to my surprise can do some amazing yoga poses.

I did not attempt to replicate this pose.

A Penguin scrating the top of its head with its foot.

I got really excited when I was supposed to go south a few days ago, but it didn’t work out. Weather here is fickle. Due to my schedule and pending departure I figured it just wouldn’t happen. Now it might. But the weather here is fickle. I’m going to just be honored that I even have an invitation to speak at the South Pole, and expect nothing more until I feel the wheels skis leave the ground ice.