Report no 10, 16-20 December

The weather is now stable and clear. We are heading eastwards along the ice divide. On the 17th we reached Kohnen station, which is maintained by Germany for the European deep ice core project EPICA. The station is unmanned at the moment, but a crew will get there later in the season.

From Kohnen we have travelled more or less along the 75th latitude and are now at 9 degrees east at an altitude of approximately 3300 m. The air pressure is about 650 mb, which means that all physical work is hard. The air temperature varies daily between -20 and -30C, which is cold of course, but does not hinder any outdoor activities.

Along the route we are measuring data on standard meteorological parameters, ice surface elevation, ice thickness, ice layering, snow layering and aerosol content in the air. During stops we perform snow sampling for chemical analyses, snow particle size, aerosol content an ice velocity.

By Per Holmlund and Tomas Karlberg.