Researchers from EPFL have been joining the Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition to Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Station every year since 2016. Rainette Engbers, a PhD student in the Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences, recently spent a month to establish communication between our instruments and the station so that data could be accessed directly from Europe in near real time. After coming back, she provided insights into her first trip to the polar regions.
Arriving in Antarctica was nothing like I would have imagined a few years ago. A large Russian Ilyushin cargo plane landed on a blue-ice runway surrounded by an immense, seemingly endless ice sheet. Yet, scattered across this apparent flatness, mountain peaks emerged through the ice, isolated rocky outcrops known as nunataks. From the landing strip, we drove for nearly three hours at only 20 km/h across a bumpy surface shaped by sastrugi before finally reaching Princess Elisabeth Station, located at the foot of one of these mountains.
The first days the weather was amazing, the sun was shining continuously, and there was hardly any wind. Initially, I wore the full polar gear we had received before arriving in Antarctica, but I quickly realized this was excessive. Day by day, I reduced the number of layers I wore, to the point where I occasionally went outside in sneakers.
As I was well aware that these conditions were not normal to hold on for the whole time and you are never completely certain how the weather will be like more than 3 days ahead, every clear day becomes precious. As a result, everyone worked intensely from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., determined to make the most of the favorable conditions, fully aware that a sudden storm could halt all fieldwork and leave projects unfinished.
When I began my studies in Climate Physics with a focus on the cryosphere, conducting fieldwork in Antarctica represented the ultimate goal. At the time, I imagined driving snowmobiles across the ice, digging snow pits, and studying snow properties directly in the field. In reality, my work turned out to be quite different.
My main task involved establishing communication between our instruments and the station so that data could be accessed directly from Europe in near real time. At times, I felt more like an electrician or IT technician than a climate scientist. Much of my work consisted of repairing and replacing malfunctioning instruments — which often meant dealing with cables in challenging conditions. Some instruments and data loggers were mounted on a 26-meter tower, requiring hours spent high above the ice carefully handling tiny cables that could not be managed with thick gloves.
Although this technical work lay outside my original area of expertise, I learned an enormous amount on site. Understanding how instruments function and how measurements are obtained is invaluable when later working with the data itself.
In the end, no major storms occurred during the entire month I spent at the station. Occasionally, wind speeds were high enough to cause drifting snow, but conditions generally remained calm. This was ideal for outdoor work, and even allowed us to spend our Sundays climbing in T-shirts under the Antarctic sun, though it was somewhat ironic for someone studying blowing snow.
My research focuses on blowing snow and its impact on the surface energy balance of the Antarctic ice sheet, with the goal of improving estimates of surface mass balance. To achieve this, we installed instruments measuring meteorological variables such as temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, radiation, and blowing-snow mass flux. In addition, high-frequency sensors mounted at multiple levels on the 26-meter tower allow us to calculate turbulent fluxes with great vertical resolution, a unique set-up for Antarctica.
Unfortunately, I did not experience any strong blowing-snow events during my stay. However, thanks to the communication system I installed, we can now access real-time data remotely and hopefully capture such events during the upcoming Antarctic winter.
